Lessons that matter most: What we’ve learned from 100 episodes of Masters of Scale

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I just have this kinda simple model. Of entrepreneurship. All a business is. is that you have to just make something that people love enough to tell other people about it. That's Brian Chesky.

Co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. To scale a business. You have to make something that people love enough to tell other people about it. That is one of the jewels shared in today's hundredth episode of Masters of Scale. where you'll hear a roundtable discussion with five of our all-time favorite guests, including Brian.

But we're not just looking back. We're looking forward. Yeah. Each of our guests today. Share what they've learned.

What they say differently. And what has changed in their scale journey. We'll hear from Tyra Banks. Because if they don't think it's cool. Big papa is not gonna be calling.

They're only calling now because we're new. Sally Crachek That'll be a little sparky and a little controversial. Franklin Leonard. That which is great that moves an audience emotionally

Is the thing that they will talk to a friend about. And that is how those things will become successful, especially in a highly connected globalized world. And Angela Ahren. To do anything great. When you build a team

You've gotta hire for trust. It has to be built on trust. And if it is The world is your oyster. Mm.

I hope you enjoy. The hundredth episode. Of masters of scale. You gotta have incredible talent at every position.

There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. It just seems absolutely nutball. Ten years later and like, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is masters of scale. I'm Reed Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Graylock, and your host.

And welcome. to the master the scale hundredth episode Round table. I'm joined today by our executive producer, June Cohen. And five.

Iconic founders, entrepreneurs. Scale leaders. and friends of Masters of Scale. Please welcome Kyra Banks.

Founder of Smise Cream and Bankable Productions. creator, an executive producer. Of America's next top model. Brian Chesky. Co founder and CO of Airbnb.

Sally Crawchek. Co founder and CO of Elvest. Franklin Leonard. Founder of the Blacklist. And film executive.

And Angela Erens. Former Apple head of retail. and former CO Burberry. Welcome. Everyone.

Good to be here. Thanks, Reed. Thank you. Thank you. To break the ice. I'm going to start by leading us to a classic round table discussion on entrepreneurship. Let's dive in. What

Harder. about entrepreneurship than most people realize. Brian, maybe you'd like to kick us off? Sure. Thank you very much, Reed. Hi everyone.

You know, I always had this impression that You start a company By yourself or with a couple of friends. And it's a kind of lonely thing and then you become hopefully very successful. And as you get very successful, all these people join your company.

And what I didn't realize is the more successful you get, typically the lonelier you get. So for me, I think the loneliness and the isolation is probably The thing that's so hard. I think the reason why is because I mean, Reed, you used to say if starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling the airplane the way down. Well, the problem is most people don't know what that's like unless they've done it.

And I think the challenge, at least when I came to Silicon Valley, is a lot of entrepreneurs don't really confide to other entrepreneurs. Pablo Casa' once said, the older you get, the stronger the wind gets, and it's always in your face, and that could be said for the isolation as well. A hundred percent. Yeah, I would echo that profoundly. I think if I had to put it in just a few words, it would be the crippling self-doubt that you're doing it wrong. And that only gets worse, like you said, Brian, the sort of more success you have, the more people are dependent on you. And at the end of the day, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and say,

Am I gonna build this plane by the time we hit the ground? And that part of it for me has been the biggest challenge. Fortunately, therapy exists. It's a big boon to my survival, but I agree with Brian. The more we can talk with each other about the realities of dealing with this stuff, likely the better off we'll all be. Yeah, this is Sally. What's harder about entrepreneurship than most people realize. The answers everything. The loneliness absolutely. particularly coming through a pandemic.

when it's even more heightened because you are Trying to figure out what's going to happen, trying to figure out how it's going to affect your company, trying to save the company. And everybody in your network is doing the same thing. At the same time, some of whom were sick at the same time. But even beyond that, at the beginning, you are always one mistake away from failure. Raising money. I know we're all supposed to say, oh my gosh, it was so easy. They threw money at me. I was so oversubscribed.

But it's rare that that happens, so I I think what's harder everything. I think one of the things that is really hard is When you're successful and you're doing it and making money and making impact. You win together. When you fail.

