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Hey, folks.
Earlier this month, our very own Reid Hoffman was joined by Kickstarter CEO Everett Taylor for a special strategy session event.
Reed and Everett offered incredibly valuable insights to entrepreneurs asking their most pressing questions.
We wanted you to hear, especially what they had to say about boosting the resilience of your business in these increasingly complicated times.
Masters of Scale strategy sessions are presented in partnership with our friends at Capital One Business.
We hope you enjoy it.
You gotta have incredible talent at every position.
There are fires burning when you're going home.
Can you believe it?
Such an idiot.
And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing.
There are so many easy ways.
I have no idea what to do.
Sorry, we made a mistake.
But you have to time it right.
Oops.
Working as a three-bedroom apartment.
Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls.
Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it.
We haven't made it just how you do it.
This is Masters of Scale.
Everett, thanks so much for joining me today.
I'm looking forward to diving into this topic, because resilience is obviously an extremely important thing.
So great to be doing this.
Yes, thanks, Reid.
I'm super excited too.
I feel like these are very challenging times and we could all use a little bit more resilience right now.
And I'm looking forward to giving back to some of the entrepreneurs we speak to today.
Exactly.
Well speaking of entrepreneurship platforms.
You've been leading Kickstarter for almost three years.
The company's had a few shakeups launching new features, reintroducing Kickstarter to a broader audience.
There's a bunch of things.
And shakeups are part of the entrepreneurial journey, not always bad, and sometimes they're necessary to either get a company back on track or get to the next level of scale.
But I'm wondering how you think about approaching these potentially challenging moments as a leader.
I was literally just talking to my team about this.
I'm a big proponent of grit.
I think grit is one of the most important traits you can have as a leader, as an entrepreneur, business owner.
You have to be able to stay level-headed.
You can't get too high on the highs, which also means you can't get too low on the lows.
And for me, I embrace the hard things.
It makes the wins that much sweeter.
You know, coming into Kickstarter, it wasn't easy.
Although we were number one in our industry and we still are, we had a slew of challenging problems.
And I think it's important to identify those challenges Be realistic about those challenges.
Right.
And communicate that to your team.
Create a strong plan to address them and then provide your team a North Star that you're striving towards.
That's going to be on the other side of those challenges.
Right.
So this will both keep your team, you and your team inspired and looking forward.
And lastly, I would say it's really important to set real goals, key performance indicators that you can keep track of, that you're actually making progress towards that goal and that North Star.
If we have time, I would like to throw a question back at you.
Yeah, of course.
I think of you as somebody who really understands the bigger shifts in tech culture, the marketplace.
I mean, I'm on LinkedIn every day.
A lot of business owners and creators right now are feeling the sense of instability, either from things happening in the government or the economy or, you know, depending on your business, there's all different types of nuanced challenges.
What's your advice for entrepreneurs who are trying to weather this particular storm that we're all living in?
You know, one of the things that you got to think about is entrepreneurship.
Obviously, it's scary.
The phrase that I use for entrepreneurship is you throw yourself off a cliff and assemble an iron plane the way down.
It's part of that sense of vertigo and impending mortality.
But one of the key things for entrepreneurs is that entrepreneurship becomes enabled by essentially creative disruption in markets.
Whether it's a technology change, whether it's a change in market, whether it's a change in ability to produce new products or services, all of these things are part of what enables entrepreneurship.
And so when you have these kind of chaotic changes difficult moments.
They are the kinds of moments that actually, in fact, enable you to be an entrepreneur.
So it is good to be risk-minimizing, thinking about, like, how do you control it?
How do you survive potential business tariff, supply chain challenges or challenges within what might be going on in an economic market or technology with AI and all these things?
But you should also be thinking about how those are opportunities.
And as an entrepreneur, it's that thinking about that as an opportunity that's, I think, really key.
But it's also like how do you have plans A, B, and Z?
Like you have a plan A, you have multiple plans B for kind of shift and then Z is a lifeboat plan if things are going really bad.
So that's like a framework for managing risk.
Similar also is how you use network intelligence, which is okay.
How do I get some sense about the way the weather is changing, the way the market's changing, what's going on and who are the best people I can talk to or the best things I can see to kind of get that?
And some of that is going – like network intelligence is going to people –
And saying, hey, what do you see that I don't see?
And that's part of the reason why networks are very important to entrepreneurs.
So anyway, Everett, I think we could probably chat, just the two of us, for the entire show.
But I know we have some callers waiting on the line as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Always great to get insights from the man himself.
And let's go on and get to our first caller.
Hello.
