YouSaid · the spoken record

Josh Silverman

lines on the record: 52
first: 2020-01-23
most recent: 2020-01-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Masters of Scale is a weight what original. The show is recorded on site in California and produced at the studio Inside SY Partners in New York. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our producers are Chris MacLeod, Adam Skeuse, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McLeod, Catherine Clark Gray, Hallie Bondi, and Ben Manila. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Music and sound design by Ryan Holliday and Daniel Nissenbaum. Mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chrisier, Elisa Schreiber, David Sanford, Saida Sapieva, Bob Safian, Christina Gonzalez, and Sarah Sandman. Visit Masterscale. com to find the transcript for this episode and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As your company increases in size, you need to put in trusted deputies to mine the details so you can take the bird's eye view, but to keep the main thing the main thing, these trusted deputies also need to help you zoom way in when you need to. You're structuring your team like a micro telescope that can be flipped back and forth so you can also take the wide angle view. I'm Reid Hoffman. Thank you for listening.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and also make sure that the team in doing that, like they say, this is a solution. You're like, well, it may not be a solution yet.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Since the refocus two years ago, Etsy's revenue has grown sixty five percent and its market cap is five times bigger. And this fine art of inspiring a team is always top of mind for Josh. I ask them if you could call your younger self and give yourself advice. What would you say?”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Note how Josh doesn't dictate what each squad should focus on. Instead, he encourages them to zoom in on the one thing they're really excited about. But he does make sure they have a clearly prescribed set of criteria for success.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a clear demonstration of how you can structure your organization so that multiple problems are being zoomed in on while the leadership team can assess them from a wider vantage point.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joshua shifting from a tight focus to a wide angle to make rapid changes at Etsy, all within just a few weeks of joining the company. Etsy maintains GMS as its top metric to this day. In fact, its whole structure is geared towards it.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With a broad strategy set, Josh dove deep into the details to determine how do we measure success with buyers, which one data point matters most.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To win from special, Josh refocused the team's perspective squarely on the buyers. It may sound obvious, but it was something Etsy had lost sight of for reasons very specific to their community.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Until this point, Etsy's focus had been on its sellers. It saw itself as a marketplace for handmade items and the people who made them. Josh knew he had to change this perspective.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just as he had done at Evid and Skype, Josh began by zooming in on individual users and asking them What makes Etsy special? Here's what they told him.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“entertainment moment because Etsy is one of the investments that I passed on as an angel. Caterinia Fake had kind of introduced it to me. And I had passed because I hadn't realized that the internet actually grows all these markets. Like I went, oh, you know, selling custom constructed goods and this kind of little artisans marketplace. It's like, oh, there'll never be big enough. And I was wrong. It had an early thing. And then the second thing was, ooh, tech industry, as you know, I was saying, well, you should do that in the valley versus New York. And you're like, no, no, these great things in New York. I'm going to stay in New York. And then it turns out it's like, oh, I'm going to do Etsy.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Josh's two and a half years at CEO Skype added more than three hundred million users, doubled revenues, and tripled profits. During that time, eBay sold sixty five percent of Skype to other investors. A few years later, Microsoft bought Skype for eight and a half billion dollars. In the meantime, Josh went on due to a stint with my partners and I at Greylock and another at American Express. In twenty seventeen he joined Etsy at CEO. I still remember my reaction when he told me. So then one of the other things that was kind of a surprise and delight for me is he said, look, my family loves New York. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to rejoin the tech industry. I'm going to go to Etsy. I had a personal kind of”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Josh got the whole team to lift their gaze away from the one feature they cared about and toward the larger mission they were working for. Skype would help people be together when they're apart, and they do it through video. The goal was set and Josh would clear the path.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like seven blindfolded people each trying to describe an elephant by just its trunk, its ear, or its leg. It was time to tear off those blindfolds and get everyone to focus on the same issue.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A new version of Skype was already in development when Josh joined. In fact, it was in development hell. Everything was writing on the new version, but no one was on board.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With video firmly in his sights, Josh could see the wider picture. Video opened up a market that Skype had struggled in. Domestic calls in the US.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By zooming in on what individual users loved about Skype, Josh detected the pattern that let him paint the bigger picture. Skype had been audio only until now, but if Skype meant being together when you're apart, then video was the clear next step, and the timing was right. Internet speeds were getting faster, and the iPhone had just come out. It was clear to Josh that Skype's next release should be a video app for mobile, but the team didn't see the logic”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where to go from there? Josh directed his laser-like focus to individual users and just as he'd done in the early days of Evite, he started asking questions What did Skype mean to them?”