You're almost. And you as that founder. are stuck with that failure where the team kinda can move on to the next thing. So that can make you feel a little lonely. So team is crucial, however, when you lose

You're alone. I just wanted to add in that in hearing everyone's answer here, I think it's so interesting that almost always the default answer from entrepreneurs is actually about the personal journey. And that's not what most business media cover. And I think one of the most interesting things we've learned together, Reed, on the show. Is that it's actually the personal stories of entrepreneurs that speaks perhaps even the most loudly to our audience that the show becomes a a sort of company on the journey and then through the valley of darkness. That is that happens to all of us along the way. Amen.

Let's move on to the next question, which is what's the most expensive lesson you've ever learned? Sally, why don't we start with you on this one? Yes, it is holding on to people for too long. You start a business.

Everybody tells you it's gonna be hard. If it's not going well. Nobody tells you it's going to be hard if it's going very well. Because you scale through people who started the company with you. And it happened so dang fast. Someone is doing great this week.

Next week They look a little miserable, they look a little unhappy, and you, well, they're having an off week in the second week and the third week. And having grown up at big companies, you try to repot them, you try to coach them, you try to help them. They have your heart because they started with you. And so I kept too many people in roles they shouldn't have been in too long. And frankly, I tried to repot too many people rather than just saying, you know what, it's time to move on. And in read, I've learned that lesson now several times. Just not once. Yes, indeed. And it hurts the whole company if you don't do it. So you've got to steal yourself for the good of the company to say goodbye to people you you love.

Franklin, same question. I actually think the most expensive lesson I ever learned was that I needed to trust myself more and lean into what I am now doing. I think I lost a lot of time and frankly potential impact by not building the blacklist into a business sooner. And that came about as you know, I think as a result of trusting that the people that were running the system running Hollywood before had the best interests of the industry in mind and in heart and were capable of executing on what those best interests were. I've since realized that's not the case, which is why my business is thriving. And I wish I had realized that lesson a bit sooner.

Mm. Yeah, indeed. Angela. What's the most expensive lesson you've ever learned? Not trusting my original gut instincts. Веню ана ідея, а віжін а дрім.

keep using your instincts and I think take all the input from everyone else, but if it doesn't align to your vision and dream Then Who's to say that's any better than your instincts? I've only failed when I've not trusted my instincts. And Brian. Number one is not hiring senior leaders fast enough. And I think the other one, and and Angela has been on this journey with me is

You know, when I started Airbnb I kinda didn't know any better. I just did what I thought was right'cause I had no other advice. And I think the challenge is that Every company starts unique, unique to the founders.

The challenge is as you scale You start to bring in people, investors, executives. If you're not careful, you start to conform, and every company starts looking more and more alike the bigger they get. And you start to lose a little bit of yourself every single day if you're not really careful. And I think a challenge is You wanna listen, you wanna take advice, but then you ultimately wanna listen to your own path and do something that is unique to you.

So we're now gonna transition. I've interviewed everyone here for their own episodes of Masters of Scale in the Past. And I'd love to reflect on our original conversation and your episodes a bit. Brian? I'd love to start with you. As many of you know, Brian's episode was the very first episode ever. Of masters of scale.

So it's only fitting we start with Brian. And I think we're going to start with playing a clip. From your episode. I didn't realize that was the first episode read. Yes. And not a surprise. Pretty cool. It was an effort towards eleven star design for Masters of Scale. I hope it's starting on good foot. The eleven star experience. It's a uh it's a classic.

Oh thank you. Let's listen. They have to promise investors the world. Tens of millions of customers, billions in revenue, it's intoxicating. Just listen to Brian go. This is a travel industry that is something like 7% of global GDP.

Some between five and seven trillion dollars, ten times the market size of Google's market size. And Brian might have stayed in the stratosphere, if not for a fateful meeting with Paul Graham. co-founder of Y Combinator. Y Combinator is a startup incubator, which cultivates and invests in early stage companies.

