Scaling a business in the US can feel like a maze.
Each state has its own payroll benefits and compliance rules, pulling your focus away from growth, which is why founders use DEAL.
DEAL is the Professional Employer Organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team.
The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one.
So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal.
Go to deel.com slash MOS and get up to three months free.
JustWorks is the human resources platform that knows your employees are more than just employees.
They're your people.
People like the show producer on the East Coast who's constantly juggling schedules, studio bookings and last minute edits before an episode drops and sometimes has a question about payroll that they need an answer to right away.
Luckily they can reach out to JustWorks for 24-7 human support and not have to wait for their boss on the West Coast to wake up.
JustWorks does human resources right so you can do right by your most precious asset, your people.
To learn more, go to JustWorks.com.
JustWorks for your people.
Hi folks, Jeff Berman here.
We have something a little bit different for you today.
It's that time of year when so many people graduate into a new phase of their lives, their careers.
For me, it's an especially big graduation year, as my oldest just graduated from high school and delivered a banger of a commencement address.
We realized that there was an opportunity to share nuggets of wisdom from some of the most remarkable people we've had on Masters of Scale.
So you're going to hear this episode from a dozen incredible founders and CEOs.
And we're going to start with our founding host, Reid Hoffman, who's gathered some questions from young people graduating this year.
And we're going to get to hear some advice from him to them.
All right, let's jump into the first question.
Hi, my name is Denise and I'm a student at the University of Oxford.
My question is, should I take a job I don't love after graduation just to get started?
You know, typically, like in commencement speeches, the answer is never.
But of course, the real answer is sometimes.
Because what you should be is you should be strategic about what you're doing.
You should be thinking about, where do I might be wanting to go two, five, ten years from now?
How would this job possibly get me there?
And, by the way, doing a job versus not doing a job is always a better way to ultimately be getting to a much better job two five, 10 years out.
So the answer is sometimes you're sometimes mistaught that you should only be looking for what you're passionate about.
And that's the most important thing.
Now, of course, your passion is important.
If you hate the job, if you're bored with the job, it's very hard to do that job well.
So there is an important component of passion.
But, for example, you can go ask a whole bunch of people.
For example, a bunch of people say I love playing video games.
Should you be making video games?
Not necessarily.
What's the right path for you?
What are you really good at?
What does the market need?
And how do you respond to that?
And sometimes it's take that job that you're kind of mediocre on, because you have a plan and for how you're evolving.
And keeping that plan in mind is the central thing.
Hi, Reid.
My name is Michael Astorino.
I'm a junior at Wesleyan University.
And my question for you is what can students be doing to truly get ahead of AI right now?
Not just learning how to prompt, but learning how to use it in ways that create real value.
I love this question because in part it's saying hey, I'm already engaging, because you're thinking about what the prompting landscape looks like.
Now, the first thing for everyone is don't discount how important prompting skills will be.
One of my own personal beliefs right now is that no one is prompting in particularly good ways.
So we're all like 5% users.
Like there's this old myth that we only use like 3% or 5% of our brains.
Well, I think we're at best at that at our current prompting skills.
And so developing prompting skills, always be learning.
It's one of the things that I ask people constantly when I am engaging with people who have been using AI is How are you using it?
What have you thought about in terms of how to prompt these things in better ways?
And so every single time that I actually, in fact, am talking to someone who is engaging, it's one of the things that I'm constantly learning.
And I could spend an hour going through all of the strategies and tips and tricks and all the rest of that.
And I think that's really important to do.
Now, the other part to get to it is to say, think about how to use AI strategically.
So it's not just, okay, I'm prompting, but which problems could it be applied to?
How could it be applied to those problems in ways that is interesting and unique?
It could generate particularly good content, because this is one of the ways that the world of work will be changing.
Within two to five years, all of us will be using AI co-pilots along with what we're doing.
And it's a question of how do we use them smartly?
What's the game we're playing?
What's the theory of that game?
What's the strategy to do that?
My question is will AI replace a lot of the careers that exist, like web designers or web developers?
One of the things is the career landscape has actually, in fact, always been dynamic.
It's always been changing.
I mean, for example I know this reveals my age a little bit, but web designer actually, in fact was a new job that came up during my lifetime.
When I was in college, there was no thought about becoming a web designer or what the skills are within web design are.
And AI is just amplifying this fact, the fact that it's changing faster, it's changing in more directions, and it highlights the fact that you need to be dynamic and evolving.
You know, part of the way to do that is to say well OK, be learning, but also be embracing these AI tools.
We know the AI tools are going to be central.
So as a specific example, think about how web designer is going to change.
The code that you learn with web design will, you know, no longer be as relevant.
The fact that you know all the tags, that you know all the coding that you could produce the website design.
