Over the past decade, Reid Hoffman has become a leading voice in entrepreneurship, with successes in the consumer Internet and online payment spaces. Hoffman is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at LinkedIn. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking service, with more than 60 million members in 200 countries. The company's diversified revenue model includes subscriptions, advertising and software licensing. Hoffman also serves as a partner at Greylock Partners.
Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of all business relationships: business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Hoffman was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart and Mozilla Corporation. Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and from Oxford University with a Master's in philosophy.
Related Links: www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman
Last Updated: Wed, Mar 7, 2012
In this candid entrepreneurial narrative, Reid Hoffman describes his journey from academia to PayPal, to finally founding the professional networking site LinkedIn. Hoffman suggests that to be a successful entrepreneur you have to take risks where others wouldn't and be willing to deviate from the beaten path.
Serial entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman encourages individuals to become the entrepreneurs of their own lives. Hoffman shares the importance of taking intelligent risks, building thoughtful networks and continually adapting your skills to navigate a fulfilling career path.
Serial entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman encourages individuals to become the entrepreneurs of their own lives. Hoffman shares the importance of taking intelligent risks, building thoughtful networks and continually adapting your skills to navigate a fulfilling career path.
In this keynote address from the Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit, serial entrepreneur and LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman shares his views on the role of entrepreneurs in society and the impact they will play in the creating the future. Hoffman offers valuable rules of thumb for navigating the startup and entrepreneurial process, as well as answering questions on developing markets, customer experience and the reasons to take a company public.
How do you set your mind to becoming a more effective entrepreneur? LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman discusses these rules to help individuals looking to create new products and companies: 1) Look for disruptive change, 2) Aim high, 3) Build a network around your company, 4) Plan for good and bad luck, 5) Maintain flexible persistence, 6) Remember these rules are just rules of thumb by which you navigate.
According to Hoffman, working as if you will succeed, getting to failure points and measuring them as early as possible, making a timely entry and exit into the market, taking controlled risks and finally, solving the easiest problems and not the most complex ones are some of the most fundamental principles of entrepreneurship. 
As a co-founder of PayPal and LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman believes the importance of entrepreneurial education goes far beyond the founding of companies. All individuals may not go on to create startups, says Hoffman, but everyone will need to act more entrepreneurially going forward. Suggesting the era of the straight-forward career path is over, Hoffman articulates why individuals and companies create competitive advantage not through ideas, but by being the ones putting ideas into motion.
Hoffman believes an entrepreneurial venture will face competition by either innovating against no competitors or against slow competitors. If a startup faces a smart, aggressive competitor, they must be really sure of what they are doing. He elaborates on this point with the example of 'Friendster' losing its first mover advantage to 'MySpace,' due to a lack of marketing strategy.
Hoffman draws comparisons between a general manager and an entrepreneur by giving his own example of becoming a general manager before starting his company. He also talks about the difference between an entrepreneur who takes wild risks and a professional general manager who is paid to mitigate risks.
Hoffman believes that out of three kinds of investment strategies, sure bets, low-risk management and high risk investments, entrepreneurship is the third kind. This style of investment is called accurate contrarian theories where raising sufficient money might help in mitigating risks, but does not ensure success.
Using LinkedIn as an example, Hoffman talks about the three main ideas which drive a successful social networking company. They are: Building a business profile, having a network for search and building an application on top of it. Such a concept not only helps employers to reference check prospective employees, but the other way as well.
Entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman details what it means to be the entrepreneur of your own life and why accelerated changes brought on by globalization must be addressed when it come to people and technology.
Serial entrepreneur Reid Hoffman says almost all successful startups will at some point reach the critical moment of pivot. Hoffman refers to these as "valley of the shadow" moments, when everyone on the early team wonders, "why did we think this is a good idea?" Hoffman uses examples from his experiences at PayPal and LinkedIn to share how a team pulls through these moments and hopefully avoids the death of a startup.
Hoffman describes 3 key lessons he learned at his first company, SocialNet. 1) Financing strategy should reflect one's financial capabilities. 2) Focusing on distribution is important. 3) Understanding that the entrepreneurial skill set is different from what is required to work for an established big company.
Serial entrepreneur Reid Hoffman understands the challenges of maintaining a solid customer experience as a company grows its user base. Although you may have a defined set of ideas you are building toward for customers, says Hoffman, users are individuals with different needs and interests. Hoffman uses an example from LinkedIn to stress the importance of testing new ideas and preserving user trust through your actions.
Entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman articulates why individuals and companies who do not take intelligent risks will eventually marginalize themselves over time. Hoffman also describes the importance of holding and testing contrarian views.
Serial entrepreneur Reid Hoffman believes entrepreneurs are the modern pioneers of our age. In the current climate of technology change, market shift and globalization, entrepreneurs will create the products and organizations that will allow society to invent and adapt to the future, says Hoffman. He also discusses how the analogy of entrepreneurs as pioneers highlights the challenges of teaching entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman shares keys to lifelong personal growth, including network building, being adaptive and staying in a mode of "permanent beta."
As a serial entrepreneur who recently took LinkedIn through its initial public offering, Reid Hoffman knows investors and early employees have expectations around taking a company public. "When people invest in a company, they expect to have some liquidity in the stock, at some point," says Hoffman. He discusses why any company that goes public must be able to show they have their house in order on a quarterly basis, and why its leaders must choose a time that is right for future growth.
Building relationships and an understanding for group dynamics are two of the benefits of choosing to work on teams over consulting, says entrepreneur Reid Hoffman. The LinkedIn co-founder also believes good companies implicitly understand great employees may eventually leave to start new ventures.