Masters of Scale is a business podcast and media brand owned and produced by WaitWhat, the media company founded and led by former TED executives June Cohen and Deron Triff. In 2017, Masters of Scale launched as a business and leadership podcast occasionally hosted by Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and partner at Greylock Partners. Masters of Scale aims to “democratize entrepreneurship” and has since extended into multiple podcasts, a learning app (Masters of Scale Courses), a book., and events, including the Masters of Scale Summit.
Podcast guests have included President Barack Obama, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Huffington Post & Thrive Global founder Arianna Huffington, and Ariel Investments co-CEO Mellody Hobson.
History Executive producers Deron Triff and June Cohen approached Reid Hoffman with the idea for the podcast, pitching it as a way of "sharing his ideas on scale in a way that could, well, scale." The first episode of Masters of Scale, featuring Airbnb CEO and cofounder Brian Chesky, aired on May 3, 2017.
In 2018, Masters of Scale was the first American media program to commit to a 50/50 gender balance for guests. Hoffman told Quartz: "Silicon Valley prides itself on being a meritocracy, but the data shows it's not. [Masters of Scale] launched with and maintained our commitment to a 50/50 gender balance of guests on each season. It's important to not just talk about this topic, but to take action ... set an example."
In March 2020, the team behind Masters of Scale launched a spinoff podcast, Masters of Scale: Rapid Response, on the Masters of Scale feed, to cover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the business community. Hosted by Bob Safian, former Editor of Fast Company, the series has expanded beyond covering the pandemic, offering guidance from business leaders making decisions in turbulent situations. These podcast episodes tackle such issues as managing through crisis, the challenges of rebuilding, and changes to leadership.
In 2021, the Masters of Scale Courses app launched. The courses are rooted in the experience and insights of Reid and well-known entrepreneurs and leaders. Also in 2021, the Masters of Scale Complete Interviews became available exclusively to members in the app.
In September 2021, the Masters of Scale book was published.
In October 2022, the inaugural Masters of Scale Summit was held in San Francisco, California.
Podcasts Each classic episode of Masters of Scale is rooted in one of host Reid Hoffman's counterintuitive theories on how companies scale. Over the course of each episode, guests share their scale journey alongside insights and additional analysis from Hoffman that support the theory statement. Each episode is scored with original sound design.
A typical episode of Masters of Scale features the scale story of a founder or co-founders. The story is further contextualized through additional cameo guests. These cameo guests come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, and have included Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, Hall of Fame sportscaster Dick Stockton, National Geographic explorer Andrés Ruzo and Olympic runner Natasha Hastings.
Masters of Scale: Rapid Response episodes track real-time insights from business leaders who are navigating fast-changing situations, such as global health crises, political unrest, and economic uncertainty. In each episode, host Bob Safian, editor at large of Masters of Scale and the former Editor of Fast Company, interviews a guest with extensive experience and insights related to the topic at hand. Episodes have featured guests such as award-winning chef José Andrés, Las Vegas Raiders' President Sandra Douglass Morgan, Delta CEO Ed Bastian, Leadership Now Project's founder and CEO Daniella Ballou-Aares and Moviepass founder Stacy Spikes.
