The Nine Counterintuitive Rules of Blitzscaling
Follow nine rules that violate traditional management wisdom to achieve hypergrowth.
Blitzscaling requires violating many management rules designed for efficiency and risk minimization. These nine rules fly in the face of what business schools teach: (1) Embrace Chaos -- replace the focus on order with willingness to accept uncertainty; (2) Hire Ms. Right Now, Not Ms. Right -- hire for current needs, not future scale; (3) Tolerate Bad Management -- when growing 300% per year, formal management structures slow you down; (4) Launch a Product That Embarrasses You -- imperfect and fast beats perfect and slow; (5) Let Fires Burn -- triage ruthlessly, only fighting fires that will destroy the company; (6) Do Things That Don't Scale -- accept throwaway work as the price of speed; (7) Ignore Your Customers -- provide only whatever service doesn't slow you down; (8) Raise Too Much Money -- always raise more than you think you need; (9) Evolve Your Culture -- culture is the one thing you cannot afford to let burn.
- Speed is more important than having a well-run organization during blitzscaling
- The only constant is change -- internal chaos normalizes radical change, making the organization more adaptable to external disruption
- What you say 'no' to is more important than what you say 'yes' to during hypergrowth
- Culture is the one fire you must not let burn -- it is the shared way of doing things that holds everything together
- These rules are temporary necessities of hypergrowth, not permanent operating principles -- knowing when to shift is critical
- Embrace Chaos with ABZ PlanningAccept that uncertainty exists and take steps to manage it rather than eliminate it. Use ABZ planning: Plan A is your best current plan; Plan B is an alternate based on the adjacent possible; Plan Z is your survival fallback. At PayPal, the team pivoted from mobile encryption to cash on phones to PalmPilot payments to email payments -- impossible with rigid role definitions.Pro tipHire people who are willing to shift roles rapidly based on company needs. The kind of employee you need early on is someone who thrives in ambiguity.WarningPassively succumbing to chaos is not the same as embracing it. You can still make smart decisions based on probability estimates even without certainty.
- Hire for Current Needs and Tolerate Imperfect ManagementHire people who can handle the current scale even if they may not scale to the next stage. Tolerate management practices that would horrify an MBA -- no career development conversations, no formal team building, deliberately inflated titles. PayPal's 'bad' management (no one-on-ones, no note-taking in meetings, $100 fines for lateness) kept the company nimble through serial crises.Pro tipWhen your organization is growing 300% per year, you may need to promote people before they're ready and swap them out if they sink rather than swim.WarningThe internal chaos of bad management normalizes radical change, which is useful. But it only holds together when people believe they have an opportunity to win.
- Launch Fast and Let Fires BurnLaunch imperfect products to start the learning loop. Triage problems ruthlessly -- only fight fires that will destroy the company if left unchecked. Like an ER surgeon, focus on saving the patient's life rather than investigating every suspicious symptom.Pro tipUse a tight OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act). A free consumer product can get away with the most flaws; a paid consumer product has the least room for error.WarningBe embarrassed by your launch, not ashamed or indicted. The line between fixable and fatal flaws is real -- if your product kills someone, you won't get another chance.
- Do Unscalable Things and Ignore Customers When NecessaryAccept throwaway work as the price of speed. Airbnb's founders personally photographed listings before automating. PayPal had only 2 support people out of 40 employees despite thousands of unanswered emails piling up daily. Provide whatever customer service you can without slowing growth.Pro tipThe progression is: founders do it manually, then outsource to freelancers, then hire someone to manage freelancers, then automate. Each stage buys time for the next.WarningIgnoring customers is a temporary solution. Eventually you must address service -- PayPal ultimately hired 100 support people in 30 days in Omaha when the time was right.
- Raise Excess Capital and Evolve CultureRaise significantly more than you need to cushion against the unforeseeable and increase optionality. Simultaneously, invest in culture as the one thing that must not be neglected. Culture is the shared way of doing things that enables aggressive, focused action across a growing organization.Pro tipAct like you have half the money in the bank. Only spend on critical path items. A major financing round also sends positive signals that discourage competitors from backing alternatives.WarningHaving extra capital is not permission to spend wastefully. High burn rate should be driven by growth investments with positive long-term unit economics, not by fixing non-critical problems.
In February 2000, PayPal's transaction volume was growing 3-5% daily on a compounding basis. Out of 40 employees, they had just 2 support people while thousands of emails went unanswered. Every phone rang with angry customers, so they stopped picking up phones entirely. They were simultaneously raising venture capital, competing with eBay's Billpoint, and negotiating the X.com merger.
The LinkedIn team defined an MVP with profiles, connections, search, and messaging. They debated adding Contact Finder (estimated one month to build) but launched without it. They immediately discovered the real problem was that users weren't sending invites at all -- making Contact Finder irrelevant until they had over a million users.
Airbnb's founders discovered that high-quality photos dramatically increased booking rates. Rather than building a scalable solution, they personally visited hosts and took photos, then hired freelancers tracked in spreadsheets, then hired an intern to manage 50 photographers, and only then built software automation.
These rules emerged from Hoffman's direct experience as a founder (SocialNet, PayPal, LinkedIn), investor (Greylock Partners), and board member (Facebook, Airbnb) across multiple blitzscaling companies. Each rule reflects a painful lesson: Hoffman delayed SocialNet's launch for a year trying to be thorough (violating Rule 4); PayPal had just 2 support people for exponentially growing transaction volume (applying Rule 7); LinkedIn launched without a feature they thought was essential (applying Rule 4) and discovered the real problem was something entirely different.