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listeners, Bob, here, if you listen to rapid response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Devilware's Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. In 2008, Josh moved on to another troubled part of the eBay Empire when he took over as CEO of Skype. At that time, it wasn't exactly a coveted role, although Skype was winning customers with its free international calls, it was struggling to make money. People wondered, did a telecom service even belong inside an e commerce company?”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We all get caught up in the charismatic megafauna of our own businesses. The key is to recognize when that happens and to never completely overlook the plankton in favor of the polar bear. And if that's an idea you want to share with a colleague, now is a good time to do it. You can share this episode using the link listen dot masters of scale dot com slash zoom. That's listen dot masters of scale dot com slash zoom. After a word from our sponsor, we'll return with Josh's story of the micro and the macro.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The microscope was invented in the seventeenth century, but understanding the interrelationship between the micro and the macro took some time for us to get.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joshua's victory here marks a triumph of taking the microscopic view. It shows how the smallest detail can have impact at the largest of scales. Someone who spends a lot of time explaining the might of the miniature world is Nick Money. Nick is a professor at Miami University, author, and expert on the microbial world.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“eBay had overlooked some of these seemingly small issues like low res photos that can frustrate customers and drive them away, and companies often fail to zoom in on these fine details, leaving them fuzzy about where their true challenge lies.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Help his team rethink everything, Josh pushed them to zoom in on the tiniest details and connect them to the overarching picture.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want you to notice how Josh hones in on the details. Many leaders make the mistake of thinking their viewpoint needs to be like a surveillance satellite, impassionately observing everything from the lofty cold depths of space. But if this is your default position, you're in trouble when a crisis hits. You'll likely find yourself burning up on re-entry as you scramble to zoom in. And this is key when you're in a crunch you need to rapidly switch to the most appropriate level of fidelity, and often that's going to be with your nose pressed so hard against the grindstone that you can see the seams in the granite as it spins before your eyes. Whether focus honed, Josh's team members got to work.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Josh asked each of his team to zoom in on one aspect of the business, and he clambered right into the thick of the details with them.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Josh had gone from what felt like a massive victory to an imminent and career ending defeat. But before the landing gear hit the tarmac, Josh's survival instinct kicked in with a vengeance.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're either This reminds me of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, when Alec Baldwin's character gives a motivational speech to his sales team. First prize is the Cadillac Second Prize there's a steak knives third prize you're fired Businesses built on network effects are Glengarry Glenros markets They're not quite as severe as Josh's claim that you're either winning or you've lost there's usually at least room for one more player, but player number two will be the stake knives to player number ones Cadillac and today where everything is hyper connected globally from markets to labor to logistics there will be more and more Glengarry Glen Ross markets Now back to Josh who was meeting with Meg Whitman and realizing he might walk away without the Cadillac or even the stake knives.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fired up by their new findings and the go ahead from their CO Josh and his team set out to reinvigorate the flagging eBay business in the Netherlands. But then catastrophe came knocking”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From cropping in close on a single problem in one market, the Netherlands, a new strategy surfaced, and a new business direction for the whole European market.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a brilliant way to prove a point, and you might think that every product team is constantly running experiments like this, using their own service and comparing it with another, but you'd be wrong. It's a completely free product test that most people miss, and it can help you course correct early. Having zoomed in on the precise problem, Josh brought it to the attention of then eBay CEO Meg Whitman”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The US product market fit wasn't European product market fit. To analyze this, Josh had to zoom out and look at the wider Dutch market, and to prove it, Josh zoomed in to study individual transactions.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here was a whole segment of companies that eBay had never thought of as competitors, but the Dutch preferred class like the one at Market Plats over auctions, and this was stalling eBay's growth in the Netherlands. This ran counter to the conventional wisdom in the US.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“eBay's growth in the Netherlands was flatlining. Others may have seen that assignment as a poison chalice, but Josh was determined to learn what made the Dutch market different. He started by taking a bird's eye view of the playing field.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You may think you need the best overall product to beat out your competitors and win market dominance, but you can easily miss the one thing that users love. This focus allowed Evite to thrive during the first dot combo and beyond. Evite was acquired in two thousand one by another master of scale Barry Dillers Company IAC. Josh moved on to a new role at eBay where he'd oversee international expansion in a country to be named.