You're online with Masters of Scale Strategy Session.
Hi, I'm Vanessa Nepali.
I'm the CEO, founder of Play Lab Beauty.
Thanks for having me on today.
Play Lab Beauty, we're a physical storefront in Pasadena, California, and we also have an online shop.
We curate and sell only the best of K-beauty.
That's Korean skincare and makeup that everyone's talking about these days.
Everyone's hearing about the Korean sunscreens, 10-step skincare routines.
The K-beauty market has exploded from 3,000 to 10,000 brands in less than a year.
So there's a lot to navigate.
And most of that discovery is happening online.
So my business partner and I, with our years of beauty and retail experience, started PlayLab Beauty to help the US customer navigate the catwalk.
Simplify it, demystify it, bring it offline in an approachable and tangible way.
So that's the business.
And we were running the business out of my back house, which we lost to the fire in Altadena in January.
So we lost some momentum with some of our growth plans.
And the question I have for you is what's the best way to approach managing risk after a setback like the one we experienced?
I'm already relatively risk averse for an entrepreneur, whereas my business partner is more aggressive and she's really wanting to continue scaling, opening new locations.
And then recently found out.
On top of all this, we're also facing new pressures from a large corporate competitor that's opening up a flagship location right in our neighborhood.
Feels like we need to act now, but also feels like we're just getting back on our feet after saving the business from literal disaster.
So love to hear your thoughts.
First and foremost, I want to say my heart goes out to you and honestly, all of the people affected by those fires.
We had so many creators here at Kickstarter personally affected by it.
You know to answer your question first.
I want to say, and just be honest, I tend to be a little bit less on the risk-averse side.
I genuinely believe if you stay stagnant too long, you die as a business, especially if you have strong competition.
It sounds like competition is coming to your doorstep.
I say this to the team all the time.
I feel the ability to move fast and execute is paramount.
When you're a startup or you know a young business, you have to stay nimble as an entrepreneur and you just can't get too much in your head right.
With that being said, I'm also a big fan of taking calculated risks.
So properly weighing out what are the best and worst case scenarios.
And what I find very often is that sometimes inaction right has worst case scenarios than actually taking the risk.
So I think it's about really weighing those scenarios, figuring out how likely they are, and really weighing out the pros and cons.
But I would go on the side of being a bit more aggressive for sure.
Building on whatever it said entrepreneurship.
You are at risk already and it's a choice of different risks.
Now, by the way, it's great to have co-founders, and it's great to have one of them being a little bit more risk management, the other one a little bit more risk forward, because it allows you to combine your thinking and get to a balanced decision.
Because, even though risk is essential to entrepreneurship, taking intelligent risk is what's most important.
Bezos has this kind of one-way doors, two-way doors, which risks that you take, that are kind of good experiment and which ones are like no no, this is betting the company.
And then you've got to be more careful, a bit more systematic on those.
You're still going to take those one-way door risks.
You just do them kind of a little bit less with like scenario planning and early precision.
But again, just as Everett said, really sorry to hear about the house and everything else.
And so heart goes out to you and also to all the other folks.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
Let's say a little bit about K-beauty.
This is.
I mean, everyone may know more about this than I do, but it's definitely like huh, learning about new things is one of the things that's great about entrepreneurship.
Yeah, K-beauty, Korean beauty.
There's K-everything these days, right?
K-pop.
There's a whole Korean wave.
And a lot of the discovery, as I said, is happening online.
There are a lot of TikTok, viral products that people are hearing about but um can't get their hands on, you know physically, or if they buy it online, they don't know exactly what they're looking for.
So there's a lot of interest, a lot of demand and a lack of supply and a lot lack of access.
So really, what we're focused on is that access and then and then, you know, helping people, folks understand it.
So you know, it's just really an exciting moment for um, for this category and a subcategory within within beauty and um.
My co-founder and I are just so excited to be able to bring it forward in what we think is a very unique, tangible and fun way.
Well, that's awesome.
It's one of the things I love about master's scale and entrepreneurship.
I always learn new things, and now I know something that I didn't know before.
So, Vanessa, thanks so much for calling, and good luck with everything.
Thank you.
I'll send you guys some Korean sunscreens.
Try.
Awesome.
I lather sunscreen all the time.
I try to stay pasty and white.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Thank you both.
So our next question is, comes to us through a slightly different channel.
If you've been to a strategy session before then, you've probably heard us talk about Masters of Scale Summit, the premier conference we host in San Francisco.
Every year at Summit, we invite a cohort of 40 hand-selected first-time founders to be part of our early stage founders program.