Brian was admitted to White Combinator in two thousand and nine. And his first meeting with Paul was confounding. Paul tends to stump people with deceptively simple questions. And he asked us. Where's your business? And I go, What do you mean? Like where's your traction? I go, Well, we don't have a lot of traction. He goes, Well, people must be using it.

I said There's a few people in New York using it. And he's said something I'll never forget. He said, So your users are in New York and you're still in Mount View I said, Yeah. He said, What are you still doing here? And I go, What do you mean?

Said go to your users. Get to know them. Get your customers one by one. And I said But that won't scale.

For hugely millions of customers, we can't meet every customer. And he said, that's exactly why you should do it now, because this is the only time you'll ever be small enough that you can meet all your customers, get to know them, and make something directly for them. Brian and his co founders. Followed his advice to the letter. We literally commuted to Newark from Mountain View.

So we would be in Wycom Air for uh was it two night dinners? And then Wednesday. Joe and I would go to New York. We literally would knock on the doors of all of our hosts and have their addresses. We say knock knock hello, hey, this is Brian Joe. We're founders, we just want to meet you. It's a little creepy just to knock on the door unannounced. We needed excuses to get in their home. So they came up with an offer that the host couldn't refuse. We'd send a professional photographer to your home and photograph your home. Of course, we didn't have any money and we couldn't employ photographers. So Joe and I we'd show up at their door and they're like, wow, this company's pretty small. These home visits became Airbnb's secret weapon.

It's how they learned what people loved. It's really hard to get even ten people to love anything. But it's not hard if you spend a ton of time with them. So if I want to make something amazing, I just spend time with you and I'm like Well what if I did this? What if I did this? What if I did this?

Uh. So, Brian, I'm sure that you remember this. Oh yeah. It's among the things that I really loved was the kind of the both scrappiness, but vision of the huge future. Any reflections as you now look back from Airbnb being a global platform everywhere in the world with becoming its own both verb and noun. But things back to that kind of

early photography moments. Yeah, I mean I just have this kind of simple model. of entrepreneurship. You know, when we join Y Combinator the first day they give us a T shirt. And on the front of the t shirt it said, Make something people love. And the basic idea was all a business is

Is that you have to just make something that people love enough to tell other people about it. It seems so simple. Of course, to make something people love can be quite difficult. But if you spend time with them, if you understand their needs. you can start with the perfect experience for like one or two people. I think what ends up happening is people skip that step. They try to go into company building mode. They try to go into system building mode. And a business is actually so much simpler. You have a customer, you make something for them, they either kinda like it, they like it, or they love it. You know, like this advice Paul Graham gave us was. Build something a hundred people love.

Not something a million people kind of like. It's very, very hard. To make something 100 people love. And the challenge here is scale is your enemy. A lot of entrepreneurs are obsessed with scale. And I tell them the biggest gift you have is lack of scale, because the bigger something gets, the harder it is to fix or renovate. Imagine renovating a tanker versus a very small boat. And so embrace being small, make something perfect because that's going to be what fuels your company going forward. Yeah. Which enables you to get to scale, since obviously you do have to get to scale. Exactly. And then eventually you have to operationalize the scale, but only after you've perfected the product.

All right, Angela, I'd like to come to you next, but before we dive into your clip. Do you have anything to add given that you're on the board and that you're now actually in fact part of this journey? Yeah, I think I mean uh Brian just summed up their journey so brilliantly. And it was funny when he asked me to join the board, I told him that I would only do it. If he continued to dream. I said, you cannot become a traditional corporation because I actually believe that Airbnb has the power to influence how really great corporations, great companies run in the future. So I just was honored for him to ask me to be on that journey with him and

I remind him constantly that he is not to be a traditional company. They dream of changing the world and they can do it through Airbnb. They're doing it. Amen. So I think we're now gonna do a clip from Angela in a similar pattern. Frequently when you do a startup and you you're do a product launch or a mission.

There's this original conception, then there's things that you learn as you're getting the product market fit. What were some of the things that you learned along the path of it? To tune it, to refine it, to make it better. We had moved a couple of people from Marcom over. Marcom Marketing communications

And then they hired a whole team of people'cause we didn't have in retail, we didn't have a huge marketing department to even create this, right? We spend a tremendous amount of time. And I was so clear on my vision. It's iOS Live. And if it's iOS Live.

