Strategy Session: How do you gain your users' trust? How do you build a team and company culture at the same time? w/questions from Entrepreneur First and co-host Jason Feifer of Entrepreneur magazine

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.

Global hiring is such a headache when you're building fast, but companies like Eleven Labs are scaling effortlessly with deal. They quadrupled their workforce in twenty twenty five. Without hiring an HR team. Build your global team with deal. Visit deal.com slash MOS and start expanding your business today. That's D E L

dot com. Slash M O S. Hey, folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more.

Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too. Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscot com slash apply. twenty six.

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. So I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of the free bedroom part. Ten years later and be 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 Greylock. And your host.

Over the last four seasons, we've heard from so many of you who have strategic questions you want to talk through. Today we're piloting a new experimental format. Where entrepreneurs from around the world ask their most burning questions. And I have to say I think you might find their questions as revealing as my answers.

For this first strategy session, we partner with entrepreneur first. A talent investor that helps founders turn their ideas into companies. Entrepreneur first. Has six campuses across Europe and Asia. And they had founders from all these locations.

Ask questions. I was fascinated with what they asked. So I invited a guest co-host to join me for this experimental episode. To bring some context to the questions we're hearing. My co host for today.

Is Jason Pfeiffer. The editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. Jason spends all his time thinking about what entrepreneurs need to know. Some of you might remember that we collaborated with Jas and his team when we first launched Masters of Scale. Jason.

It's great to have you back. Thanks, Reed. I gotta say it is a special kind of thrill to be on a podcast that I also listen to for fun, so I appreciate you having me. And what we're doing on this episode is important. Because hey, if you want to know how business is changing, there is no better way than to listen to the problems that entrepreneurs are wrestling with. They are on the front lines. They are reacting to a changing world. And the questions we'll hear today all reflect that. So I want to start today's strategy session with a question that really captures how much change is happening in business. Read, you're going to hear from Raj Srinivasan, the co-founder of a startup in Singapore. He's working on the next generation of tech, and he also acts in a very forward thinking way. Raj shut down his first company and take a listen to how casually he talks about that. Even a few years ago, that would have been seen as a failure, something to conceal. But today, with the right founder telling the right story, it is the mark of a fast learner.

Here's how Raj introduces himself. Hey Reed, I'm Raj. I was part of the second cohort of EF in Singapore. My co founder and I started Invol, a deep tech seed fund company. But due to many reasons, we decided to shut it down and return money to the investors. But with the same founding team, we have started another company, right EV. To enable mass adoption of electric vehicles in Asia

Listeners, as Raj gets to his question, you're gonna notice that he references Reed's episode with Uber CEO Dara Koshoshahi. The theory in that episode is that all startups have to eventually transform from a rule breaking pirate ship into the rules oriented Navy. Okay, Reed, here is Raj's question for you. The question is in reference to the episode with the Uber CEO, where you talk about a start up transitioning from a pilot ship to a navy vessel. Can you give a specific example from LinkedIn's past when being a pirate was helpful and one when it wasn't helpful? Also when and why did you shift to being a Navy vessel? So Raj, your question is really interesting.

But not quite for the reason. That you might think. Which is Everyone assumes that everyone starts as a pirate. LinkedIn actually started as a small navy.

Two of my co founders, Jean Luc Fallon and Alan Blue, I had actually done an earlier startup with Called social net. We knew how to work together, we knew what the processes were, we knew how to go from small to large. So as opposed to a pirate ship.

We were actually in fact like You know, a navy destroyer and then built into a fleet. And so We didn't do much of the normal kind of swashbuckling pirate stuff. that most people did because we we knew what our plan was, we'd done social networking before, we knew what technical build would be like, how it wings with business models, why we do growth first.

Uh matter of fact, I was one of the earliest people saying growth engagement monetization as part of the the tempo for what we were doing. And that was all because we were actually operating with a focus of a navy from very early days. However I will give you an example from PayPal.

Which was A Pirate ship. Then a pirate fleet. And only much later a navy.

In the very early days of PayPal We were building a new payments layer. On top of and around side existing payments layers. Like Visa and MasterCard.

And they actually at the time didn't have the vision to realize that PayPal could be super helpful to them. They could add a lot of volume to their system. And would be additive to what their system would do. So they were trying to do various things. In order to Essentially

get us to not use Visa and MasterCard because then that would kill PayPal. Part of Their techniques. were to claim issuing fines. Right.

and various little rule inflections rather than trying to figure out how do I essentially evolve the rules to evolve all of the growth in the system and to really bring in All of these new small businesses. To be able to use

Which the existing merchant bank system, the existing visa mastercard system didn't do. So our pirate techniques were essentially to try to delay V Zen MasterCard long enough. In order to get us to scale and to size so they can see all the volume, they can see how it'd be useful.