And just last month, we selected the members of this year's cohort.
And a few of them sent in video messages with their burning business questions.
So Everett, I hope you're ready because these are going to be rapid fire.
I'm ready, Reed.
Let's get it.
So our first question comes from Sharon.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Sharon Samjit Singh.
I am the CEO and co-founder of Healthcare Originals and I'm thrilled that we're a part of the Masters of Scale Early Stage Founders Program.
My question today is as we continue to build traction and grow our organization, How do we start thinking about the balance that we need to achieve between deploying resources to get even more traction versus really starting to scale operational processes and really developing repeatable processes and assigning resources to that?
So appreciate any insight you can give me.
Thank you.
Everett, I presume you get questions like this all the time.
I'll kick off this one first and then pass it over to you, because I think my guess is you may actually have a bunch of depth here through the entire entrepreneurial Kickstarter program.
First, one framework.
When you're growing as entrepreneurs, you never kind of settle on one set of repeatable processes.
Things will change.
The market will change.
Your level of scale will change.
Your supply change will change.
You'll need to pivot or change, as you're doing, various product market fit or scale product market fit.
You always want to be deploying resources to get more traction and scale.
But, you know, as I said at the beginning, I think Everett might have some more things to add in.
Yeah, I mean even as an established company Reid, even for billion dollar companies, et cetera, et cetera.
You're still making these level of decisions, right?
In terms of setting up the foundation for success, whether you're launching new products, adding new business lines, going to new audiences, et cetera, et cetera.
But I really believe in setting the foundation for success to be able to properly scale.
I've seen a lot of founders, creators on Kickstarter, I've made the mistake myself, of investing too much capital without the proper infrastructure.
With everything in life, it's about balance.
Growth and traction is obviously key, but it's not worth people having bad user experiences, losing customers, not being able to properly serve customers or, you know, you want to be able to always maintain and give a consistent experience.
And that's one of the hardest parts of being a startup.
And so, yes, you have to get the growth.
You have to go after the growth.
And obviously, there's a balance here.
But trust me, it's much harder to win back a user or a customer if they had a bad experience because you didn't have the proper infrastructure to serve that customer.
So If you have the time and you have the capital and I don't know what situation that you're currently in I would definitely invest in making sure that you know you talk about MVPs for products, but like what is the minimum viable product for your infrastructure to make sure that you can actually scale and serve your customers the right way?
Sharon, great question.
Thank you.
It's a question that bedevils all entrepreneurs.
So a very good general question for everyone.
In just a minute, more advice from Reid Hoffman and Kickstarter CEO Everett Taylor.
Real leaders don't back down when the stakes are high.
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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.
You can watch a video of this virtual event on our YouTube channel.
Next up, a question from another early stage founder.
Hi, my name is Ifunaya Wanoyuri and I am the founder of Obodofo Circle, an organization serving underrepresented languages, starting with Igbo, of Southeastern Nigeria.
As a female solo founder who's very aware that, in order to scale and really take the business to the next level, my question is how do I find co-founders or a team who can help with things like marketing, who can help with operations, finances and more, that are as passionate as I am or as skilled or able to do these things with such circumstances such as lacking resources?
Reid, I'll take this first question, but you might have more experience than me.
I've been mostly a solo founder throughout my career and you were very successful creating something as a co-founder.
So I'll pass this over, but I'll give a few of my own thoughts here.
There's no perfect answer and I don't know what kind of budgets you're personally looking at right now as a founder, but a co-founder is such a big decision.
Your wife or your husband or your partner or your co-founder are some of the biggest decisions you make in your life.
And you don't just want to give anyone that distinction or equity, right?
So the best advice I can offer to you is that you have a very mission-driven business.
And Kickstarter is a very mission-driven business.
And one of the things we think about when we're bringing people into the organization you should think about this as well as when you're looking for any of your first employees co-founders, et cetera, et cetera is that we want to start with people who care deeply about this problem or this region or someone who works adjacently in another mission-driven organization, right?
And so...
To me this is not an easy solve, but I think, starting first with people who are mission-driven, that are passionate about the problem, and then networking and having conversations in these communities to say hey, do you know a great marketer?
Do you know a great engineer?
I need a payments engineer or infrastructure engineer, et cetera, et cetera.
And so really start to network in the communities that are passionate about the problem that you're solving or adjacent to that.
So I think Everett's given a great basis.
I'll add a few things.
I tend to be a huge believer in co-founders.
It's like the equivalent of a lifetime partner or close friends or other kinds of things as ways of doing this.
