BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The award-winning Masters of Scale podcast will bring its signature style to the stage of Boston’s gorgeous Wilbur Theatre at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, July 23, with celebrated founder and philanthropist Tory Burch as the featured guest. Host Reid Hoffman — founder of LinkedIn and legendary investor with Boston-born Greylock Partners — will set out to prove a counter-intuitive theory about scaling a business alongside Tory, who opened her first boutique in 2004 and has since grown her business into an iconic brand with more than 250 stores around the world.
Together, Tory and Reid will delve into the intersection of two ideas: the combination of patience and timing required to scale a sustainable business; and the drive to give back and support fellow entrepreneurs. Tory’s vision to start a foundation was part of her business plan from the beginning, and since launching in 2009, has distributed $50M in loans to nearly 3,000 women entrepreneurs in partnership with Bank of America. Tory will share insights and winning strategies from carving her own entrepreneurial path — and how she's using those lessons to now support women entrepreneurs.
“I’ve long admired Reid and his ‘Masters of Scale’ series,” Tory Burch shared. “His themes and business theories are always unexpected, and I can’t wait to see how he channels them to a live audience. I’m honored and delighted to participate in the first show.”
“Tory is a scale entrepreneur who grew a spectacular business through a combination of patience and speed,” said Reid Hoffman. “I’m honored to have her join us for the first Masters of Scale live event, and looking forward to comparing stories on how we each approach company-building.”
This first-ever live recording of Masters of Scale will unfold through a captivating onstage interview between Reid and Tory; “cameo” appearances by other well-known names in technology and business; the show's beloved music, and surprise moments just for the room. Many of Boston's leading thinkers and builders will be at the theater, connecting with up-and-coming entrepreneurs for an evening full of illuminating stories and hard-won truths on growing a business.
Why Boston? From Instagram's Kevin Systrom to Dropbox’s Drew Houston to MIT Media Lab's Joi Ito, famous founders from Boston and around the world have appeared on Masters of Scale, sitting down with Reid to talk about steering a company through a time of explosive growth and change. Boston has always been a hotbed of business and tech innovation, and it’s home to some of our favorite incubators, startup spaces and research labs. We're connecting here with a passionate audience that cuts across the spectrum, from investors to early-stage startups; scale executives to students.
Listeners have described Masters of Scale as “the best masterclass in building companies and scaling them,” “like sitting through an MBA program,” and said of Reid's interview style: “His thought process is so crystal clear that it makes you want to be like him.”
The evening is presented by Thoughtexchange, a disruptive platform that helps leaders crowdsource answers to questions in real time.
“We’re more than a little excited to partner with Masters of Scale for their first-ever live event,” said Dave MacLeod, CEO of Thoughtexchange. “It will be an amazing opportunity to learn from Reid and Tory, and see if we can learn a thing or two from one another as we tackle a tough question with the audience using Thoughtexchange!”
Tory Burch is the Executive Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Tory Burch LLC, an American lifestyle brand. Tory launched the company in 2004 with a small boutique on Elizabeth Street in New York City, as well as an ecommerce site. The brand has since grown into a global business with more than 250 boutiques from New York to Paris and Shanghai. In 2009, she launched the Tory Burch Foundation to advance women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship in the United States by providing access to capital, education and digital resources, as well as a Fellowship program. To date, over $50M in loans have been distributed to over 2,800 women entrepreneurs through the Foundation’s Capital Program powered by Bank of America, and more than 300,000 women benefit from the Foundation’s digital resources each month.
Reid Hoffman is the host of Masters of Scale, co-founder of LinkedIn, and a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. As an entrepreneur and executive, Reid has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. He possesses a unique understanding of consumer behavior and the dynamics of viral businesses, as well as deep experience in driving companies from the earliest stages through periods of explosive, “blitzscaling” growth. He serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Gixo, Microsoft, Nauto, Xapo and a few early-stage companies still in stealth. In addition, he serves on a number of not-for-profit boards, including Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub and Do Something. Prior to joining Greylock, he angel invested in many influential Internet companies, including Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, and Zynga. Reid is the co-author of the recent book Blitzscaling and best-selling books: The Start-up of You and The Alliance.
Masters of Scale is an original podcast hosted by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a legendary Silicon Valley investor at the Boston-born Greylock Partners. In each episode, Reid shares a key theory about how companies grow, testing his conclusions in conversation with some of the most iconic business minds on the planet – famous founders and leaders who've built world-changing companies from a single great idea. Guests have included Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, Netflix head Reed Hastings, Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber, Spanx’s Sara Blakely, Shake Shack’s Danny Meyer, Daniel Ek of Spotify, Caterina Fake of Flickr/Etsy, Joi Ito from the MIT Media Lab, as well as Arianna Huffington, Barry Diller and Tim Ferriss. Voted the winner of the 2018 People’s Voice Award Webby for best business podcast, Masters of Scale was the first American media property to commit to equitable gender representation among guests. Masters of Scale is an original series from WaitWhat, a media invention company founded by June Cohen and Deron Triff, former TED executives, and is based in New York.
Details: Tuesday, July 23, 2019, at the Wilbur Theatre on Tremont Street. Doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m. Tickets are available at mastersofscale.com/live and the Wilbur Theatre box office.
Find Masters of Scale on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen and @MastersofScale on Twitter. Follow live show news at #MoSLIVE.
Find Tory Burch at toryburch.com and ToryBurchFoundation.org.
Discover more about how Thoughtexchange brings people together at www.thoughtexchange.com and @thoughtxchng on Twitter.