And once we're at that size. We could then recruit members. From the Visa and the MasterCard ecosystems, these large issuing banks who are just issuing credit cards. In order to say

Well, no, actually, in fact, PayPal is useful to us. We really want this. We're issuing cards with them, uh, we're doing a lot of payments, transactions through them. We want them to exist. So that was a helpful case. An unhelpful case. Was that we were competing with eBay's own solution called Bill Point.

On eBay. And as part of that, eBay was trying to turn the various knobs to get people to not use. PayPal and to use Bill Point, even though most of their customers at the time didn't prefer it, then they preferred PayPal instead. And so one of the things they introduced was buy it now.

which when you click the button would only go to the billpoint flow. on the webpage. So one of our engineers Released. A feature that when we added the PayPal icon

To it would go to the Pay by PayPal versus the Pay by Bill Point. It essentially in a very small way hacked the eBay webpage. Why wasn't that helpful? Well You know, that was essentially hacking their webpage and eBay was furious. Right. So

I had to like get that rolled back in hours in order to make that Not work because That was the kind of case where it's like no, you're you're being a pirate and you're and you're skirting the gray. But that was going into black hat territory. Even though it was visible and it was clear on the webpage, it was still the wrong thing to do. And

Papal shifted to being a navy vessel once it got large enough. That we established a relationship with eBay. We established a relationship with Visa MasterCard, and we got to, well, here's the rule set in which we're operating. And now it's just a question of growing the ecosystem within that rule set. You know what's interesting, Reed? I said at the very beginning that Raj is a very forward thinking guy, and as I listened to this, I realized that his question is pretty modern too, or really I guess it's a

framing that's new for a age old problem. Because modern businesses have long struggled with questions about growth, but Raj and his peers today are especially grappling with the legacy of Uber and other companies like it, because they're wondering, you know, to what extent should I Be like Uber, that is, grow like crazy and break all the rules along the way, and to what extent should I avoid being like Uber and avoid the toxic fallout of growth at all costs? This next question comes from Laura Douglas in London. Her company has actually relocated to San Francisco since she submitted this question, but in any case, Laura is the co-founder of My Levels, which makes a wearable device that monitors your sugar intake. And Laura asks a question that I hear from entrepreneurs constantly. It's among the first major challenges that an entrepreneur will face, and it is this.

How do I go from my first customers to the wider group of customers that I need to scale? By the way, on some of these questions you are going to notice some background noise just Consider that the bustle of startup life. All right, Reed, here is Laura's question. Laura Douglas from My Levels in London. Um, I'm wondering about how you might

Suggest. The focus switching between Your early adopters who are giving you a lot of feedback and ideas of things that they want to Focus on and then actually like how do you broaden your mind to your longer term community and who you expect them to be and like how the product would be for them. How do you make that leap and how would you recommend

Doing that. So Laura, great question. And I'm guessing that you've probably read Blitz Scaling. Because one of the counterintuitive rules in blitz scaling. was ignore your customer.

But really it was ignore your current customers in favor of your scale customers. In favor of the customers that you're Building towards. So Part of the key thing when you're thinking about transitioning from early adopters to long term users.

Is the thing about Which of the attributes of the early adopters Or Your scale customers. And your long term users.

Because those are the ones to focus on. Now you might do that through surveys, you might do that through analytics and watching the actual use. of your My Levels product. You might talk to some of them and do some user groups. Uh, this is actually one of the things that Mary and Nefisi have minted.

would do a lot is bring in users and be there talking with them without identifying herself as the CEO so that you can kind of Make that theory, that prediction. about which attributes of your early adopters are the one for long term users. Now one of the things of course

you always have to be measuring and monitoring is that your theory of your long term users may not be right. And so you need to be measuring that and changing it. You may be learning things from your early adopters. That actually in fact All right. What your long term users are. Now

Sometimes you just know. I'll give you an example from LinkedIn. When we launched LinkedIn There was a very active and vocal group called the LinkedIn Open Networkers. They were called Lions. They called themselves Lions. And they were like, Well, the whole world, everyone should respond to everyone, everyone should be open to everyone, everyone should email everyone, everyone should be accessible to everyone.

