Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

When evaluating market size, it’s also critical to try to account for how lower costs and product improvements can expand markets by appealing to new customers, in addition to seizing market share from existing players.

The first technique of blitzscaling is to design an innovative business model that can truly grow. This sounds like a Start-ups 101–level insight, but it’s astounding how many founders miss this key element. A major mistake made by many start-ups around the world is focusing on the technology, the software, the product, and the design, but neglecti

Product/market fit enables rapid growth, while the lack of it makes growth expensive and difficult. The concept of product/market fit originates in Marc Andreessen’s seminal blog post “The Only Thing That Matters.” In his essay, Andreessen argues that the most important factor in successful start-ups is the combination of market and product. His de

We also recognize that the number of employees is only one of several measures of an organization’s scale. Some of the other measures of scale include the number of users (user scale), the number of customers (customer scale), and total annual revenues (business scale). These measures usually, but don’t always, move in lockstep. While it’s nearly i

Another important organizational arc is moving from generalists to specialists. During the early stages of blitzscaling, the need for speed and adaptability places a hefty premium on hiring smart generalists who can get many different things done in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment. But as the company grows, it needs to shift to hiring

photographers. Founder Brian Chesky describes this strategy succinctly: “Do everything by hand until it’s too painful, then automate it.”

Bezos writes, “Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight.”

recommend that you read Ben’s essay on the topic, “10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman,” which you can find on his personal website, Casnocha.com.

modularity.” As Baldwin and Clark describe in their book, Design Rules, Vol 1: The Power of Modularity, this principle makes it possible for a company like Amazon and its customers to build complex products out of smaller, standardized subsystems. But the power of modularity goes beyond just software development and engineering. By building easy-to