And I think it's Very important to approach it with that level of seriousness, because you're going to go through valley of the shadow moments together on this.
And so you have to have a high level of resilience through these kind of entrepreneurial processes.
Now, that being said, the way that I kind of do this is it isn't that it's just have to be someone you knew from your high school days.
It can be someone you get to know.
But you get to know people through your network.
Like I go to people and I say, who are the best people that I can meet?
And it doesn't have to be the you know, here's an exact job description, exact CV, et cetera, et cetera.
It's like, no, no, just meet really great people and use that as a way of doing it.
What a great question.
I'm personally passionate about the African region.
I'm actually about to head to Ghana, West Africa after this call.
So please reach out.
I would love to help.
And, you know, we'll grab some jollof or something like that.
So our last question from an early stage founder comes from Nico.
Hey, I'm Nico, co-founder and CEO of Speako.
We're an AI speech coach that helps you build confidence in your voice.
So historically, we've been selling Speako directly to consumers on the app store.
So you can download Speako.
You can use it to count your filler words or get feedback on the tone of your voice.
And what's happened is we've started having individuals, so teams, things like that say hey, can I get this for my team?
Can I get this for my company?
And now we're expanding Speako to sell directly to these businesses and organizations.
The struggle we're having though, is we just keep getting labeled as a nice to have, and we're spinning our wheels.
So how do we get beyond this nice to have label?
I mean, it is the key part of the entrepreneurial journey to figure out how to be as essential as possible.
And this is part of where you kind of do user scenarios.
You figure out if your concern if it's a nice to have versus a necessary to have is product concern or is it marketing and how they understand it.
So like one of the things we do in consumer internet stuff is paper testing.
Like when, you know, in early days, when we had enterprises show up and say hey, we'd like to buy an enterprise product from LinkedIn.
We just created a PowerPoint deck and showed it to them and say this is a product we're thinking about.
You know, we're building.
What do you think?
And that's the stuff you will need to do.
I'm glad that you've got AI speech coaching.
I think we're going to have coaching from AI for all kinds of things.
So anyway, Everett, over to you.
Yeah, I say the same thing, Reid, to echo your sentiments.
This to me sounds like a classic product market fit problem.
And when I listen to you say, hey, you're having people tell you this isn't a must have.
All I hear is that you got a bunch of data points, right?
And people that you could be surveying and getting more data from.
So are you properly getting the data insights from the people that you're speaking to, that are giving you that feedback?
Are these people actually using the product or is it their impression that of the product or service itself?
So what I think is either you're not communicating value the right way.
A lot of times I see this people will have a great product but they don't know how to pitch it, or they don't know how to sell it or market it right.
And so, you know, really it's either you're not communicating value the right way or your marketing and sales strategy isn't resonating Or something else that could be the case is that your product truly isn't a must have yet.
And that isn't the end all be all, right?
Like you can continue to iterate, learn and get that product to where it is, because you already have people using it.
So you know that it delivers value.
What is going to take that product to the next level and continue to think about hey, Am I truly reaching my core audience?
The creator market is exploding.
Speaking in front of cameras, there's a huge public speaking market.
There's so many things where people need a service like this and like really start to think about are you truly reaching that core audience?
Is that core audience really employees inside of companies or is it somewhere else?
And how big is that audience?
And these are the tough questions. that you really have to ask yourself.
Thanks to all of the early stage founders that sent in videos.
I'm looking forward to seeing you all at Summit in October.
Reid, I think we got another call coming in.
Hello.
Thanks for calling Strategy Session.
How can we help?
Hello.
Thank you so much.
My name is Jared Walker.
I'm the founder of a nonprofit called Dollar Four.
And Dollar Four helps patients with hospital bills.
Specifically, we help patients access something called hospital financial assistance or hospital charity care.
Charity care is a federal law that requires nonprofit hospitals, which is most in America, to reduce or waive hospital bills for low-income patients.
So if you're within a certain income range, the hospitals have to reduce the bill.
The problem is that hospitals don't do a great job of telling people about these programs, right?
So it's really hard to access and millions and millions of people go on payment plans or declare bankruptcy for bills that they don't have to pay.
So I started $1.4 to help patients through the process.
And we built a platform to tell patients that they're eligible, lead them through the application, and we submit their application and advocate on their behalf.
So Since 2021, we've helped eliminate over 100 million in medical debt for people throughout the country.
And we've grown rapidly with a lot of bipartisan support.
So enter Medicaid cuts.
And we are going to have millions of people lose coverage and we'll need the safety net.