It has to replicate every single thing on the phone. Because it's the three D live version of it, right? So if if it's the number one camera in the world, and that's what everybody knows, when they walk into a store, it's gotta be intuitive that those classes, courses are all about photography. And I was so clear. Over and over. But you know, there were a handful of them that were like, No, no, Steve was also about art and creativity and but there's not an art app. Right? I mean I was being so black and white and so linear.

And pushing hard on it. But they finally convinced me that I shouldn't be so black and white in some of the best classes today. R Some of those on art and design. Uh yep, which aren't necessarily a specific app on the phone, yes. What's interesting to me about this moment is that Angela wanted a logical

direct correlation between the app on the iPhone And the class being taught. And it was her team that convinced her to let the class topics be more intuitive. The proof that she had built. The right team.

And The right approach. Is that when it came time to make a critical decision They showed her The right answer.

They had adopted the elevated mission. Has their own. That How you unite. A global team.

You inspire them. With a guiding mission. You connect them. Face to face. Give them a reason to buy in.

To think big and think different. And then watch them. Take ownership. Of the mission itself. Uh

So Angela, obviously many great things here. Everything from the parallel from the app of the IOS into the store and the platform to the creativity and generativity to Team. you know, kind of giving permission for the team to drive underneath the mission and making that happen. Any reflections?

Yeah, you know, the thing that came to mind as I was listening to it was we never used the word trust. And I think that to do anything great. Whether it's your investors, the founders, whether it's the team you're bringing in, when you build a team. The just innately trust and you've got a hire for trust. And then what happens is

Then everyone feels empowered. And I think it unlocks their greatest creative thinking. I trusted that team. And so that's why I was open. for them to convince me to do something differently. They were experts in their field. Just because I had a vision doesn't mean it was right.

А дом we talk enough about trust in any size business. But Every relationship it has to be built on trust, and if it is, the world is your oyster. And I'll just jump in to say read. You wrote a book called Blitz Scaling. There's an old saying, things move at the speed of trust. So in startups, I think trust is especially important because that

is really how fast you can move. Yep, I completely agree. We've touch on it a couple of different ways in masters of scale. I think those are Essential. Points.

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learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wire's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable?

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From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. All right, so let's move on. To Tyra. Shall we play the Tyra clip?

When something like Covid hits. An entire business can be crushed in a matter of weeks. But your personal brand is still with you.

And that. allows you to pivot in a bold new direction. Tyra did just that. Some ice cream. Which is an innovative ice cream company.

It went from an idea. To have been launched. Now, which is crazy. The craziest pivot I have ever done in my life. To go into consumer packaged goods and food and to go into a place that was Passion for me.

But not expertise. Was Pretty crazy. But I am so proud of this product. And I'll be 100% honest, when I started, I had a passion for ice cream.

but just thought good ice cream was good ice cream and I did not understand it. And I had said yes to some product that I thought was good. but then we had some kind of technical difficulties with the manufacturing process. So it allowed for us to slow down. And read

I ordered from every single ice cream company in this country that delivers. I have about 250 pints of ice cream. I have like six freezers in our garage. And I taste it oo too dry.

Ooh, too much air. Too much fat. Ooh, too much this. Ooh, not enough this. And then I was like, Oh my god, this is no longer a passion, this is an expertise. Tyra's epic journey.

From model. to reality show creator. To Stanford Instructor. To found her. The ice cream magnet.

is one that might not suit almost any other entrepreneur on the planet. But makes perfect sense for her. And that is exactly the point of cultivating a personal brand. Startups can come and go. And so do employers.

In our current Very uncertain landscape. The thing that remains constant is you. How you solve problems. How you learn from mistakes.

How you build networks and relationships. And what you stand for. So this reminds me that one of my still action items from our discussion was to follow up to get your Expert recommendations on ice cream.

But of course the more general point For our our listeners is that and what you teach at Stanford is the importance of approaching this on a kind of a brand and entrepreneurial and a high engagement with the customers any reflections, anything you would add or change or develop since our conversation? So when Brian was speaking about creating a product For a hundred people and not a million. And to really start pleasing a few.

