Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture
capitalist and author. Hoffman is best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a
business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking.
Hoffman, with a net worth of US$4.7 billion, is ranked as #341 on the list
of the world's richest people. Early life and education
Hoffman was born in Palo Alto, California, to Deanna Ruth and William
Parker Hoffman, Jr., and grew up in Berkeley, California. His paternal
great-great-great-grandfather was Theophilus Adam Wylie, a Christian
Presbyterian minister and Indiana University president pro tempore. Reid's
uncle Eric Hoffman is a writer. He attended high school at The Putney
School, where he farmed maple syrup, drove oxen and studied epistemology. He
graduated from Stanford University in 1990, where he won both a Marshall
Scholarship and a Dinkelspiel Award, with a BS in Symbolic Systems and
Cognitive Science. He went on to earn an M.A. in Philosophy from Wolfson College,
Oxford University in 1993 as a Marshall Scholar.
Career = Early years=
While in college, according to Hoffman, he formed a conviction that he wanted to
try to influence the state of the world on a large scale. He saw academia as an
opportunity to make an "impact", but later realized that an entrepreneurial
career would provide him with a larger platform. "When I graduated from
Stanford my plan was to become a professor and public intellectual. That
is not about quoting Kant. It's about holding up a lens to society and asking
'who are we?' and 'who should we be, as individuals and a society?' But I
realised academics write books that 50 or 60 people read and I wanted more
impact." With that in mind, Hoffman pursued a
career in business and entrepreneurship. He joined Apple Computer in 1994, where
he worked on eWorld, an early attempt at creating a social network. eWorld was
acquired by AOL in 1996. He later worked at Fujitsu before co-founding his first
company - SocialNet.com in 1997. It focused “on online dating and matching
up people with similar interests, like golfers who were looking for partners in
their neighborhood.” Peter Thiel has said SocialNet.com was “literally an
idea before its time. It was a social network 7 or 8 years before that became
a trend.” = PayPal=
While at SocialNet, Hoffman was a member of the board of directors during the
founding of PayPal, an electronic money transmission service. In January 2000,
he left SocialNet and joined PayPal full-time as the company's COO. Allen
Blue, whom Hoffman hired at PayPal, said that “PayPal had to scratch and claw for
every advantage it had, and Reid became an expert at competing effectively in an
extremely competitive environment." Hoffman was responsible for all external
relationships for PayPal, including payments infrastructure, business
development, government, and legal. Peter Thiel, Hoffman's boss at PayPal,
has said that Hoffman “ was the firefighter-in-chief at PayPal. Though
that diminishes his role because there were many, many fires.” At the time of
PayPal's acquisition by eBay for $1.5B in 2002, he was executive vice president
of PayPal. = LinkedIn=
Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002 with two former colleagues from
SocialNet, a former college classmate and a former colleague from his time at
Fujitsu. It launched on May 5, 2003, as one of the first business-oriented
online social networks. Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, colleagues of Hoffman's at
PayPal, invested in LinkedIn. As of November 2014, LinkedIn has over 332
million members in more than 200 countries and territories. The site
allows registered users to create professional profiles and connect with
each other. Users can invite anyone to become a connection. According to
Forbes, “LinkedIn is, far and away, the most advantageous social networking tool
available to job seekers and business professionals today."
Hoffman was LinkedIn's founding CEO for the first four years before becoming
chairman and President, Products in February 2007. He became Executive
chairman in June 2009. With the IPO of LinkedIn on May 19, 2011, Hoffman owns a
stake worth an estimated $2.34 billion, not including any potential benefits
from Greylock Partners, where he was named a Partner in 2009. Hoffman
believes that many people still do not know how to use its service and it is
LinkedIn's job to help them out. In an interview, Hoffman said that “you have
to think proactively about how to use a tool that enables your ability to move
in ways that you weren’t able to move before, and most of people are not very
good at that”. = Investing=
After the PayPal sale to eBay, Hoffman became one of Silicon Valley's most
prolific and successful angel investors. According to venture capitalist David
Sze, Hoffman "is arguably the most successful angel investor in the past
decade." Dave Goldberg, former CEO of SurveyMonkey, says that Hoffman “is the
person you want to talk to when you are starting a company.” In 2010 Hoffman
joined Greylock Partners and runs their $20 million Discovery Fund. His areas of
focus at Greylock include consumer and services, enterprise software, consumer
Internet, enterprise 2.0, mobile, social gaming, online marketplaces, payments,
and social networks. According to David Kirkpatrick's book
The Facebook Effect, Hoffman arranged the first meeting between Mark
Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel, which led to Thiel's initial $500,000 angel
investment in Facebook. Hoffman invested alongside Thiel in Facebook's very first
financing round. Hoffman’s current investments include
Airbnb, One Kings Lane, Swipely, Viki, Coupons.com, Edmodo, Wrapp, TrialPay,
Xapo, and Talko. Past investments include Flickr, Digg, shopkick,
SixApart, Wikia, Permuto, thesixtyone, Tagged, IronPort, Ping.fm, Nanosolar,
Care.com, Knewton, Kongregate, Last.fm, Technetto, Vendio and VigLink. He served
on Zynga’s board of directors from March 2008 to June 2014, and on shopkick's
board of directors from its foundation in July 2009 until its acquisition by SK
Telecom in October 2014. Public Intellectual Work
= Speaking= Hoffman has spoken at the XPrize
Foundation's conference and the TED conference in Long Beach in 2012. He is
a frequent lecturer at Stanford University, Oxford University, Harvard
University, MIT's Media Lab, and others. He has appeared on The Charlie Rose
Show, Fareed Zakaria's Global Public Square on CNN and other current affairs
television programs. = Writing=
Hoffman has published a variety of posts as a “LinkedIn Influencer” on LinkedIn.