And that's just not the way the world works. Right. If you're a important a celebrity or business person, a CEO, there's lots of people you cannot respond to. And so they need essentially their network to be gatekeepers for them. That's part of the reason why we design LinkedIn the way it is. And yet these lions, who were important parts of early growing network, would advocate very strongly. Now the reason we knew that that was Certain.

Is that we knew that if the lines were right, we would never be big. Maybe they were right, but if they were right, LinkedIn would only be a small service, only Used by people who are like the LinkedIn open networkers. And so we stuck to our guns.

and of course eventually got to the over six hundred million people who are using the service today. And that was actually in fact Key for thinking about early adopters. To long term users.

This next question is about hiring, and I love it for two big reasons. Number one, despite how important the subject is, it is just not something I think you'd have heard a male entrepreneur ask even a few years ago. And two, even though many men are now recognizing the problem, I think a lot of them are uncomfortable admitting that they themselves are part of the problem. So okay, here's a question that truly capturing. Coming to us from a startup in London. Hi, my name's Tou Hin Chakrabordy.

I run a company called Mimica and we're building AI that learns to automate repetitive computer work. My question is As an early stage company that has a top of the funnel problem hiring diverse talent. What can we be doing to source more women and minorities? A very important question to win.

This is a problem. to address early. in the company's life cycle. And the reason is is when you bring in diverse talent

Then They help you bring in additional diverse talent. They help create a work culture. Workplace A set of practices and a set of ways that people talk to each other.

That already embodies Inclusivity And diversity. So starting early. Really matters.

Now in terms of What can you do to source? Companies techniques for sourcing talent is actually part succeed uniquely.

Like each company develops its own Patterns. For Here's how we differentiate. These are the universities and networks we reach out to.

These are the companies we go talk to. This is our pitch about what our mission is and about why we will work as a company, why This AI that learns to automate repetitive computer work. Will actually, in fact, grow and scale. This is the kind of thing that's very valuable. So what you need to add to your recruiting strategy

is a diversity recruiting strategy. And some of that is okay, we're gonna be searching LinkedIn and we're gonna make sure that we are looking for the right diverse talent. We're gonna make sure that when we're work looking at the list and the people that we might encounter we're making sure

That Diverse candidates are in the list. When we're going to our networks and asking them for Who are the great people to join an early company, we make sure to also ask the question

Who are The great people who have diverse backgrounds. So you should be thinking about the diversity and inclusion from the very beginning because then that's helps set the foundation for your company and then sets that when you scale. You scale the company.

That you want to. Scale the company. That you want to be. So Reed, these next two questions are both about speed, but they're very subtle. Anyone who listens to Masters of Scale knows that you are a champion of fast growth, or blitz scaling as you call it, and yet you'll probably agree that there are exceptions to that rule, depending on where the company is based and what industry they're in.

The two questions that you're gonna hear next might both fit those exceptions. They're reminders that business doesn't happen in a bubble. You have to consider your unique circumstances and in the case of these entrepreneurs we're gonna hear from the challenges of operating outside America. My name is Dominic Eggert, founder of Better by Less. We help our members to get rid of single use plastics in their bathrooms and improve their ecological footprint. We're in a very early stage. We worked with YF in the last couple of weeks on the idea, and now we're preparing for seed funding.

My question is If you scale pretty fast, then you're so busy making sure the business doesn't um uh collapse um and that you can manage all this growth, that sometimes you're not able to iterate and test and improve the product. And learn from what you're doing wrong. With my former business, it became harder to test and improve the larger we got.

You have a lot of business and you have your processes set up and uh you're managing a business in five languages, uh, which is always a challenge in Europe. Then you're just a lot Slower iterating. How should I balance growth and improving my product? Dominic.

Here's the thing to think about from the top. Which is it's the first to scale that matters. within the blitz scaling universe. So for your situation With better buy less.

The very first question is What does competition look like? If you have competition near at your heels. Where You actually in fact are in a contest.

for who gets to market first, who establishes the brand, who establishes the channel, who establishes the partner relationships. Then You may go, All right. I will iterate on what the product market fit is as I'm going there. But

If you feel you don't have current competition And you also don't have competition that might emerge very quickly and suddenly be Blitz scaling against you. Then taking the time

You know, with still an eye to speed, but taking the time in order to do product market fit to think about kind of like, okay, what are the ways that we need to improve the product? What are the things that we're gonna lock in such that when we're doing scale We don't have as many product iterations and the challenge of doing that While we're also scaling our supply chain.

uh scaling our marketing uh scaling our channels for distribution. And so the right balance it's a great question. The thing to always remember. Is that at relative speed.

