Masters of Scale
On Masters of Scale, iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world's most fascinating companies. Founders, CEOs, and dynamic innovators join candid conversations about their triumphs and challenges with a set of luminary hosts, including founding host Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner). From navigating early prototypes to expanding brands globally, Masters of Scale provides priceless insights to help anyone grow their dream enterprise.
Episodes
Mark Cuban has spent decades as a serial entrepreneur and investor, with one of the best track records on the planet (including celebrity status on ABC’s Shark Tank). In this episode of Pioneers of AI, Cuban joins host Rana El Kaliouby for a wide-ranging conversation about whether we are in an AI bubble, how he’s applying his investment philosophy to AI, and why the AI world is tending to excite him less and less each day.
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To get the most out of your talent, you need to create an environment that allows them to thrive. Nobody knows this better than Indra Nooyi, who spent 12 years as the CEO of PepsiCo. Her drive to support talent underpinned the initiatives that transformed the company. Hear her conversation with host Reid Hoffman in this episode from our archive.
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In this encore episode of Rapid Response, we revisit a scientific breakthrough that set the internet ablaze: The ‘de-extinction’ of the dire wolf. While many celebrated Colossal Biosciences’ announcement, the experiment also sparked controversy throughout the scientific community — namely the ethics of birthing and re-wilding extinct animals, and whether Colossal’s dire wolf puppies are the real thing. Colossal’s co-founde...
After serving as Chief Legal Officer and then CFO at Salesforce, Amy Weaver sought a new challenge. She is now CEO of Direct Relief, which she tells host Jeff Berman is "the largest, most efficient, most effective, and most impactful global humanitarian group that you may never have heard of.” Weaver reveals scale lessons from Salesforce and how she's now applying them to amplify Direct Relief's vital work.
This year delivered whiplash: geopolitics, tariffs, and technology all shifting at once. And heading into 2026, the disruption isn’t easing up. In this special episode, host Bob Safian distills five hard-won lessons from Rapid Response this year on how to lead when the ground won’t stop moving. You’ll hear standout moments from Brian Chesky, Clara Shih, Marc Lore, José Andrés, and more, with practical takeaways for turning...
With over two billion in annual revenue and nearly 7,000 employees, Gensler has cemented itself as a global icon in architecture and design. Host Jeff Berman talks with co-CEO Elizabeth Brink and global co-chair Andy Cohen about why the company has doubled down on a collaborative leadership model, the ways AI is disrupting their industry, and how they’re designing for the future of work.
Can ChatGPT dethrone Gemini? Is Tim Cook capable of leading Apple into the next wave of AI? As 2025 winds down, journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher joins Rapid Response to cut through the noise and decode what’s really happening across OpenAI, Meta, Google, and more. Swisher also sizes up the state of Disney, Netflix, and the escalating bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. And in classic Swisher fashion, she doesn’...
How does a country sliding toward autocracy affect its economy? Political scientist and author Barbara F Walter offers data-driven insights about why the murky middle ground between democracy and autocracy is bad for business. She talked with host Jeff Berman live on stage at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit.
Walter’s book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-civil-wars-start-and-how-to-stop-them-barbara-f-walter/35f702a...
In less than a decade, OnlyFans says it has grown into a business earning $7 billion a year. The digital platform is known for letting its 4 million creators share exclusive – often NSFW – content with more than 400 million paying users. So far, creators have earned $25 billion using OnlyFans. CEO Keily Blair revealed what’s next for the brand with host Jeff Berman live on stage at Web Summit in Lisbon.
A recent New York Times headline — “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” sparked a firestorm across social media. Bob Safian welcomes a leader pushing back on this notion with data and nuance: Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious network for senior women executives. Drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders, Moore unpacks how evolving career paths are being misread, why women-centered spaces r...
Danny Meyer is best known as the founder of Shake Shack and the legendary restaurants of his Union Square Hospitality Group in New York City. He joined host Jeff Berman in 2024 for the first Masters of Scale Live, presented by Capital One Business. Later in the conversation, Danny’s daughter, Hallie Meyer, joined them on stage. Hallie is busy scaling her own food venture, the gourmet NYC ice cream shop Caffè Panna. The Mey...
This Thursday marks the 99th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Macy’s Inc. chairman and CEO Tony Spring joins Rapid Response with a behind-the-scenes preview of what to expect. It’s been a tumultuous year for the legacy retailer, shaped by new tariffs, shifting consumer habits, and the constant flip between “wartime” and “peacetime” leadership. Spring shares why his team is now on “version twenty-seven of the plan...
What does it take to turn tragedy into advocacy, and advocacy into lasting change? This week, Reid and Aria are talking to Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and Kris Brown, president of Brady, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organization. Together, they explore how sports, storytelling, and civic engagement can move the needle on one of America’s most polarizing issues: guns.
In the first part of this episode, Stev...
The brilliant computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is often called the Godmother of AI. She talks with host Reid Hoffman about why scientists and entrepreneurs need to be fearless in the face of an uncertain future.
Li was a founding director of the Human-Centered AI Institute at Stanford and is now an innovator in the area of spatial intelligence as co-founder and CEO of World Labs.
This conversation was recorded live at the...
In recent weeks, OpenAI faced seven lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT contributed to suicides or mental health breakdowns. To spotlight the controversial relationship between AI and mental health, host Bob Safian is joined on stage at Innovation@Brown Showcase by Brown University's Ellie Pavlick, director of a new institute dedicated to exploring AI and mental health, and Soraya Darabi of VC firm TMV, an early investor in men...
When Emilie Choi first left Linkedin to go work at a crypto company called Coinbase, her old colleagues thought she made a big mistake. But after surviving a crypto winter, she’s become a key figure in the rise of the company – and the industry. Now Coinbase President and COO, Choi talked with host Reid Hoffman about the operating lessons that enable hyper-scaling and the future of money. This conversation was recorded liv...
Reid Hoffman, Stacy Brown-Philpot, and Aileen Lee are three of the most successful, legendary leaders and investors in Silicon Valley. (The term “unicorn” for a startup valued at a billion dollars? Well, Aileen coined that.) This power trio sat down with journalist Van Jones live onstage at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit, October 8 in San Francisco, to share candid snapshots of the investor’s mindset during this time of ...
What happens when a world-class chef learns that success doesn’t taste like he imagined?
David Chang—the culinary force behind Momofuku and author of Eat a Peach—joins Guy Kawasaki to talk about ambition, burnout, scaling the unscalable, and learning to trade Michelin stars for family time. From plumbing disasters to poetic revelations, Chang opens up about the messy, beautiful art of creating something worth tasting.
See Pr...
She built her first company, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, into a billion-dollar brand. But when things soured between her and her parent company, Estée Lauder, she had a choice: retire from the industry, or reinvent herself with a new brand. Brown joins host Jeff Berman to reveal the lessons she learned from scaling – and leaving – her first company. She’s leveraging those decades of insights now in her new venture: Jones Road B...
In a special episode of Rapid Response, we feature two fast-paced, lively conversations from Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. Autodesk CMO Dara Treseder breaks down branding and marketing lessons from the most high-profile campaigns of 2025. Treseder shares her unvarnished read on Sydney Sweeney, Cracker Barrel, Taylor Swift, and more. In the second half of the episode, Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen assesses the five...
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