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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh describes the process of rapid growth for startups, exploring how to scale ideas from zero to market dominance and the challenges that come with it.
“Blitzscaling” is a recently invented word, so if you’re not sure what it means, you’re in good company! The easiest way to define “blitzscaling” is to break it down into its components: “blitz” and “scaling.”
In German, “blitz” means lightning. In modern English, it’s become an informal way to describe what happens when an organization tries to achieve something at lightning speed. For example, if a company suddenly floods the airwaves with a full-throttle advertising campaign, it would be a “marketing blitz.”
“Scaling,” in turn, is shorthand for “scaling up.” In business, that means two things. First, it means growing a company in a way that keeps all of its parts proportional to each other as it develops. That’s important, because to sell more products or services, a company needs to expand its infrastructure, resources and labor force, and they have to keep pace with each other for the growth to be sustainable.
For instance, imagine you’re a kid with a lemonade stand, and you want to expand your empire. To sell more lemonade, you need to invest in additional booths, lemons, cups and workers. If you try to expand in just one of these areas, the expansion won’t be sustainable. After all, if you run out of cups, it won’t matter how many lemons you can squeeze!
If you manage to avoid this problem and your lemonade empire spreads to every block of the city, you’ve achieved “scaling” in the second sense of the term: your company is operating on a massive scale!
Put those ideas together, and you have a first approximation of what “blitzscaling” means: it’s business growth that’s not only very rapid, but also proportional, and therefore sustainable. It’s what happened when Amazon went from having 151 employees and $5.1 million in revenue in 1996 to having 7,600 employees and $1.64 billion in revenue in 1999 – a 50-fold increase in employees and a 322-fold increase in revenue, all in just three years!
But there’s a caveat we need to add to our definition. Every company seeks to grow, and every successful company grows. If “blitzscaling” only meant growing rapidly and sustainably, it would be just another word for impressive business success.
While blitzscaling involves rapid, sustainable growth, there’s more to it than that. We’ll find out what the missing ingredients are in the next blinks.
Blitzscaling (2018) looks at a revolutionary development in the business world – one that’s so unprecedented, a new word had to be invented for it. It’s the process whereby companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon began as small, scrappy start-ups and then rapidly ballooned into world-conquering giants within just a few years. What’s their secret? In a word: blitzscaling. And that, as the title suggests, is what this book is all about.
Blitzscaling (2018) by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh is an insightful exploration of the hyper-growth strategy that has propelled companies like Amazon and Airbnb to success. Here's why this book is worth reading:
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Get startedBlink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
What is the main message of Blitzscaling?
The main message of Blitzscaling is that in today's fast-paced world, rapid growth and scaling are essential for success.
How long does it take to read Blitzscaling?
The reading time for Blitzscaling varies, but it typically takes several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.
Is Blitzscaling a good book? Is it worth reading?
Blitzscaling is worth reading as it provides valuable insights on scaling businesses quickly in a competitive market.
Who is the author of Blitzscaling?
The authors of Blitzscaling are Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.