Altman: Blitzscaling fails without market updraft and a winning product
Sam Altman · From Startup to Scaleup | Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman · Y Combinator · May 31, 2017 · at 36:04
Sam Altman discusses organizational invariants and why startups should avoid blitzscaling before securing product-market fit.
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“I, one of the reasons, I think, why trying to hyperscale a company that is not, that that is not winning fails, is because without that, then all of these problems of people having their turf stepped on, and, you know, the occasional bad hire you have to get out, people have a lot of time to, like, think about how unhappy those things make them. And if things just keep getting better, and there's, like, more opportunity than you can possibly take on, and that everyone constantly has, like, new expanding roles, and so they don't get caught up in these turf wars, then it works. But I think This is one of the reasons it's so important to not flip into hyperscaling mode until You're pretty sure the product is working because without without this natural updraft of Like a market that is desperate for your product and a feeling that like Everyone is winning every day and the company is doing just fantastically well Then all of the things that go wrong when you try to blitz scale can break the company. So I think the key thing for me is don't try to do this until you're confident you have this updraft.”
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