As you say, when you're you're kind of managing this challenge in Europe, which is five languages, multiple countries, multiple logistics systems, that's actually one of the things that Europe has the general challenge of getting to scale. And that's a challenge. But your key thing is your speed relative to your competitors. It isn't speed for its own sake. It's speed to accomplish being the first to scale.

Good luck. I loved what you just said there, Reed. You don't want speed for its own sake. Speed isn't an accomplishment on its own. Speed is a method. It's a tool. You want speed that accomplishes something else that enables you, in this case, to be first to scale. There's a lot of nuance in that point, and it often gets lost when entrepreneurs just focus on moving fast. That plays out in a different way in this next question, our second question about speed. My name is Emile. I am the CEO of Novoic.

And we are Diagnosing Alzheimer's radically early. Using the way you speak. Producing language is a very complicated task for the brain to do. And

As the brain changes, when it gets affected by disease, this affects your language in ways that we can actually learn. So It's been known in the literature for a long time that there is changes in language in Alzheimer's disease. And what we're doing is bringing modern computational techniques to learn those micro changes very, very early on in speech.

There are Potential Regulatory questions. We're looking to get approved as software as a medical device. down the line and that's an area where the guidelines are very much being drafted right now by the FDA as we're speaking.

So as a digital biotechnology company, the medical products that we are building Uh software. This makes them Rapidly scalable.

But the industry that we are operating in in healthcare and pharma are inherently slow moving and heavily regulated. So how do we Best scale up hyper fast given the constraints of the industry. Like balancing.

Innovation and being contrarian. versus abiding by the existing rules. Emile, a particularly interesting question. Given of course a podcasting medium. I'd of course wonder how you would diagnose me.

Based on all of the Masters of Scale podcasts. As always with Plit Scaling. The key question is How fast are you going to need to move? Moving faster than slower is always valuable.

has compounding growth. gets more customers, increases revenue, that's always a useful thing. But in terms of blitz scaling, in terms of moving hyper fast. That depends a lot on competition. That depends a lot on

What do you need in order to get to critical mass? And Heavily regulated industries. Like the medical industry. tend to be things where

You should be More cautious. About your speed. You still need speed relative to competition. But these are things that

You need to evaluate in a specific instance. As you've undoubtedly heard. One of our recent episodes. was with Ann WJ. Of twenty three and me.

The idea of the is sometimes You need to embrace the gatekeepers. Because that's What allows you to reach.

Scale. And A lot of it depends on your specific gatekeepers. It depends on what the competition looks like. It depends on which variables are the ones that you could

Tune up some. And all of those things are specific to your specific case. But I look forward to seeing your product. And I look forward to other medical products as well. by which we take the digital world.

And we make health care. So much better. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show.

Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford's 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. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those 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. I'm Rana El Chayubi. 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. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

This next question is a great example of how entrepreneurs often have to tackle very, very new problems. So I mean a startup's purpose is to invent, right? But that can mean going into areas where there's just no established rules and no ready-made solutions for very difficult challenges. Listeners, I should warn you that our questioner is about to touch on some subject matter that's a bit violent. So if you're sensitive, you can jump ahead 30 seconds. Hi, I'm Sasha. Co founder of Unitary. And we are developing novel AI to understand video for use in content moderation.

So we're pretty early stage. We've just got our pre seed round. So recently My co founder found on Facebook an image of somebody Beheaded. And

flagged it to a moderator, it was then um still up forty eight hours later. And in that time, obviously so many people have to see that. These moderators have to watch harmful content all day. The worst job in the world. And we believe that no one should ever have to see this kind of content.

And the problem is that current state of the art for AI in video is um Really behind. So a lot of video gets through the net. So we're developing new techniques in this space so that moderators don't have to see so much.

So, Reed, given that harmful content on social media is both a topical but also really sensitive issue. How can we gain trust quickly so that we can move fast in this space? Sasha Obviously important question. And I know you've probably already listened.

To our Daniel Eck. How to build trust fast. Episode. The key set of techniques For building trust fast.

Are using bridges. where the people already naturally trust that bridge. So One bridge is Can you get someone that people already trust?