Coding for dummies book no longer matters as much, because AI can do all that.
What it does is it changes.
What web design could mean in terms of what you have to bring to it is your creativity, your originality, your hey.
This would be some way that it would strategically map onto the kind of goals of the company organization entity, person that's doing it.
This is something you could try that's different, that other people using AI tools could might not think the same way you do, or may not be able to bring it into focus the same way you do.
Hi, Reid.
My name is Keisha Patel, and I'm a rising senior at WashU.
And my question is what advice would you give to students who feel like their major is becoming less relevant as AI advances?
Given that things are so disruptive, it's very natural to feel anxious about did all the things I just learned?
Are they not relevant anymore?
Now the good news is is that what you should take forward from your college degree isn't necessarily the thing you learned in X101.
It isn't specific degrees, specific courses, even necessarily specific skills that are relevant to you.
It's your capacity to learn.
It's your capacity to say, hey, here is the new tool set, here's the new challenge.
And that is actually what the future work's gonna look like.
So one thing is to not focus on the degree, but to focus on how you learn and to be continually learning.
The other part of college that's super important.
That you should not forget is that life is a team sport, not just an individual sport.
So the people that you became friends with, that you shared experiences with, that are out there in the world.
With you, you can help each other.
And this is, of course, one of the reasons why I built LinkedIn, because the whole idea is it's not just an individual career.
It's a, hey, what do you know that I don't know?
Do you know of a good opportunity?
Hey, have you found a good way to use AI to do this yet?
Hey, I'm kind of confused and I may feel like I'm at a dead end.
What might shake up that dead end?
And, of course, not just think about maintaining the friendships and network that you have from college, but also think about how you build that as you go forward.
So my two primary questions for you are will AI make my degree or skill set less valuable by the time that I graduate?
And I'm also concerned that AI will make it even harder for me to find a job, since I don't have that much experience yet.
Yeah, it's a legitimate worry.
The thing that you should always keep in mind and this is part of the kind of entrepreneurial mindset is how do you convert challenges into opportunities?
How do you take something that could be a negative and possibly turn it into an advantage?
And that's part of the reason why I wrote the startup review.
But in this particular case you think about okay, AI is changing the landscape.
May make entry-level jobs harder to get to.
May make employers uncertain about who they're looking for and employing.
Then you say, well, OK, how do I use the current circumstances, the disruption to make this better?
How do I use AI to identify what possible new opportunities might be, to map me to those opportunities?
How do you use AI to make myself stand out and thrive?
What's more and this is one of the kind of driving themes that I have is very strong advice for young people to say you are generation AI.
You are AI native.
So bringing the fact that you have AI in your tool set is one of the things that makes you enormously attractive.
And so you say OK look, on this side it's transforming the workspace.
Entry level work employers, confusion.
But on this side it's making you able to show your unique capabilities that you know with the environment of a bunch of older people, you might be able to help them out.
And that, of course, is part of the magic.
It's been great being in this dialogue, but part of the reason it's a conversation is because it's dynamic and it's ongoing.
This is, in fact, just the beginning of these questions that we should be asking, these questions that we should be learning together.
So for everyone, including the class of 2025, I wish you the very best on this journey as we discover and make this future together.
Outstanding insights there from Reid.
And thanks to those students for their questions.
In just a minute, advice for graduates from a dozen more incredible founders and entrepreneurs.
Real leaders don't back down when the stakes are high.
They innovate, they push forward, and then they take the stage at the Masters of Scale Summit.
Join us in San Francisco October 7th to 9th to hear from the CEO of The New York Times scientists using cutting-edge technology to find cures, the leader of crypto powerhouse Coinbase, a retired four-star general and many, many more more.
Apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply25.
That's mastersofscale.com slash apply25.
If you're ready to take your startup from idea to impact, then AWS is your launchpad.
From data storage to machine learning to secure app hosting, AWS gives you the tech trusted by the world's fastest scaling startups.
And here's the best part.
Join AWS.
Activate today and you could score up to 100000 in AWS credits, tailored to your stage and network.
Go to awsamazoncom slash, activate and start building.
Expanding your business in the US can feel like a maze.
Every state has its own payroll benefits and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth.
That's why founders use Deal.
Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team.
The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one.
So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal.
Go to deel.com slash MOS and get up to three months free.
Welcome back to Masters of Scale.
We'll be right back.
It's traumatic for me because in my commencement speech it was pouring rain and we sat out and the speaker, who I shall not name, started by saying I was given 45 minutes and I'm going to use every single one of them.
Oh, this is not good.
I don't have warm and fuzzy memories about commencement speeches, but So the advice of the speaker is be brief.
Yeah.
You know, I think what I'd say is there are a lot of people who tell you to follow your passions, and then there are a lot of people who tell you to do something you're great at.