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By diving deep into the details with EVIT's users, Josh realized that the who's coming list was Evite's killer function, and it was a feature their competitors overlooked. The next step was to zoom out and see how this insight could drive company strategy.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing Josh did at Evite was zoom in for details. He started by asking individual customers what's your favorite feature?”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Alib and Selena Tabakawala. Selena, of course, featured on our episode Let Fires Burn. But what I want you to notice here is how Josh reacted. He could have said Oh no competitors and instead he said Oh good collaborators Josh ended up joining Selena now at Evite.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have more people and more things going on and more kind of a larger scale effort. The problem is a complex plan or a detailed plan means many more ways the systems can screw up and then people can become miscoordinated, parts of the product or the technology can become miscoordinated, etc. Being able to boil it down to a simple plan is actually in fact very important to scale. That doesn't mean that there aren't still a lot of details within it, but that means that everyone can have the exact same simple plan on their head. And so that ability to distill it is critical after a stint in Washington. Josh got his MBA and worked as a management consultant. He then had an idea for his first startup.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's easy to dumb ideas down, but to simplify complex ideas in a way that captures your essence for this you need to zoom out and get the widest context, and then sometimes zoom in to show the one tiny detail that makes everything clear. It's a skill that I discovered the value of when I moved from the academic world into the business world. When I moved from the academic world to the business world, I thought my personal competitive advantage would be the fact that I could manage complexity in my head, that I had a better ability to have a larger map, a more strategic map, a composition, all the ideas of mastering a complex system and putting it all in my head, somewhat of which is a parallel to sometimes how engineers think about engineering problems. However, as businesses scale, what I learned was that actually in fact businesses can actually only implement simple strategies.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Josh flourished under this challenge to find his own way, and I see this in a lot of great leaders. It's not that they don't thrive in structure. It just has to be a structure of their own making. Asking this type of leader to work inside a rigid framework is like giving an artist a coloring book and telling them to keep within the lines.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Level of scale and shrivelling on the vine. Josh discovered the power of taking a different perspective when he was struggling in high school.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not about finding a common ground between these two viewpoints, nor even about having trusted lieutenants to scout for you, though that is important. What you need to be able to do is switch effortlessly between the two views. You need to be both the drone hovering above the field, observing the whole game, and the microscopic quantum field that determines how the opening coin toss will land. And most importantly, you need to know exactly when to switch between these two perspectives. I wanted to talk to Josh Silverman about this because he's demonstrated this ability with a string of iconic companies, Evite, eBay, Skype, and Etsy. In each case, Josh's ability to flip between the macro and the micro help them synthesize new strategies that made the difference between reaching the next”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is Masters of Scale. I'm Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host, and I believe the best scale leaders know exactly when to dive deep into details and when to zoom out for the wide and high view. They see the forest and the trees right down to the aphids on the leaves and the ecosystem that fuels the forest growth Every early stage founder will wrestle with the challenge of getting out of the weeds and keeping an eye on the horizon, but you can't take this too far. Your big picture strategy can fail based on the seemingly smallest tactical blunder And if you spend too much time with your head in the clouds, you'll miss the calamity unfolding at your feet.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Represent all of life through dominoes, Scott is constantly shifting his view from a wide angle lens on the room size tableau he's building to the teeniest details that bring the towers and flowers and T Rexes to life, and the same is true for entrepreneurs. I believe the best scale leaders know exactly when to dive deep into details and when to zoom out for the wide and high view. They see the forest and the trees right down to the aphids on the leaves and the ecosystem that fuels the forest's growth.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Each of these ingenious measures adds up to a domino display of extraordinary scale, but to achieve this, Scott can't get lost in the details. He needs to keep his eye on the big picture as well, like the twenty five thousand domino depiction of life on Earth.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Throughout his forty years as a domino artist, Scots learned how to solve very particular problems, like how to prevent your entire display from going down if a single domino wobbles during the week long setup”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel I must point out that it was the skeleton of a real T Rex on display at the museum and forced to reenact the trauma that had killed it sixty five million years ago. With tens of thousands of tiles, the display took a week to build. The scene was expansive and unexpected.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Scott Suko, engineer by day, Dominoarist by passion. He founded the Maryland Science Center Domino team, and his team creates enormous, intricate domino art displays like the one he's describing. It showed the moment the dinosaurs went extinct.”
2020-01-23 · Masters of Scale · When to zoom in, when to zoom out, w/Josh Silverman (Etsy/eBay/Skype/Evite) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT