What I learnt from Reid Hoffman, Brian Chesky, Marrisa Mayer, Elizabeth Holmes, Jeff Weiner on blitzscaling start-ups.

What are the three most important factors you think should trigger the decision to commit to blitzscaling?

a. “Can’t do without”: In one way or the other almost everyone who came to class mentioned this in their own way and most describe it as product-market fit. I think a simple way to think about this would be that your product has found a core-group of users of significant size that cannot do without your product, use it at high frequency and find it awesome. Cracking this “magic sauce” is a sure indicator that gears should shift to blitzscaling and bring your product to more and more users. If as a founder you take a no BS approach to your data and user stories, one can feel this inflection point. Google expanding their ad business internationally under Eric was a brilliant example of this, though late but a brilliant example of “Can’t do without”

b. “This is it!! Holy Cow!”: The early days are iterative on features and product and sometimes even target users until you hit a version of product that seems to be providing 80% of the value your users need, and you feel even without more features ( which would probably make it even more awesome), this version of product can be used simply by a large number of users. In other words, the core of your product is now clearly defined and working well.

c. “People! People! People” : Do we have the guns? Blitzscaling will require one to fire across multiple functions and if the talent width is not there, it may lead to a shit-show as one tries to scale. Therefore, by tribal stage — the seeds of operational breadth should be sown for companies to shift gears into blitzscaling. If not, time to move really really fast on finding the right people. If we hire good people at this stage and define our policies on hiring great people, it will have 100X benefits in people scaling across different OS stages.

To summarize in order of priority, if your start-up as a sizeable set of loyal users that cannot do without it, a core product that’s stable in its definition and have the people power to power a blitzscaling effort, one must go #ALLIN and #BLITZSCALE.

2. What are the three techniques you’ve learned in the class that you’re most likely to use when you blitzscale?

a. Cutlure Codification: Something simple, but almost everyone mentioned was codifying culture, defining it, writing it and driving it down right from the top — not only in words but action of the various leaders. I think almost everyone mentioned how critical this as decisions making gets decentralized, you get spread across products or geographies and functions and everyone must be making decisions which are consistent with the values that company stands for and it creates. For e.g. Jeff pointing out Sales head at LinkedIn driving the core value of “users come first” all the time and the impact its had on how LinkedIn does sale or Brian pointing out to everyone should have a passion for hospitality to be part of AirBnB. Advantages of codifying values and ensuring consistency will lead to 10X benefits in hiring, processes, customer service etc. I think Elizabeth exemplified these values.

To me this also includes the “hiring/people” aspect as most companies one would definitely hire “A” talent but culture codification helps hire the best “A” talent for your organization.

b. Ensure Communication: I think Marrisa exemplified this when she joined Yahoo and spent a while listening. Almost everyone pointed out their little technique — whether it was “All team hands down” or a “Town-Hall” or “Weekly/Fortnightly CEO emails” or “having lunch with the team”. As the team scales communication breaks. Though not from this lecture series, Ben Horowitz has also written about communication and why as founders our job is to create more and more seamless communication across function, hierarchies and offices. Even from my personal start-up experience, I have seen the benefit (and pitfalls) of communications done right (and wrong). Yahoo’s board on archaic rules was a good story on how transparent communication should seep down to even simple things like gym usage at the company. Also, there were passing references and in some cases very definite message that as founders/senior management communication lines from bottom-up should be open and fairly easy.

c. Define the key metrics the business is chasing: This was touched upon a bit by Eric Schmidt, Shishir and others but I think best phrased by Jeff when he spoke about “Local maxima versus Global maxima”. I think its really important for the company as a whole and different units/functions to understand whats best for the company, what are the key common goals we are chasing and not be caught up in just maximizing their units/functions. Again a lot of emphasis was given by Shishir, Brian, Jeff, Elizabeth on defining whats core to the company and making sure everyone from first to the last person is aware of it. I think Youtube’s story — when they defined views as a key metric — and the changes it brought across the board was really a simple yet great example of what defining simple metrics can do to the way every function is run.

To Summarize codify culture and allow it to seep across people, processes and product. Work hard on ensuring communication across and through functions/units and in both directions while ensuring everyone understands and can articulate the companies goals and priorities.

3. Which stories, either from the class or from elsewhere, most struck you as example of the blitzscaling principle of “What got you here won’t get you there”?

I think Brian’s story is the one that comes first to mind as AirBnB grew so big so quickly that he exemplifies these shifts. From the humble and troublesome beginnings where it was survival, to initial growth, to explosive growth within US and then threat of Samwar brothers and massive geographical expansion — they had to shift a lot of gears really quick.

But, if I had to pinpoint a personal favorite — Elizabeth’s story is the perfect example. She began with just researching a problem — recruiting her professor, getting lab space, and filing patents, then was building a product that could be used by pharma companies, and then shifting gears to consumers and building a physical distribution network via partnerships and then fighting regulators and drafting bills. I can only imagine the skill set required at each stage would be so widely different than the one before and she seemed to have effortlessly guided herself and shaped herself for every new challenge. She is my HERO on this principle.

4. What blitzscaling lesson that you learned in this class do you think is least likely to work and why?

While most idea from the class are difficult to debate against, I think there was tendency in many companies and maybe its a “Google Syndrome” that long hiring processes i.e. 4–6 rounds, 10+ hours etc. seems to be norm. I am pretty confident that after 2–3 interviews and 3–4 hours with a person if we make decisions and compare it with spending double that amount of time and effort, we would find no correlation to performance after 2 years w.r.t extra time spent interviewing.

I understand that for CEOs or VP’s why these long(or even longer) processes make sense as cost, time and culture implications are huge. But on managers and engineers I would move faster.

I am Rish, Co-founder/CEO of Letsintern. My company is one the world’s largest student-organization platforms. I am a hard working adrenaline loving technology junkie. An Ironman triathlete, certified scuba diver, football enthusiast, an avid traveller, marathon runner who reads, writes and codes in spare time. Follow me on Twitter :www.twitter.com/rish_says or Connect with me on Linkedin: in.linkedin.com/in/profilerish/