Before trying to please A ton. It really struck me. I have recently Tweaked the strategy for SwifeSpray. Because we have a big megaphone, we have a lot of opportunity and a lot of opportunity to do things fast and big and

We're getting these phone calls this huge store wants us in two thousand of their stores next summer. This country wants to do subsidies and bring us and so then we were like oh my gosh we need to produce in mass and we need to produce in bulk and we need to just get it out there out there out there And It made us lose touch on being able to pivot.

fast and create flavors fast and to do crazy wacky things that We know we're gonna make lines happen. So we ended up creating Oh, obviously. product that can go out to the world because there's all this demand on a mass scale.

But forgetting about the customer because if they don't think it's cool Big Papa is not gonna be calling. They're only calling now because we're new. And so Brian, when you're saying that, it just touched my heart and my spirit and my soul. Because I have

Paused on all the big orders. Because you can get on those shelves or get on this crazy distribution. But if you don't sell, you get kicked off and it is hella hard to get back. So I said pump the brakes. Let's R and D and just build the most crazy.

He sees What the hell Eating experience. For a hundred people. So

I didn't think of it in the way that Brian was saying, but hearing it from you, Brian, it's like you were my instructor today. So I wanna thank you for that because it's that gut that I had that I said to my team, but now you've given me some vocabulary to go back to say it in a different way to the team. Oh thank you. Any other folks with reflections on when'cause you know, obviously the usual thing on entrepreneurship is go, go, go, go, go. Scale, scale, scale, scale, scale. Hitting the brakes. As a smart thing, any other add ins?

The other thing I would add is also know when it's time to shift. During the pandemic. I remember calling my head of product and saying All I know is the world has changely, maybe for some period of time. Maybe for forever.

But I find it hard to believe that we would be doing exactly what we're doing. today if we knew this was coming. And so let's Take a step back and the storm was there. I mean, it was a four five, you know, hurricane type of thing. And just trying to find The quiet

And the moment. to really think deeply about what we should do. And for us at Elvest. What we did was stop everything. and then we'll pick up the product. Road map on the other side, which

ended up being different than the one we've been working on. Yep. Well, with that, I actually think we should go to Sally's clip. Next. Which is I believe our next clip up.

Sally realized that despite all the connections she had in Wall Street, she would need to build her own network from the ground up. Sally would work to ensure it was as diverse as possible and put in place systems to ensure that diversity was vigorously maintained. Okay.

So Networks are huge, right? Networking has been cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. And men tend to have stronger networks than women earlier on, which is one of the reasons they go ahead. So Back up.

One of the delights. of moving into the world of entrepreneurs has been the network of female venture capitalists and entrepreneurs on the West Coast. I found my way into building that early. And it has been such a really uplifting

support for me You know, it's interesting on Wall Street we just didn't have it as much among women. And I've never been able to figure out why, and someone said to me last week they think it's maybe because we all competed against each other. Mm.

Right. Where we were competing for deals, you're competing for the trade, whereas the women out here could do business together. What I would say is You gotta start building it. From the moment you start, who are entrepreneurs that I want to get to know.

who are doing similar things, who maybe if I'm still in business I can advise so I can get to know them, who can they introduce me to. And my approach to networks is I try to do as many favors as I possibly can. That it's not about what I can get from it, it's what I can give and give and give and give to it. And that it will come back to me later. So this is really timeless advice on the networking side, which everyone here

having succeeded getting the scale knows Was there anything in that part of the episode or discussion or stuff that you've learned in the years intervening that you would Amplify and build on that or Any other commentary, Sally? Well, I had completely forgotten about that part of the interview.

But I would say I'll be a little sparky and a little controversial. Which is that somehow you gentlemen learned early on that business is a team sport. And you fund each other and you invest together in companies and you bring each other in the deals and you put each other on the boards and you talk each other up. And somehow we women along the way. sort of picked up that it was an individual sport.

