Executive Summary:
- Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, and Allen Blue shared common themes on moving fast, making decisions quickly, and building something people care about, but had divergent views on diversity, proprietary advantage, and internal decision making processes.
- The transition from small scale (OS1) to large-scale (OS2) growth requires a plan for growth, execution, learning, and iteration; competing and gaining market share before competitors; and building a "tribe" by adding new capabilities, expanding the team, and managing scaling vs. defending core operations.
- The Mozilla case study highlighted how they leveraged the community, maintained focus on mission and independence, and managed organizational scaling challenges as Firefox grew to 20% market share.
Meeting Notes:
Review of Previous Weeks
- Common themes from Sam, Ann, and Michael:
- Move fast and make decisions quickly
- Build something people care about
- Divergent views:
- Importance of diversity in the team (Ann vs others)
- Building proprietary advantage vs building things people love (Ann vs Sam)
- Differences on internal decision making processes (Michael vs Reid)
Organizational Scale 2 (OS2)
- Transition from small OS1 stage to OS2 for effective large-scale growth and value delivery
- Key aspects:
- Create a plan for growth, execute, learn, and iterate
- Adjust product-market fit based on learnings
- Compete and gain market share before competitors
- Identify real competitors carefully
- Become a "tribe":
- Add new capabilities and functions
- Expand the team
- Set up teams for scaling vs defending core operations
- Ensure appropriate financing and capital allocation
Case Study: Mozilla
- Context in 2004: Internet Explorer (IE) had 95-96% market share, bundled on PCs
- Mozilla's origins as an open-source project within Netscape
- Launch of Firefox 1.0 in 2004
- Key features: speed, pop-up blocking, tab browsing
- Building a community-powered movement
- Crowdfunding campaign (New York Times ad) to raise awareness
- Leveraging localization and volunteer contributors worldwide
- Challenges as Firefox grew:
- Managing relationships with Google, Apple
- Internal organizational scaling challenges
- Key strategies:
- Hiring top talent, building distributed teams
- Leveraging the community for growth and localization
- Maintaining focus on mission and independence
- Growth of Firefox:
- 2005: 10+ million downloads in first month, ~10% market share
- 2006: 75 million MAUs, 25 million DAUs, 12-13% market share
- 2008: 20% market share, 150 employees
- Organizational Evolution at Mozilla:
- From ~15 people initially to 30 people in 2006
- Realized need for:
- Project managers
- Head of operations
- Legal support
- Focused on iterating goals and being open about challenges
- Transparent communication on goals with the team
- Managing community leverage along with hiring
- Relationships & Competition:
- Google was initially supportive but grew wary as Firefox's share increased
- Concerned about browser disintermediating them from users
- Made KEY DECISION to:
- Keep own rendering engine (Gecko) instead of WebKit
- Double down on community and localization efforts
- Position as a movement, not just a product
- Scaling Challenges:
- Organizational complexity increased rapidly with growth
- Employee distribution across multiple locations globally
- Trade-off between hiring best talent vs. centralized teams
- Managing contributor community alongside employees
- Maintaining connection to mission as org scales
- Key Principles and Lessons:
- Balancing growth targets and learning
- Motivating and aligning the team
- Transparent communication, open goal discussions
- Managing community leverage, not just headcount
- Leveraging user communities for growth
- Different scaling approaches for enterprise vs consumer
Scaling Principles and Lessons
- Covered key principles and lessons from the Mozilla case study.
Looking Ahead
- Preview of future sessions on growth strategies for enterprise vs consumer products.