When Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a Greylock partner, developed the term “blitzscaling,” he kept it simple: It is a notion that pushes entrepreneurs to emphasize speed above efficiency during times of uncertainty. Years later, the founders are dealing with a pandemic, possibly the most uncertain time of their life, and Hoffman has a clarification to make. “Blitzscaling isn’t the goal in and of itself,” Hoffman stated at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021.
“Blitzscaling is inefficient; it wastes resources and hires inefficiently; it leaves you unsure about your business model, and these are not positive things.” Rather than a path to pursue from idea to IPO, he added, blitzscaling is a choice organizations may have to make for a set amount of time to overtake a competition or respond to a pandemic.
That is not to say that entrepreneurs should not prioritize fast speed, particularly in fields like financial and edtech, where the pandemic shone a bright light on a lot of opportunities. Instead, Hoffman believes that the pandemic has changed “the standard for what you may need to do in order to outrun your competition to scale in an ecosystem.” Hoffman has broadened his perspective of blitz scaling blends nicely with his firm’s latest announcement of a $500 million seed fund. The close came weeks soon after Andreessen Horowitz shut its very own $400 million seed fund.
Greylock claims that its new fund is “the premier pool of enterprise funds devoted to backing founders at 1,” and explicitly stated that it is “willing to generate substantial seed checks at lean-in valuations, which provides organizations extra runway to hit milestones without the need of having on further dilution.” It is good to say that Greylock’s checks could assistance seed-phase startups affording to pay for blitz scale although nevertheless prioritizing runway and other business enterprise-oriented means. As it is a notion that pushes entrepreneurs to emphasize speed above efficiency during times of uncertainty, years later, the founders are dealing with a pandemic, possibly the most uncertain time of their life, and Hoffman has a clarification to make. Therefore Hoffman stated at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, “Blitzscaling isn’t the goal in and of itself.”