He published an essay proposing a new form of credentialing for university
students and professionals entitled “Disrupting the Diploma.” On his
personal website, he published “LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch to Greylock:
Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs,” in which he analyzed LinkedIn’s 2004 Series
B venture funding pitch deck and offered advice to prospective entrepreneurs on
how to formulate a pitch deck. Hoffman has also written op-eds in the
Washington Post, including one published in 2009 entitled “Let Startups Bail Us
Out” encouraging funding for grassroots innovation in the wake of the financial
crisis and another in June 2013 entitled “Immigration promotes entrepreneurship
and prosperity” advocating for immigration reform. He has written for
Strategy+Business on professional networking and is an "Influencer" on
LinkedIn where he posts original written content.
= The Start-Up of You= Hoffman is co-author, with Ben Casnocha,
of the career book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself,
and Transform your Career. The book was released in the United
States on February 14, 2012. It argues that individuals should think of
themselves as businesses-of-one – the “CEO of their own career” – and draws
many parallels between lessons learned from the stories of successful Silicon
Valley technology companies and an individual’s career.
Publishers Weekly reviewed the book positively, saying, “with plenty of
valuable guidance relevant to any career stage, this book will help readers not
only survive professionally in times of uncertainty but stand out from the pack
and flourish.” The Economist said that “Hoffman and Casnocha make a number of
astute observations about shifts in the world of work.”
As of September 2012 it had sold more than 100,000 copies. It became both a
New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Business Insider republished
visual summaries of The Start-Up of You, which have received over 13 million
views. = The Alliance=
Hoffman is co-author, with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, of the management book
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age.
The book was released in the United States on July 8, 2014. It argues that
previous career models of lifetime employment and free agency no longer
work in a business world defined by continuous change. Instead, it proposes
that employers and employees should think of each other as “allies” and move
from a transactional approach to employment to a “relational” one. It
proposes a new framework for managers and employers to organize their work,
described as “tours of duty.” Further, it argues why managers should encourage
their employees to gather “network intelligence” and why companies and
managers should maintain a lifelong relationship with former employees via a
corporate alumni network. The book became a New York Times
bestseller. Arianna Huffington named The Alliance “the must-read book of the
summer” in 2014. Honors and awards
In September 2014, the Academy of Achievement awarded Hoffman with the
annual Golden Plate award, which honors accomplished individuals “for
significant achievement in their fields.”
In April 2014, President Barack Obama named Hoffman as a Presidential
Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship “to help develop the next generation of
entrepreneurs.” In April 2014, Hoffman received the
Distinguished Citizen Award from the Commonwealth Club.
In May 2012, Hoffman was ranked third on the Forbes Midas List of the top tech
investors. Forbes described Hoffman as “Silicon Valley's uber-investor” and
said Hoffman “has had a hand in creating nearly every lucrative social media
startup.” In 2012, Newsweek and The Daily Beast
released their first "Digital Power Index," a list of the 100 most
significant people in the digital world that year, and Hoffman was ranked No. 3
in the "Angels" category. In 2012, Hoffman, along with Salman Khan
of Khan Academy, was honored by the World Affairs Council and Global
Philanthropy Forum in 2012. The council recognizes and honors remarkable leaders
who have effected and will continue to effect social change through their
private enterprise and social action. The awards in 2012 were dedicated to
celebrating Technology for Social Impact.
Hoffman was awarded the 2012 David Packard Medal of Achievement Award by
TechAmerica for his contributions and advances within the high-tech industry,
his community, and humankind. Hoffman received an Honorary Doctor of
Laws from Babson in 2012. In 2011, Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of
LinkedIn shared the EY U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
In 2010, Hoffman was named No. 17 on Fast Company 's list of the 100 Most
Creative People in Business. Personal life
In 2001, Hoffman married Michelle Yee. The couple has resided in Palo Alto, CA
for 10 years. Philanthropy
Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn's CEO, has said that “Reid's true north is making a
positive and lasting impact on the world, in a very profound way.” Hoffman
serves on the boards of Kiva.org, Mozilla, Endeavor Global and Do
Something. Hoffman also serves on the Advisory Council of the MIT Media Lab,
and is a supporter and Chair of the Advisory Board for QuestBridge.
Politics In April 2013, a lobbying group called
FWD.us was launched, with Reid Hoffman listed as one of the founders.
In 2014, Hoffman donated $150,000 to the Mayday PAC
In 2014 Hoffman contributed $500,000 toward David Chiu's State Assembly
campaign by funding an independent expenditure committee devoted to
negative campaigning against his opponent: San Franciscans to Hold Campos
Accountable — Vote No for Campos for State Assembly 2014.
References External links
LinkedIn management page including a brief biography of Hoffman
Hoffman's LinkedIn profile Hoffman's LinkedIn Influencer posts
Podcast and videos of Reid Hoffman, speaking at Stanford University
The Start-Up of You book website The Alliance book website
Hoffman’s Personal Web Site