And unfortunately, $1.4 is going to be really busy over the next few years.
So We're trying to scale our patient support.
At the same time, we've had a lot of our key supporters start to question our work.
For the first time ever, I'm finding myself defending the work that we do against the idea that we are So.
Fundraising in this environment has been extremely difficult.
My question is how do you navigate financial uncertainty while trying to scale, especially when the needs of the people you're serving are urgent and growing rapidly?
Well, Jared, as you know, I'm extremely sympathetic.
I've done an investment with you.
I think it's extremely important work.
And medical emergencies are the kinds of things that can throw individuals and families into complete tragic, difficult times.
And so the services you provide are, I think, totally critical.
Now –
One of the things that I think is really good about your calling in is that it's this general strategy around all right.
Entrepreneurs have to navigate so many different things.
They have to navigate capital.
They have to navigate hiring.
They have to navigate product market fit.
They have to navigate scaling.
They have to navigate managing the business.
It's part of what makes it such a difficult path.
And so you have to kind of trade off balances, of risks, just as we were talking about at the beginning.
And part of, I think, these balances of risks is to say well, capital and ability to proceed is always really fundamental.
So like, one of the things to really focus on is like look we are – prospectively saving people's lives and ability to contribute to the world and community by doing this.
It's one of the things that's really important to invest in.
We're not actually, in fact, anti-hospital.
We're just trying to get the individuals the ability to navigate this.
And you know frankly, the hospital payment systems, as you know, are totally screwed up because of the way that we do our payment industry with insurance and all the rest.
The fact is, you say, well, the billing for Procedure X is $100,000.
That's because that's the list price that the insurance people navigate with.
So it's like you're actually helping fix an otherwise challenging system.
And I think that's one of the things to –
So to be building that pitch, and that would be one of the things to focus on because, with the capital, that's how you could ultimately scale to the people that you're serving, even though, of course, there's always going to be lots of people you're not going to be able to because the need is so deep.
Yeah, first, Jared, honestly, this is my first time hearing about your company.
But this is something that is very, very personal to me with my family.
And I see the impact that it's having on people.
So I just want to say, I give you kudos.
Your mission and cause is so important in this time.
It's incredibly inspiring.
And to do this work, you know, I just want to say, like, keep going, man.
I know it's incredibly tough.
When I hear what you're doing...
I can't help but think that crowdfunding could be a potential vehicle for you not to pitch you on Kickstarter or another platform.
But you know, when we see government funding getting cut and all these things happen, we've had a slew of entrepreneurs creatives, makers coming to Kickstarter now because they need to.
Organizations. nonprofits coming to Kickstarter because they need funding.
And what I will say is that, yes, there are going to be people that question you.
The political climate is going to shift.
Things are going to constantly shift.
But you know that you are doing the right thing.
And history is going to shine brightly on you, my friend, in the end.
So keep going and look at alternative paths to raising money, whether it's a Kickstarter or whether it's another platform.
I'm telling you, there's people out there like myself that are inspired by what you do and is going to want to support and give money.
It's just really thinking about your marketing strategy like just zero base, your thinking like hey, we're starting this thing tomorrow.
Like, how do we find our people?
How do we find those audiences?
How do we find that community that's going to really rally behind us?
Because I know that they exist because I'm one of those people that exist.
So keep going, continue to have that grit.
And we're definitely rooting for you.
I genuinely hope those answers help you, Jared.
And genuinely, good luck with all the work that you're doing.
Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Super encouraging.
And yes, Reid, thank you so much for all the support.
Jared, one quick moment before you go.
Tell everyone a little bit what your experience at Summit was last year.
Oh, man, it was fantastic.
A little overwhelming for me.
I, from the nonprofit side, not used to it.
I had to take a couple days just to let it all in.
It was fantastic.
Great content and had a great time.
Thank you.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And by the way, I think Everett's exactly right, which is I think there's a broad-based support.
So, whether it's you know kind of social media, don't pick obviously, fights with the hospitals, as per the thing, but pick fights with, like the times of what's going on to get the elevation, because a lot of people will be in your – category of help people with these emergencies, these underdogs.
And that's part of exactly what crowdfunding, Kickstarter, et cetera, is also very good with.
So strong plus one to all that.
And, you know, we're all rooting for you.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, everyone.
And I hope to see people at Summit.
Thanks to Reid Hoffman and Everett Taylor for all the wisdom they shared during the strategy session.
And thanks to all the entrepreneurs who asked questions.
Learn more about our upcoming events, including the Masters of Scale Summit, at mastersofscalecom slash events.
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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.
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.
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