And I don't think either of those things is true.
I think it has to be both.
I'm someone personally who I need to love what I work on.
You can look at my resume and it speaks to that that I would work at the NBA and then I'd go home and watch NBA basketball.
That motivation and that passion for the product was critical to me being highly engaged and excited and motivated to get to work.
At the same time, I tell people all the time, Don't work in sports just to work in sports.
It is not an industry as one would define it.
You are selling sponsorships or you're marketing or you're creating content.
When I was running strategy, it was still PowerPoint and Excel.
And so if I wasn't motivated by the business problems that I was working on as the head of strategy for the NBA, I wouldn't have been good at it.
Following your passion doesn't get you anywhere if you're not really narrow on what are the things that get you out of bed in the morning, that make you excited and that you're really good at.
Next up, advice from the therapist, author, and game maker, Esther Perel.
I just did a whole conference with 2500 therapists and coaches and the likes and I had a phenomenal surprise.
At one point I said, how many of you are in the field as a second career?
Now, that used to be a tiny fraction of people that would answer, and probably half the people in the audience answered.
And I thought wow, this is like a transformation of my field.
That used to be something totally secret, something hidden away, tucked in a room.
Nobody talked about it.
It's fascinating how that has shifted.
So I would say to the young student where you start is not where you will go, nor where you will end.
It doesn't really matter where you start.
Start by finding people who will teach you to work, to think, to solve problems, because it's like a teacher in college.
You can be... passionate about a subject.
If you have a bad teacher, they'll ruin it for you.
But if you have a subject you know nothing about and couldn't care less, but you have a teacher who can pique your curiosity, they will open an entire world to you.
So go for the teacher.
Don't go for the topic.
Go for the particular manager.
Don't go for the company.
Next up is Aaron Levy, founder and CEO of Box, the cloud-based file sharing platform, valued at over 4 billion.
My biggest advice right now is truly become an expert in AI not how the models are trained, but in using AI for daily work.
Like, if you are not an expert in just incredible prompt engineering, how to write the perfect prompt for doing a research project or analyzing a set of data, or generating marketing materials or producing code.
That is a liability in this job market.
You want to be incredible at using AI to get work done.
That does not mean that every company you join will afford you that ability right now.
But for the companies that do, you will be able to stand out relative to basically every other employee in that organization.
You will seem like you've come from the future. into this company.
And so the more that you can look like a time traveler right now, because you're kind of like, perfectly set up to do that, because you have a larger proportion of your life with AI than anybody else in the job market.
So there's no excuse to not be incredible at this stuff and just know your way around these tools flawlessly.
And then, I think, understanding things like human judgment and analysis and creativity, because these are the things that will always be the X factor on top of using AI.
So, on top of getting the response is, what judgment did you apply to that response from the AI to lead to a better outcome?
So analytical skills, critical thinking judgment, creativity get incredible at that, but also be amazing at using these tools and you will stand out in this environment.
Let's hear next from Stacey Brown Philpott.
She's the founder of a new fund, Cherry Rock Capital, the former CEO of TaskRabbit and a longtime leader at Google.
My eighth grader is graduating.
She's going to ninth grade.
Big moment.
Big moment.
And she said to me, she said, mom, after I graduate from high school, then I have to go to college.
And then what am I going to do?
I have to become an adult.
And I said, yes, you do.
So my advice, anyone's graduating from college, become an adult.
Yes, you can.
What does that mean?
Do the work.
Part of what you've accomplished up until this point is because somebody put an infrastructure in place called an education system to help you get there.
Create your own.
How are you going to continue to learn and do the work to fulfill whatever it is that you want to accomplish in life?
Create a vision and do the work.
Achieve some goals.
Do the work.
Start a family.
Do the work.
Have fun.
Do the work.
Next up, the CEO of the ride-sharing app Lyft.
Here's David Risher.
My advice for a new graduate would be to look at the decade of your 20s as a decade of maximal experimentation.
It's such an opportunity for you to explore and not yet be asking yourself the question what is my career going to be?
Or how do I do this thing to get to this thing, to get to this thing, to get to this thing?
I think people who worry a lot and get stressed a lot about that tend to get in sort of a frustrated position and tend to sort of narrow their thinking quite early in life.
And most successful people that I have met have gone through periods of sort of active exploration.
And I think particularly now I think you know, 20 or 30 years ago there was sort of a career track that you sort of felt like you kind of needed to be on, because it was kind of the default.
I don't really think that's the default right now or doesn't need to be.
You know, there are opportunities that are literally haven't been even created yet.
You know, I don't even know what the job is going to be two or three years from now, right?
Because AI will change so much and so forth.
So you have to do something that satisfies your economic reality.
