Top Insights from; Blitzscaling: the lightning-fast path to building massively valuable companies

TOP 20 INSIGHTS

Reid Hoffman’s “Blitzscaling” presents a set of processes and frameworks for startups that have successfully achieved traction and are now looking to scale.

1. Blitzscaling is an aggressive growth program that prioritizes speed over efficiency. It is both a general framework and a set of specific strategies and tactics.
2. While Blitzscaling is credited as a Silicon Valley creation, many of the tactics and benefits can be used and enjoyed by just about any industry.
3. Blitzscaling uses 3 Techniques, the most important of which is design an innovative business model that can truly grow—ideally, before starting the company.
4. Within the innovative business model are 4 Growth Factors: Market Size, Growth Size, High Distribution Margin, and Network Effects. The most important is Market Size: Eliminate ideas that serve too small of a market.
5. 2 Obstacles that can limit the company’s growth: lack of product/market fit and operational scalability. Are you able to scale without major failures, such as overloaded servers or routinely malfunctioning products?
6. Next, the 7 Business Model Patterns. If you want to scale at warp speed, consider about a digital business. Think software as a service, or a social network, or some other kind of digital good.
7. There are 4 Principles that power the technological and business innovation: Moore’s Law, Automation, Adaptation, and Contrarianism. Of these, Contrarianism is perhaps the most difficult.

1. The only time to blitzscale is when you have determined that speed is THE critical strategy to achieve massive outcomes. This means tolerating greater uncertainty or less efficiency than competing companies do.
2. If your market stops growing or reaches its upper limit, it’s time to stop blitzscaling.
3. As you Blitzscale, you will encounter 5 Stages: Family, Tribe, Village, City, and Nation. At the Family stage, the founder pulls all the levers of growth.
4. At the Tribe and Village levels, the founder manages the people who are pulling the levers. The founder also designs an organization that pulls the levers.
5. At the City stage, the founder makes high-level decisions about goals and strategies. And at the National stage, the founder pulls he organization back from blitzscaling and starts growing new product lines and business units.
6. There are 8 Transitions through blitzscaling. The most important are transitioning from Small to Large teams, from Inspiration to Data, and Single-focus to Multithreading.
7. Next come 9 Counterintuitive Rules. Of these, we think the most interesting are Let Fires Burn and Ignore the Customer.
8. “Let Fires Burn” means to focus on the really big fires that, if left unchecked, could destroy the company. If anything can wait, let it wait.
9. “Ignore the Customer” means “Provide whatever customer service you can as long as it doesn’t slow you down.”
10. Established companies can also blitzscale, even when slowed by caution and processes. They can overcome these barriers by leveraging the people and businesses that have prior blitzscaling experience.
11. China may become an even better landscape for blitzscaling than Silicon Valley. It has an entrepreneurial culture that encourages risk taking, a highly developed financial sector that is willing to fund aggressive growth.
12. If competitors are trying to out-blitzscale your business, you can either beat them, join them, or avoid them.
13. The speed of technological change is increasing the speed of change for every business. All of this means that speed and uncertainty are the new stability. To thrive, you need to be an infinite learner and a first responder.