LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman

April 22, 2019

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About the Guest

Reid Hoffman

Co-Founder of LinkedIn

Reid Hoffman was a founding Board member and executive vice president of PayPal, and in 2003, he co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service. He was an angel investor in Facebook and Zynga, and in 2009, he became a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. He currently serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Gixo, Microsoft, Nauto, and Xapo, as well as not-for-profits Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub and Do Something. He hosts the podcast, Masters of Scale, and he has co-authored multiple books including his most recent effort, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies. He also is the co-author of The Start-Up of You and The Alliance. He is an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and a graduate of Stanford University.

Episode Overview

390: LinkedIn co-Founder Reid Hoffman argues that companies should value speed over efficiency. In the modern world of network effects, being the first to scale often provides significant first mover advantages in creating a transformative company. While second place can be a decent consolation prize, Reid believes that if you are third or worse, you failed. However, while speed is important, Reid warns against having a blind adhesion to size as companies also need to determine which components put them in the best possible position. We also discuss the lessons Reid took from SocialNet, a company he founded before LinkedIn, his experience as a founding board member at PayPal, how China is able to move at such an extraordinary pace, among other topics.

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“"One part of strategy that many people mistake is that as the time frames get compressed, the ability to quickly react to opportunity becomes a much more important part of strategy.""