And there was a reason for it. The research has shown if we promote each other in corporate America historically, we sort of got hit for it. Oh you know, look the women together. And maybe it's the rows and rows of books on how to get ahead. In business for women. That none of'em say, you know, look, you you've gotta do the same thing. But Y'all have gotten further ahead than we have. And so

Women. Coming together to support women. is a key to us becoming more successful. So many times you hear well You know, if it's four women, it feels sort of junior varsity. But there are massive opportunities and you know, you can look at L of Est and say

El ofest is women, we're seventy five percent women solving problems for women. putting more money in their hands, investing that men just didn't see. Bumble. Who knew? That women needed a dating site where they made the first move, except for Whitney. Right?

Goop. Who knew that women were looking for health and wellness in that way, but Gwyneth. The honest company. You know, so there are such big opportunities for us. But they are much easier to access.

If we Fund each other, work together, share ideas, network, and not let the old ways. Hold us back. I love that, Sally, and may I jump in for a minute, first of all to applaud that. Attitude and approach.

Also, I'd love to add something on that that I'd love to see from women founders, because I think everyone here will remember that Masters of Scale has always had 50%. women founders on the show. And what you learn from that is you suddenly realize how many highly successful women founders there are. Who often don't put themselves forward. And I would like to make a call out to every woman out there to say yes to the next speaking opportunity that's offered to them. It's one of the challenges we have on this show and that everybody has in business media especially and across the board is that women founders tend to decline the invitations to speak. So Thank you so much to Sally and Angela and Tyra for saying yes. Cause it's role modeling too, the more women step forward.

play those roles, play it to the audience, the more we realize like there's actually far more women leaders in the world than we realize. Yeah, if I could jump in here and maybe be a little sparky too, the system that men created by and large has allowed their self interest to be perpetuated by these transactions. And it was only possible for women to get ahead by engaging in a system that was not of their creation. And so when you see more systems that are authored and sort of created by women, there's an incentive structure to sort of move ahead as a team, which is why we see women led companies, women led organizations have greater diversity in their leadership teams and get better outcomes as a consequence. Amen. Let's go to Franklin's clip.

For the last couple of years we've been doing these lists with affinity groups. We wanna put people in a position to be like Well, here you go, here's a menu. Here's that bushel of needles. Don't worry about the haystack.

I love this iteration of our theory. Because lest we forget haystacks. Are terrible places. to keep needles. Creating these lists, especially to find the best writers from different demographics, helps upend the old systems.

And let new talent. Into the room. It disrupts that old system of pattern matching. By looking for new patterns. But in the case of a blacklist.

It's been important to Franklin Leonard. is still in the product. After all. Art is subjective.

But movie making is a business. Who's to say the scripts and the writers are finding? are actually The best. Well

The numbers. Say it for one. 1200 scripts on the list. 400 of them have been produced. 54 Oscars. Four best pictures. Eleven of the last twenty eight. Screenwriting Oscars.

That's crazy.$30 billion in Worldwide Box Office. The pa But the icing on the cake for me was Harvard Business School did a study specifically trying to look at the economic impact of the black. And I wanna be clear that this is not causative, it's correlative, but it's still notable. Movies made from scripts on the blacklist made ninety percent more in revenue than movies made from scripts not on the blacklist. Yeah.

Start with a great script. Right. Have the best chance of making a great movie. Have the best chance of making money. In practice is it ninety percent?

No. Maybe I don't know. Is it always ninety percent? No. This is a probabilistic situation across the portfolio. And I think a lot of people in the industry have trouble understanding those kind of Thinking systems. But at the end of the day

I will take A ninety percent revenue advantage. Based on my ability to select material. I'll put that up against anybody else controlling for all other factors. Mm-hmm.

