Alyona Mysko, the CEO of a B2B startup in Ukraine called Fuelfinance, walks us through the lessons she’s learned while leading her company in wartime — sometimes working with her team from bomb shelters during the day. All of Ukraine is running like a startup now, she says: Each citizen takes the initiative to pick up what needs to be done.
Eric Friedrichsen, the CEO of Emburse, a B2B software provider, has navigated risks and costs to meet the needs of their tech contractors based in Ukraine — like offering to relocate families, and funding housing costs for colleagues taking refuge in Poland. These choices haven’t come without obstacles. But the benefits are moral, communal, and quantifiable.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the sanctions that followed, radically impacted supply chains around the world. Jennifer Bisceglie, CEO of Interos, a risk-management firm focused on supply chains, has seen her company’s risk dashboards light up in new and far-reaching ways. Meanwhile, a more sophisticated supply chain is coming together in real-time.
“It’s not about fixing women. It’s about fixing the system,” says Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code and Marshall Plan for Moms. As the author of Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work, Reshma pushes the discourse around the “future of work” to include flexibility, childcare, and an end to the hustle culture — for all of us.
How do you create authentic partnerships to build scale? In Part 1 of our two-part series featuring Daymond John, founder of FUBU and one of the original “sharks” on ABC’s Shark Tank, Daymond shares lessons from FUBU’s earliest days in Queens, where he partnered with bouncers, bodegas, his neighbor LL Cool J, and his earliest collaborator and investor (his mom) to turn a great idea into a billion-dollar urbanwear brand. Coming in Part 2: Transcending the transactional with Shark Tank, the Kardashians, and more.
For some entrepreneurs, risk is just part of the game. But for the reluctant entrepreneur, risk can feel more like a necessary evil. Stacey Abrams shares stories of how harnessing and balancing risk can be the key to your success.
Jessica Alba shares how she built The Honest Company by shining the spotlight onto their customer’s real needs.
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. “I looked at each person in my company, not as a tool of the trade,” she says, “but I looked at them as an individual asset that had to bring their head, heart, and hands to the company for us to be successful.”
Reid’s personal advice on the most important success factor for any scale leader: your mindset. Talking with editor-at-large Bob Safian, Reid shares how he approaches every challenge with a learning mindset: ask the right questions, leverage networks, and build curiosity and resilience. To cement the idea, he shares Lesson One from the new Masters of Scale Courses app, starring Sir Richard Branson! You’ll learn an exercise from Reid that you can practice daily.
Even all-star athletes are coached. So why not you? Alex Rodriguez, former professional baseball player, leaned into outside advice at the most challenging moments in his career – and in building his successful business, A-Rod Corp. He shares what he’s learned from mentors like investing guru Warren Buffett and NBA icon Magic Johnson, and how mentorship can help sharpen your skills and open up opportunities. The best way to find great mentors? Build the mindset of a mentor yourself.
To win at scale, you need more than great players – you need a team of great coaches. Alex Rodriguez learned this in baseball, and now as an investor at A-Rod Corp., where his mentor is none other than Warren Buffet. Alex and Reid, with Katia Beauchamp of Birchbox and HBS professor Mihir Desai, take questions from the HBS class of ’21.
Frustration is an important signal: it indicates an opportunity, a problem to be solved, a path to scale. Adi Tatarko founded the online home-design site Houzz with her husband after their own home reno turned into a nightmare. By building a tool that flipped their frustration on its head, they’ve grown Houzz into a bustling platform and marketplace for homeowners, designers, architects, craftspeople. Learn how to identify frustration – and flip it.