Reid Garrett Hoffman – the American internet entrepreneur and Silicon Valley’s most prolific investors.
Hoffman describes himself as a passionate gamer as a child, just like the other children, his day started with playing Dungeons and Dragons. Surprisingly his first paid job was at the age of 12 as an editor at a gaming company Chaosium. This obsession of playing was influential to the path he ended up taking in life – focus on strategy.
His second obsession was reading science fiction books. This would help him imagine the world as it could conceivably be and thinking about human interconnections and the impact of technology.
He graduated from the Stanford University in a new major back then called Symbolic Systems which is a combination of artificial intelligence and cognitive science (linguistics, psychology and philosophy). This is where he met the co-founder of PayPal Peter Theil who also took Hoffman on board. He further went on to pursue philosophy from Oxford University as he had the drive to contribute towards society as a public intellectual. Within six months of his academic year, he realised academics did not resonate with him as his scholarly work would be read by a few, maybe published only one time and this would limit his aspiration of changing lives of millions.
“The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.” – Reid Hoffman
From Oxford to Silicon Valley
After Oxford, he returned with great entrepreneurial zeal and ready to start his own company that could positively affect lives. Since he was new in the game nobody gave him the time of the day. Recognizing that he has to complete Silicon Valley apprenticeship he networked his way into Apple – he worked on the eWorld project but his first job was a short-lived experience. He then moved to Fujitsu.
“You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.” Reid Hoffman
SocialNet
With this experience he came back to Silicon Valley raised funds and in 1997, Hoffman started his own company SocialNet. SocialNet which is today’s Tinder was way ahead of the time and people weren’t ready for it. This shows how Hoffman has an uncanny ability to seamlessly see where the world could be.
Though SocialNet failed, Hoffman was all set to start another platform but fate had other plans.
“We don’t celebrate failure at Silicon Valley. We celebrate learning” – Reid Hoffman
PayPal
After selling Social Net to an online dating site, he was approached by two old Stanford friends one of them being – Peter Theil to join their start-up company PayPal. He joined as a full-time employee and went on to become the Executive Vice President. He was the most strategic thinker by understanding where the person was coming and how to bridge the gap.
“Great opportunities almost never fit your schedule” – Reid Hoffman
After selling PayPal to eBay, he was adamant about his aspirations and founded LinkedIn in 2002 with his colleagues from SocialNet and Fujitsu. He believed that everyone should have a professional identity because of this whole notion of how networks can be a platform for identity and for applications that help navigate the world in a better way.
After Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, Hoffman became a Microsoft board member. Reid Hoffman gained his popularity after the establishment of LinkedIn. He believes his first failure with a social networking venture SocialNet led him to the success story of LinkedIn. He wanted to create an ecosystem that could positively transform people’s lives by making connections more beneficially.
“An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.” – Reid Hoffman
GreyLock Partners
While he was holding the position of an executive chairman at LinkedIn, he joined as a partner in Greylock Partners. Greylock focuses on start-up companies – they invest and support promising start-ups in consumer software, services and infrastructure. This exactly aligns with Hoffman’s thought process as his main area is to understand the consumer behaviour and he has the prodigious skill to guide start-ups right from their inception. He focuses on early-stage investing in products that reach millions of people.
“Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really powerful.” – Reid Hoffman
What Reid Hoffman said in an interview “What I’m passionate about is, how do we improve these human ecosystems. I’m not particularly passionate about building organizations. I’m not fond of staff meetings. What’s fun for me is the insight that I can suddenly make something better, whether it’s a product, a business deal or a business model. That’s what I do: I build, design and improve human ecosystems, through technology, finance and entrepreneurship.”
Prolific Investor
Hoffman invests in companies that are technology or data-driven. Just how he invented SocialNet which was way before its time he thinks there will be a new ‘medium of the internet’ that will redefine the internet. Along with the above hustle, Hoffman became one of the technology industry’s most prolific networker. He arranged the first meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Theil for early investment in Facebook and is continually improving his network between investors, entrepreneurs and others.
His current investments are Airbnb – the world’s largest community-driven hospitality company.
Entrepreneur First – Shaping exceptional individuals into exceptional founders.
Nauto – Artificial intelligence cloud data platform to improve transportation safety.
Blockstream – Developing ways to accelerate crypto-currencies, open assets and smart contracts.
Xapo – A bitcoin wallet combined with the cold storage vault and a bitcoin-based debit card.
His past investments include the likes of Facebook, Flickr, Swipely, Zynga, Shopkick.
And so on, hence proving he is “Silicon Valley’s Uber Investor” with a third rank on the Forbes Midas List of the top tech investors.
“If you’re not embarrassed by the version of your first product you’ve launched it too late” – Reid Hoffman
Writings
Hoffman is still an intellectual at heart; he is very regular with his posts on LinkedIn. He also has a personal website where he publishes various essays or advice for entrepreneurs. https://www.reidhoffman.org/
A few of his bestselling books are –
- ‘The Alliance: Managing Alliance with the Networked Age’
- ‘The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform your Career’
- ‘Blitzscaling The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies’
Rejuvenating his love for the philosophy he has his own podcast Masters of Scale.
Beyond start-ups
Hoffman has a keen interest in philanthropy. He serves on several, not for profit boards like Kiva, Endeavor, CZI and so on. His work was applauded and got him an award from the Queen of England and Salute to Greatness Award from the Martin Luther King Center.
Takeaways
Have a Plan Z
Hoffman advises entrepreneurs to have a Plan A, Plan B and Plan Z. Plan A is what you want to start with real passion, Plan B is finding parameters of elasticity if Plan A doesn’t work, here your mission is the same but with variations in reaching that mission with more elasticity. Plan Z is your last resort like your backup plan sorts that you can always fall back on. He emphasis on making Plan Z before you launch your company only to assure yourself that you can always fall back on if everything crumbles.
Hoffman advises taking intelligent risks. “When you stop taking risks, you start dying. You stagnate and inertia grabs hold of your life and business” He says taking risks will help you learn through the process, gain experience and of course the connections you develop along with it.
As Margaret Thatcher once said “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” Reid Hoffman disagrees and has gone ahead to prove his belief that society and communications are real. Networking is of utmost importance to survive this golden era.
“Society flourishes when people think entrepreneurially.” – Reid Hoffman
There’s a lot to learn from the most seasoned tech entrepreneur. I hope you take something with you from this post and learn how to navigate it.
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