And again, it just comes from a simple place. Find scripts that people are responding to emotionally. So you already mentioned earlier that one of the things was productizing the blacklist sooner was one of the things that

was kind of one of those lessons which I completely agree with and I think is Amazing. Any additional reflections, Franklin, from this thing, which is the core iconic inside of this Amazing new thing on finding scripts. Yeah, it honestly goes back a little bit to Brian's comments. You know, I I've sort of always believed that all artists are entrepreneurs on some level, right? You're accreting labor and capital in order to create something that has value in the marketplace, whether that be emotional or cultural artistic value or financial value. But it's the same engagement, right? And so

It doesn't surprise me that people who think of themselves as creative are also very successful entrepreneurs because that skill set overlaps heavily. And if anything, I think I'm just more sure of that even a year on. I mean everybody's talking about Squid Game right now. And to bring it a little bit back to this diversity thing. That which is great, that moves an audience emotionally is the thing that they will jump on social media, their group chat, or talk to a friend about. And that is how those things will become successful, especially in a highly connected globalized world. And I think it's really incumbent upon Hollywood to focus on the signal and not the noise. And the noise is is the actor a white male under the age of thirty? The noise is is it the right genre? The signal is Is this something that people love? And if you can make something that people love and it's easy for them to get, as it is with something like Netflix around the world, you will have a hit.

It's kinda just that simple. I think a corollary of that, unfortunately, is that the film and television industry has historically not been great at that because they've been more focused on the noise than the signal. There was a McKinsey study that came out earlier this year that shows that Hollywood is losing ten billion dollars a year annually, solely driven by anti black bias. by a series of assumptions about black talent and the saleability of black content, and that's just black people. That's not every other marginalized community, including all women, who knows how much money there is to be had by again focusing on the most talented people, making the best stuff and making that stuff available to an audience. And I, for one, am excited that sort of the world in which we live makes that reality a little bit closer than it was even five years ago. Awesome. So

Let's end with saying look, where does storytelling play into How you tell your founding story, what you're doing, how you're doing your company. And Franklin, since obviously that's the business we just talked about, we'll start with you. Uh, I'm gonna turn the tables a bit here, Reed, because I realize that I have no idea about your founding story of this very podcast. And you know, I don't know how much time we have, but I'm just gonna say

Let's start with yours. Uh huh. Maybe I should actually turn that to June first. That that is so funny. Frank then. So I think that the founding story of this podcast started

With what would later become the theory in the Reed Hoffman episode of it. Which the theory in the Reed Hoffman episode of Masters of Scale is in order to scale, you have to make other people the hero. In their own story, not yours. We were founding our company, Wait What? We were deciding what would be our first media property we brought to the world. We thought about two things. We thought about where is there a large community of people who have a daily habit where we can play into it. We thought entrepreneurs. always, always, always are looking for advice and insight. Then we thought

Both who is the person in that space Who can offer the most advice, the most insight, the most wisdom, and would be most motivated to do so. Like who who will be the hero in their own story? by um bringing wisdom to entrepreneurs. And the only answer to that is Reed Hoffman.

And so I pitched my old friend Reed on Masters of Scale. And we are all better for it. And Reed, did you know it was ahead? No. And June's one of the very few people who could persuade me that I might have a chance at being talent. But I'm actually the storytelling stuff is super important. All of us are there. Here's my contribution to the sort of storytelling discourse since ostensibly I'm supposedly an expert. And it comes back again, I think it's just a recurring theme in this conversation. It is about

the human emotional reality of any of it. If I'm telling my story, I'm talking about being in an office being like, I gotta find some good scripts and how am I gonna do it? Right. The most effective stories are the ones that center a person, make that person actually human, and move a person emotionally with the recounting of their adventures. I don't know that there's any other way to tell a story effectively. And that's true in entrepreneurship. That's true in movies. That's true if you're sitting at a bar next to somebody in an airport. You gotta make them feel. Kyra? So I like I have two thoughts uh when it comes to storytelling. The first is I am a child of the nineties, came into this entertainment industry in the nineties.

When things had to be polished and things had to be perfect, and you had to present yourself Like so. And I have a hunger to tell my smise cream story and to tell it in real time. And to not tell it perfectly and to not tell it beautifully. But I struggle with that. I struggle with

wanting to take people on this journey because they think things just pop up. But I think it's important to what I tell my students to work out loud. And so that is a challenge that I want to do to be able to tell real time storytelling. I think it's important that we live in a in a world that the world does not want to see to. They wanna see the journey on the work or shall I say The enchanting side of storytelling

I always you know tell people to to lean into your truth and to lean into your strengths. I have a passion for ice cream and now an asciano and an expert. based on the time put into it. However, my core competency is storytelling and producing and knowing how to delight and give people what they don't know that they want and creating new words and nomenclature and things. Yep.