To endorse Or to be the articulator of the value proposition Or that entity

agrees to it. Then That's trustworthy. A second bridge to trust. is doing something

That's really new and extraordinary. Rather like the things that Daniel Eck was doing. It might be making a commitment. It might be making a guarantee. Like if we break trust in this way, then you know, each instance will pay you X dollars or we'll pay

you know, charity Y Z dollars. You know, something where people go, Wow They're doing something where they're really putting on the line to say that this is who they are, this is what they're doing, and we can trust them. A third bridge. is to be radically transparent.

Here we're completely open. Here's all of our code. Or Here's our commentary board. That

all of our customers or all the people can use and they can just put it and it's all there. You can see it. We do ask me anything. We have places where you say, look, we are completely open, or completely open, at least within some areas. That established trust. So transparency. Is another way of building trust fast.

A fourth and final bridge. Which we've talked about a bunch on Masters of Scale. Is that trust. is built up. By consistency over time.

And This consistency is can still help you with some speed. But it's really the way the the deep layering.

The very deep trust is built. Because when you're very consistent In addition to being transparent. And or getting endorsers or other people to stand with you.

That consistency then allows people to go Right. We trust you. We know that it will work.

So those four bridges are key bridges in building trust. And they can work. In sensitive climates as well. They're just harder. Longer

You need to be more radical. So These things can help you. I hope. with unitary.

This next question reflects a mindset that every entrepreneur should have, but that in my experience, few actually do. And here it is. An entrepreneur needs to be a long-term thinker. They need to make decisions that may be hard or even painful today, but that set themselves up for long-term success. And here is what that mindset sounds like. Hello Reed, this is long from Singapore.

I'm running a manufacturing analytics platform called Firevisor systems. And we analyze more than half a billion every year. in order to understand the facts more deeply and help our clients to increase their yield. And I have a question.

on how a startup especially an early stage startup Can scale during the time of an economic Downturn. So basically doing a recession. So why I'm asking this is because our company is working in the manufacturing field. And manufacturers are heavily affected by economic downturns.

So I wonder what can we do now to maybe prepare? for um potential recession. And when it does happen, what can we Do to still

Keep on growing. Yeah, that's it. Thanks. Long, this is a great question, in particular because the market is so overheated by stimulus over the last two years. That one wonders. When

There will be an economic downturn. versus if. There's a couple of simple things to think about. Prepping for downturn. One is

Put a lot of capital in the bank. Right. Have that capital for flexibility. Uh raise more money than you need. Preserve it. This is one of the reasons on one of our earliest episodes with Maryam Nafisi the

The money episode. We talked about raising more money than you need. Because you're planning for both. You're planning for both success. And potential volatility. A second thing is to try to be monitoring and develop as much monitoring as you can.

Other folks who are dealing with things like you know, hardware products selling stuff through retail. Try to measure as early as possible what your demand is. Be willing somewhat to even under supply to demand. uh versus over supply.

You may be underrealizing certain market opportunities, but if you see any measurements that suggest that that's the right thing. Then to play it a little cautious doesn't necessarily mean a lot cautious. Now for firevisor systems. Where you're doing the analysis on the products. The

questions for you are okay, well you just have to make sure that you can weather the fact that their volume will go down and their volume will go up. But the principles of monitor what's going on. Make sure you have cash in the bank.

Potentially don't overhire. You're always playing the win. But part of playing to win. Із мекиншо. You get through down turns.

And volatility. Next, you're going to meet an entrepreneur. Who has A co founder.

All right, I know there's nothing unusual there, except his co-founder is someone he just met. This is something I think is going to become a lot more common in the coming years. It's coming out of incubators like Entrepreneur First, which is matchmaking co-founders based on complimentary skills. And now this new kind of co-founder is curious about a new kind of problem. As you'll hear, he's curious about company. culture, which is something that I hear a lot of people discussing these days. You know, in the past we might have talked about hiring or management or leadership, but probably not culture per se, especially at the startup stage. And yet I think it's great that early stage founders are talking about it now. They understand that company culture matters and that you have to shape it early. It's a global trend, as you'll hear from this entrepreneur who's based out of Berlin.

My name is Max Mund, I'm CTO of MyProbes. Together with my co founder and CEO Nina, we are developing rapid detection tests for food safety. We are at a super early stage. It's just the two of us. We just met three months ago.

We're still In the process of getting to know each other. Which obviously is is interesting and sometimes there are misunderstandings and so on. And you always have to find a way to be aligned. So th that simply makes it tricky.

