Given the desire for home runs like eBay, most venture capitalists filter investment opportunities based on market size. If a company can’t achieve “venture scale” (generally, a market of at least $1 billion in annual sales), then most VCs won’t invest, even if it is a good business. It simply isn’t large enough to help them achieve their goal of r

Blitzscaling drives “lightning” growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency, even in an environment of uncertainty.

Some software companies employ business models that allow them to achieve massive success with minimal numbers of employees. The founders of WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, designed a clever business model that addressed some of the key growth factors (their messaging service leveraged both classic network effects and the existing distribution

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

Whenever I interview someone for a job, I like to ask this question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” This question sounds easy because it’s straightforward. Actually, it’s very hard to answer. It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon. And it’s psy

eight million calls—and tremendous word of mouth.

Internet as a whole. As the Internet grew and the amount of content increased at a superlinear rate, so did the difficulty of filtering and finding relevant information, making search increasingly important. Combine that effect with the rapid growth of the Internet itself, and the result was a massive market. Google has astutely expanded the market

Airbnb built a system that allowed and encouraged its hosts to cross-post their listings to the much-larger Craigslist. Hosts were told, “Reposting your listing from Airbnb to Craigslist increases your earnings by $500 a month on average,” and were allowed to do so by clicking a single button.

It’s not easy to judge the size of a market, or what pitch decks and venture capitalists often refer to as TAM (total available market). Predicting TAM and how it will grow in the future is one of the main sources of uncertainty in blitzscaling. But predicting it correctly and investing accordingly when others are still paralyzed by fear is also on