I mean, let's be clear, I'm not being naive, but I wouldn't optimize for that and I wouldn't optimize for the long-term career.
I'd set a floor, an economic floor, but I'd say above the floor.
I think it's really about exploration.
I think if you have that mindset, for the next couple of years at least, you'll almost certainly end up in a happier, better place.
Next up Ben and Guido Teuber, the brothers who now run the board game company Catan that their father started 30 years ago.
First, let's hear from Ben.
Something I learned in game development is that if you want to really make a good game, it takes a lot of patience because you'll have one iteration after the next and it will be bad very often.
So patience is one of the things that you should always test yourself, and failure is never the end result.
And now, his brother Guido.
Stay curious and obviously fulfill your dreams.
You know, shoot for the moon.
But also be empathetic and be kind.
Take failure in stride.
So when you play a Catan game, it is in itself a game where even the person who loses gets some victory points.
Next, it's Zillow alums and co-founders of Picasso, Spencer Raskoff and Austin Allison.
Here's Spencer.
Put yourself in a situation where you can learn.
So optimize for growth, not compensation early in your career.
Surround yourself with people that you can be a sponge and learn from, especially early in your career.
And here's Austin's advice.
My one piece of advice would be around surrounding yourself with great people.
But that's such a, I think, well-documented piece of advice at this point that I'll offer one other one, which would be to Live in the moment and be present.
You know, life passes us by really quickly.
And when you're looking back on time, many of the what felt like big struggles end up being the most enriching part of company building and life.
So try to embrace the struggle and live in the moment.
I talked with Buddy Media founder Mike Lazaro recently at South by Southwest and here's what Mike offered.
To me, it's so simple.
It's basically large platforms that have aggregated audience, AI and the no-code development platforms.
So check out Lovable.
Build me an app or a website and it's like.
It opens it up and it walks you through how to connect it to a database.
Right?
And so, all of a sudden, we have the democratization of engineering with the largest productivity hack the world has ever seen AI and access to consumers that we have never had access to like this.
And I'm not talking about just Facebook and Instagram and whatever that Twitter X thing is, but also Shopify and Etsy and all these other incredible platforms.
And so I just think, figure out an idea that should exist, and even a journalism student can build it now.
And here's Rachel Botsman, author of several books on trust, including her latest How to Trust and Be Trusted.
I've actually given a commensal speech, but I didn't say these words.
And I always think about the redo.
And I would stand up there and say there are three words that have served me well in my career and I want to pass them on to you.
I don't know.
The three most important words in the English language, perhaps.
Yeah.
They are the three most important words that will serve you so well in your career.
Be confident with humility.
But also those words, they're what makes me a deeply curious person, right?
Like.
It's like so much of education is about knowing and it's about those positive capabilities and it's about achievement and performance and outcomes.
And the earlier you can be comfortable in that space of unknowing and complexity and uncertainty, the more you'll be able to handle life, but the more valuable you'll be in organizations.
So that's my, that's my do-over.
Thanks to all these folks for offering up advice for graduates and to Rapid Response host Bob Safian for helping gather some of these interviews.
I'm Jeff Berman.
Thank you for listening.
This is Emily Worden Capital One business customer and owner of Emily Worden Designs, a bespoke, fine jewelry store that quickly gained buzz after opening its doors in Richmond Virginia.
My customer base grew exponentially once we had a storefront.
We had one engagement ring case at the time, and we had lines out the door every weekend.
As her storefront continued to have record sales, Emily knew it was time to up-level production.
We normally just purchase diamonds in very small batches or per order.
So we wanted to invest in not just one or two pieces, but a collection of natural diamonds.
Emily knew creating a collection would be a big investment but with the help of her Capital One business card, she was ready to bet on herself and bet big.
It was about $40,000, $45,000 all in up front.
Having the Capital One card was definitely reassuring to be able to make such a large investment purchase.
And of course, to get the cash back that came with it.
To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards.
If you're in private capital, you understand that your next great deal starts with who you know.
That's why over 3000 firms trust Affinity, the CRM platform purpose-built for private capital.
Affinity's relationship intelligence reveals your team's strongest paths to founders, investors and decision makers, using insights hidden in emails, calendars and meetings.
With powerful AI tools like Affinity Notetaker and Deal Assist, you'll spend less time managing data and more time closing the right deals.
Learn more at affinity.co slash marketplace.
AI agents can make your teams more productive, but if they aren't connected to other agents or your data or your existing workflows, they can only take you so far.
Any business can add AI agents, but IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business.
Let's create smarter business.
IBM.
Masters of Scale is a Wait What original.
Our executive producer is Eve Tro.
Our senior producer is Trisha Bobita.
The production team includes Masha Makotunina and Brandon Klein.
Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern.
Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh.
Original music by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is Lital Molad.
Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter.
