The core premise of Blitzscaling is growing quickly is the best defense against takeover. Uncertainty in the midst of growth is more important than efficiency and growth.
What made Blitzscaling a unique book is it lays out the transition from small scale startup to medium to large. In each step, the role required from employees and boss shift. I particularly liked the analogy of Marine (startup that deal with chaos and find solutions on the spot), Army (find a way to scale up and secure the territory), and Police force (people who sustain order rather than expand). Marine and army can talk together. Army and police can talk together. But not marine and police.
Reid Hoffman along with Peter Thiel believes in strategic thinking. "Many companies … still think it’s sufficient to conduct a lot of A/B tests and iterate accordingly. This is an effective tactic but poor strategy, since local optimizations do not necessarily lead to a globally optimal result.".
Other common paths in blitzscalable businesses are:
- Bits rather than atoms.
- Platforms (lasting competitive advantage)
- Free or Freemium
- Marketplaces
- Subscription
- Digital goods (Line stamp)
- Feeds
He concludes the book with how existing organizations can defend against these blizscalers. That makes this book accessible and interesting read for a wide range of audience from startupers, investors, existing corporatinos who look at Sillicon Valley in a strange eye.
For me as a startuper, it was one star off. Despite its packed advice, he did not dive that deep into his own story of LinkedIn. Most startups fail before product-market fit. That's before this blizscaling is even possible. It'd have been more valuable if he covered the early days of LinkedIn more extensively for startupers.