And Brian. I think the way to tell your story as a founder. is passionately All the time.

In a way that everyone can relate to. The little I know about storytelling is most characters want something. And this drama is the obstacles to getting that thing. Well, what is the ultimate manifestation that other than an entrepreneur? Everyone knows what you want. And the obstacles Are things that almost everyone can relate to. Maybe everyone can relate to be an entrepreneur, but everyone can relate to the struggle. So I think you tell it every single time, and you don't just tell what happened, but why it happened and how it felt. And then suddenly people can relate to you, because they may not have done what you've done, but they felt have you felt. And the moment they relate to you, they start to root for you.

You humanize the company. And this becomes more important as you get more successful, because you get more successful. You become less like the person they think. And I think it's really important. And I think the job of a founder is you're the chief advantageist of the company. You know, when you're hiring people, you're basically trying to get them to follow you by telling the story. When you're putting out a product, you're telling the press and the customer, when you're raising money, when you're talking to partners, when you're telling your story to regulators, every single time you tell the stories if it's the first time. Indeed.

And Angela, one of the things I learned from yours was the quarterly pull together of those magical moments and achievements. Another storytelling thing, anything you would want to add there? Yeah, and you know, Reed, I love the fact that you call it storytelling, especially for all the entrepreneurs that are listening because I think people talk to them about leadership and culture and and they don't really, you know, truly understand what that means, but I think as Brian and Tyra said, your story is your passion and it's your energy and it's your vision and it's your values. And it's getting the authenticity of what you're doing out there. And I think also you know

When you talk about leadership other than storytelling, they don't tell you that it's okay to be vulnerable, right? Like Brian said, every story has highs lows. And and what I've learned I called it leadership, but calling it storytelling what I learned is often the most vulnerable That you are and when you are a bit insecure and you share with the team that you don't know. And you need them. That's actually when the team unites the strongest.

collectively to achieve incredible things. And Sally, the power behind the all of those things that need to happen with women and Elvest. has obviously got Both systems and stories. So over to you. No, the the storytelling is so important and it's important

Externally it's very important internally and I meet With new employees. Once a month or every couple of weeks. And the first bit of the conversation. is the story of Allavest and making sure that they know the founding story. I was

Putting my mascara on one day when all of a sudden and that is literally how L of us started in, you know, with the mascara going on and and sort of a stroke of insight. The other thing I would add is the story, you know, may have to shift for the audience. So for some folks They are Feminist, they understand that money is power, that women will have more power when they have more money, and they are there. For other folks, I begin with, well, uh, you know, you may be thinking L of S is about the dumbest idea around.

And then you get a I really do. Yep, I really do. And then you can take so did I. And then you can take them from that place, but if you start on chapter three for them You've already lost them. So knowing who your audience is and tailoring the story to that audience. And June. I'd love to build on all of those answers saying having spent the last many, many years working on

Stories from extraordinary entrepreneurs here, stories from extraordinary thinkers at Ted, I'd say the single most important thing in storytelling is what was reflected with almost every single one of you is the vulnerability. What I remember most in each of your episodes were the moments when you were really vulnerable, Sally, whether it was you being bullied on Wall Street, Angela, the moment of you starting at Apple I feel like I hated it. I hated it. You never hear a leader say I hated it. Brian, so many times that Joe and I was broke at the beginning, the moment in the pandemic when you felt like a captain with a torpedo aimed at your boat. Like I will never forget that sound in your voice.

Like those are the moments that stay With the audience and they stay with the consumer and they stay with the investors. And so I just think vulnerability, it's like That's the story that sticks. And I think with that we our wrap for all of our listeners. Think What is your story? What is the story that you live? What is the story that you tell?

Thank you from my heart, Angela, Brian, Tyra, Franklin. June and Sally. For joining us today. I'm Reed Hoffman. Thanks for listening.

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those who are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. Rana Al Calyubi And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.

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