Tim Sullivan

Reid Hoffman es uno de los adultos de Silicon Valley. Tras ayudar a fundar PayPal, pasó a fundar LinkedIn, en 2002, que le ha convertido en multimillonario. Fue uno de los primeros inversores en Facebook y ahora es socio de la empresa de capital riesgo Greylock. Ha escrito dos libros, The Start-up of You (con Ben Casnocha) y The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (con Casnocha y Chris Yeh).

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Reid Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley&#8217;s grown-ups. After helping to found PayPal, he moved on to launch LinkedIn in 2002&#8212;an endeavor that turned him into a billionaire. He was an early investor in Facebook and now serves as a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock.
In this edited interview with Tim Sullivan, of HBR Press, Hoffman explores his idea of &#8220;blitzscaling&#8221;&#8212;the discipline of getting very big very fast. In today&#8217;s networked landscape, the path to high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship can be chaotic and grueling. It involves rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale.
And there&#8217;s no playbook to guide you, Hoffman notes. &#8220;You throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down.&#8221;
Hoffman emphasizes that blitzscaling is not just about growing revenues and the customer base but also about scaling the organization. People naturally focus on the first two, and &#8220;if you don&#8217;t get those right, then nothing else matters.&#8221; But very few businesses can succeed on those fronts without also building an organization that has the capability and the capacity to execute at a high level in the face of extremely rapid growth.
The challenges, risks, and headaches of blitzscaling go beyond the operational; they can take a toll on organizational happiness. &#8220;But the thing that keeps these companies together&#8212;whether it&#8217;s PayPal, Google, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter,&#8221; Hoffman says, &#8220;is the sense of excitement about what&#8217;s happening and the vision of a great future.&#8221;

Blitzscaling

Reid Hoffman es uno de los grandes de Silicon Valley. Tras ayudar a fundar PayPal, pasó a lanzar LinkedIn en 2002, una empresa que le convirtió en multimillonario. Fue uno de los primeros inversores en Facebook y ahora es socio de la empresa de capital riesgo Greylock.
En esta entrevista editada con Tim Sullivan, de HBR Press, Hoffman explora su idea del "blitzscaling", la disciplina de hacerse muy grande muy rápido. En el paisaje interconectado actual, el camino hacia una iniciativa empresarial de alto crecimiento e impacto puede ser caótico y agotador. Implica construir rápidamente una empresa para servir a un mercado grande y normalmente global, con el objetivo de convertirse en el primero en actuar a escala.
Y no hay un libro de jugadas que le guíe, señala Hoffman. "Uno se lanza por un acantilado y monta su avión en el camino hacia abajo".
Hoffman hace hincapié en que la escalada relámpago no consiste sólo en aumentar los ingresos y la base de clientes, sino también en escalar la organización. La gente se centra de forma natural en las dos primeras y "si no aciertas con ellas, nada más importa". Pero muy pocas empresas pueden tener éxito en esos frentes sin construir también una organización que tenga la capacidad y la habilidad de ejecutar a un alto nivel ante un crecimiento extremadamente rápido.
Los retos, riesgos y quebraderos de cabeza de la escalada relámpago van más allá de lo operativo; pueden hacer mella en la felicidad de la organización. "Pero lo que mantiene unidas a estas empresas, ya sean PayPal, Google, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn o Twitter", afirma Hoffman, "es la sensación de entusiasmo por lo que está ocurriendo y la visión de un gran futuro".

Reid Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley’s grown-ups. After helping to found PayPal, he moved on to launch LinkedIn in 2002—an endeavor that turned him into a billionaire. He was an early investor in Facebook and now serves as a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock. In this edited interview with Tim Sullivan, of HBR Press, Hoffman explores his idea of “blitzscaling”—the discipline of getting very big very fast. In today’s networked landscape, the path to high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship can be chaotic and grueling. It involves rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale. And there’s no playbook to guide you, Hoffman notes. “You throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down.” Hoffman emphasizes that blitzscaling is not just about growing revenues and the customer base but also about scaling the organization. People naturally focus on the first two, and “if you don’t get those right, then nothing else matters.” But very few businesses can succeed on those fronts without also building an organization that has the capability and the capacity to execute at a high level in the face of extremely rapid growth. The challenges, risks, and headaches of blitzscaling go beyond the operational; they can take a toll on organizational happiness. “But the thing that keeps these companies together—whether it’s PayPal, Google, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter,” Hoffman says, “is the sense of excitement about what’s happening and the vision of a great future.”

Blitzscaling

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