We are thinking about adding one to two people to the team by the end of the year. And we are still in the process of developing this company culture. And we are asking ourselves How can we add people to the team and try to convey this company culture.

while we are still in the process of developing it. We don't have this Ten or twenty years of joint experiences that shaped the way we interact uh with each other or within that company. So we're building something

Besides the product, which is this company culture from literally nothing. And adding people to the team feels like A bigger challenge when you don't have this nicely tied up package of certain standards and rules and ways of how to interact with each other. So it's a complex issue.

Max. Many people misunderstand culture. They think it's kind of like a dictates like the ten commandments or something you say, Well once it's this, this is what it is, we're done. Culture is always evolving. And it's obviously super important.

Because it's the thing that spreads literally from person to person. And if you don't get it right in the initial set, It doesn't spread the right way. But the key thing to think about is As you're interviewing each new person

Part of your question is Will this person Help me grow my culture. Well she or he Be the person

Who makes us better. In terms of how we work together, in terms of our belief and commitment to the mission. That doesn't mean that there are mis aren't misunderstandings. That doesn't mean there aren't mistakes. Actually part of the growth and evolution of culture.

Can be Well, we had this misunderstanding. And now We've gotten to a much better place. And that actually can make people much stronger. It's just like sometimes when you have a conflict with your friend. When you get through that conflict, through that misunderstanding.

Then you're better friends. And so The last two things That I'll say about culture. First,

Do think a lot about How it is you grow. How it is Your culture will be Somewhat different a year from now, five years from now.

That doesn't mean radically different. That means deeper. You know, think about like the aging of a wine. It's We are growing this culture that we deeply believe in.

that we think is the company as it should be. As we get there. Five years. Ten years. Twenty.

Fifty years from now. The second thing. To really understand about culture. І за ви ал. In service of the mission.

We all work for the mission. And the culture Follows from how it is we work. For that mission. So for example at LinkedIn

It was How do we make sure that we stay Focused. On every Free member.

Every individual professional The transformation Of their work life. Their career opportunities Their ability to do their job.

Is our mission. And so We put members first. So that the company would realize that as much as all companies are focused on revenue,

That the free member In LinkedIn. Із акціин факт ар топ касимер. And everything we do. needs to remember that.

And that culture then goes into The organization where they say The transformation of these individuals, the transformation of individual careers is what we're about. And so for example When someone

comes to any of us in management and says, Hey, this is where I'm transforming my career and it's gonna be in a company outside of LinkedIn. As long as that's done in a appropriate way to your team and to your role. We celebrate that.

And that's actually part of company culture. So much so That Kevin Scott, who was then the VP of Engineering and CTO. would actually in fact ask people.

What's the job you want after LinkedIn? As part of the interview question. of coming to LinkedIn. And that's how deep. Our company culture went.

If you share this fascination with cultivating company culture, there are a few Masters of Scale episodes that you should revisit. One of them is the episode with Reed Hastings of Netflix. Another is the episode with Ariane Huffington, which focuses on work life balance. And the final episode you should seek out is the one with Anil Boucherie of Workday on Hiring. And I can't help but add that I also hit on company culture a lot in my own podcast, which I do for Entrepreneur Magazine. It's called Problem Solvers, and each week we learn how an entrepreneur solved an unexpected problem in their business. Funding, scaling, motivation, you name it, and we have explored it. I hope that the show leaves you inspired and full of ideas just like Masters of Scale does. So check it out. It's called Problem Solvers.

And with that, I'll hand it back to Reed for the final word. Reed, thanks for having me on. I love hearing entrepreneurs' problems, and I love hearing your solutions, so this has been a total blast. Thank you, Jason. For your co-hosting and for your own great work supporting founders at Entrepreneur Magazine. Thanks also to Georgie Mallet and Alice Bentink from the Entrepreneur First Team for their partnership. And to all the founders from Ontreprener First who submitted their questions.

If you want to learn more about entrepreneur first. Or any of these companies. Head to Join EF. Dot com.

And if you're a startup incubator or accelerator, and you'd like to work with us on a future strategy session for your entrepreneurs. Email us at Hello. at masters of scale dot com I'm Reed Hoffman.

Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. The show is recorded on site in California and produced at the studio. Inside SY Partners in New York. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff.

Our producers are Chris McCloud, Adam Skus, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McLeod, and Ben Manilla. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Original music by Allison Leighton Brown and the Holiday Brothers. Sound Design Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chris Shay, Elisa Schreiber, David Sanford, Saida Sabieva.

Cristiina Gonzales and Sarah Sandman. Visit mastersofscale dot com to find the transcript for this episode, and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.