Masters of Scale Episodes +Season 1 Episode Title Airdate 1 "Do Things That Don't Scale" with Brian Chesky of Airbnb 5/3/2017 2 "Raise More Money Than You Need" with Mariam Naficy of Minted 5/10/2017 3 "Learn From Every "No"" with Tristan Walker of Walker & Co. 5/17/2017 4 "Imperfect Is Perfect" with Mark Zuckerberg of Meta 5/24/2017 5 "Lead, Lead Again" with Sheryl Sandberg of Meta 5/31/2017 6 "Innovation Is Managed Chaos" with Eric Schmidt of Google & Schmidt Futures 6/7/2017 7 "Your Plan B Needs A Plan B" with Nancy Lublin of Crisis Text Line 6/14/2017 8 "Why Culture Matters" with Reed Hastings of Netflix 6/28/2017 9 "What's The Next Silicon Valley?" with Linda Rottenberg of Endeavor 7/12/2017 10 "Let Fires Burn" with Selina Tobaccowala of Gixo, Evite, & SurveyMonkey 7/19/2017
+Season 2 Episode Title Airdate 11 "Escape the Competition" with Peter Thiel of PayPal 11/8/2017 12 "Look For The Ideas That Come At You Sideways" with Diane Greene of Google and Vmware 11/10/2017 13 "The Big Pivot" with Stewart Butterfield of Slack Technologies 11/15/2017 14 "The Infinite Learner (Part 1)" with Barry Diller of IAC 12/6/2017 15 "Learn to Unlearn (Part 2)" with Barry Diller of IAC 12/13/2017 16 "Build a More Human Internet" with Caterina Fake of Flickr and Yes Ventures 1/24/2018 17 "Customer Love is All You Need" with Sam Altman of OpenAI & Y Combinator 1/31/2018 18 "How To Build Your Company To Last" John Elkann of Fiat 2/7/2018 19 "How To Price Your Product To Scale" with Payal Kadakia of ClassPass 2/14/2018 20 "Never Underestimate Your First Idea" with Ev Williams of Medium and Twitter 2/21/2018 21 "How To Do Good And Do Good Business " with Howard Schultz of Starbucks 3/7/2018 22 "How to Find Your Big Idea" with Sara Blakely of Spanx 3/21/2018
+Season 3 Episode Title Airdate 23 "Keep Humans In the Equation" with Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit 7/11/2018 24 "How to Kill Your Bad Ideas" with Mark Pincus of Zynga 7/25/2018 25 "How to Make the Star Employees You Need" with Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Google, and Lumi Labs 8/8/2018 26 "Keep it Simple While Scaling Big" with Kevin Systrom of Instagram 9/6/2018 27 "How to Build Trust Fast" with Daniel Ek of Spotify 9/19/2018 28 "What Great Founders Do At Night" with Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global 10/3/2018 29 "When to Ignore Conventional Wisdom" with Danny Meyer of Shake Shack & Union Square Hospitality Group 10/22/2018 30 "The Elusive Formula for Great Hiring" with Aneel Bhusri of Workday 11/5/2018 31 "The Millennial Episode" with Brit Morin of Brit + Co 11/19/2018 32 "To Scale, You Must Master The Art of Storytelling" with Scott Harrison of charity: water 12/18/2018 33 "Let Your Customers Be Your Scouts" with Julia Hartz of Eventbrite 1/8/2019 34 "Make Everyone A Hero: The Reid Hoffman Story (Part 1)" with Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners 1/22/2019
+Season 4 Episode Title Airdate 35 "Make Everyone A Hero: The Reid Hoffman Story (Part 2)" with Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners 2/26/2019 36 "Check your Blindspot" with Sallie Krawcheck of Ellevest 3/12/2019 37 "Take Bigger Risks" with Shellye Archambeau of Nordstrom & MetricStream 3/26/2019 38 "Open or Closed? The Answer is Both" with Joi Ito of The Chiba Institute of Technology 4/30/2019 39 "The Case for Bootstrapping" with Ben Chestnut of Mailchimp 5/21/2019 40 "Bringing A Culture Back From The Brink" with Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber 6/5/2019 41 "Entrepreneurship as a Second Act" with Gwyneth Paltrow of Goop 7/2/2019 42 "Small Changes With Big Impact" with Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble 7/18/2019 43 "Embrace the Gatekeepers" Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe 8/1/2019 44 "Take On Goliath — And Win" with Drew Houston of Dropbox 9/5/2019 45 "LIVE! Patience or Speed? Both" with Tory Burch of Tory Burch LLC 10/17/2019
+Season 5 Episode Title Airdate 46 "Make it Epic" with will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas 10/31/2019 47 "How to Accelerate History (Part 1)" with Bill Gates of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 11/7/2019 48 "How to Set the Drumbeat" with Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn 11/15/2019 49 "How to Embrace Conflict" with Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates 11/26/2019 50 "LIVE! Find Your Trojan Horse" with Robert F. Smith of Vista Equity Partners 12/5/2019 51 "How to Solve an Impossible Challenge" with Megan Smith former Chief Technology Officer of the United States 12/13/2019 52 "The Biggest Success Story You Haven't Heard (Part 2)" with Bill Gates of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 12/20/2019 53 "What's the Hidden Business Behind Your Business?" with Jennifer Hyman of Rent the Runway 1/9/2020 54 "When to Zoom In, When to Zoom Out" with Josh Silverman of Etsy 1/23/2020 55 "Be a Platform" with Tobi Lütke of Shopify 2/13/2020 56 "How to Start a Revolution" with Wences Casares of Xapo 2/27/2020
+Season 6 Episode Title Airdate 57 "How to Unite a Team (Part 1)" with Angela Ahrendts of Apple & Burberry 5/12/2020 58 "How to Unite a Team (Part 2)" with Angela Ahrendts of Apple & Burberry 5/19/2020 59 "A Masterclass in Crowdsourcing" Luis von Ahn of Duolingo 5/26/2020 60 "Build. Measure. Learn." with Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" 6/16/2020 61 "The Power of Small Goals" with Stephen Colbert and Charles Best of DonorsChoose 6/30/2020 62 "The 4 Core Principles of Crisis Management" with Ellen Kullman formally of Carbon and DuPont 7/7/2020 63 "Be a Painkiller AND a Vitamin" with Clara Shih of Hearsay Social 7/28/2020 64 "Why Your Company Needs New Rituals" with Shishir Mehrotra of YouTube and Coda 8/18/2020 65 "How to Turn Skeptics into Fans" with John Foley of Peloton 8/25/2020
+Season 7 Episode Title Airdate 66 "How to Build Authentic Connection at Scale" with Trevor McFedries & Lil Miquela of Brud 9/29/2020 67 "How to Find – and Keep – True North" with Susan Wojcicki of YouTube 10/6/2020 68 "To Scale, Find the Right Values" with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia 10/13/2020 69 "The Empathy Flywheel" with Sarah Friar of Nextdoor 10/20/2020 70 "How to Sell Without Selling" with Phil Knight of Nike 11/10/2020 71 "How to Find Hidden Value that Others Miss" with Franklin Leonard of The Black List 11/17/2020 72 "Building Bridges to Scale" with Daniel Lubetzky of Kind 12/1/2020 73 "The Secret Power of Onboarding" with Melanie Perkins of Canva 12/8/2020 74 "How to Master Your Emotion" with Sam Harris of Making Sense 1/26/2021 75 "How to be the Steward of Your Idea" with Rana el Kaliouby of Smart Eye & Affectiva 2/2/2021
+Season 8 Episode Title Airdate 76 "The Secret to Big Leaps" with Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group 2/23/2021 77 "How Acquisitions Become an Ecosystem (Part 1)" with Bob Iger of Disney 3/2/2021 78 "Personal Brand Power" with Tyra Banks of Bankable Productions 3/9/2021 79 "How Acquisitions Become an Ecosystem (Part 2)" with Bob Iger of Disney 3/23/2021 80 "What Investors Really Look For" with Mark Cuban of Shark Tank 3/30/2021 81 "How to Teach Your Customer" with Ethan Brown of Beyond Meat 4/5/2021 82 "Frustration is Your Friend" with Adi Tatarko of Houzz 4/20/2021 83 "When the Moment Chooses You (Part 1)" with President Barack Obama 5/11/2021 84 "How to Adapt to Changing Rules (Part 2)" with President Barack Obama 5/18/2021 85 "How Mentorship Provides an Edge" with Alex Rodriquez of A-Rod Corp 5/25/2021 86 "Build the Right Flywheel" with Wendy Kopp of Teach for America and Teach for All 6/8/2021 87 "Make Room for Magic" with J.J. Abrams of Bad Robot Productions 6/15/2021 88 "Asking the Uncomfortable Questions" with Michael Seibel of Y Combinator 6/29/2021 89 "How to Accelerate Expertise" with Mellody Hobson of Ariel Investments and Starbucks 7/6/2021 90 "The Beauty of Emphasizing the Obvious" with Katia Beauchamp of Birchbox 7/27/2021