CEOInterviews.AIReid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn F...

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Interviewee0:00

President Trump was threatening personal and political retaliation because I tried to help Paris going.

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Reporter0:05

Do you think you'll be penalized?

I

Interviewee0:07

Yes.

R

Reporter0:07

And direct on you?

I

Interviewee0:08

And direct to me.

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Reporter0:09

You're not planning on leaving the US, are you?

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Host0:12

Um Reed Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn and one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs playing pivotal roles in the success of influential companies including PayPal, Airbnb, Facebook, and Open AI. And now he is a leading voice in AI, helping people utilize this new technology to empower themselves in their life and careers.

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Interviewer0:31

You were part of what they call the PayPal mafia who went on to create Tesla, YouTube, Reddit, SpaceX, LinkedIn, and become multi-billionaires. And so I've got so many questions.

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Reid Hoffman0:40

Let's do it.

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Interviewer0:41

What are the key factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset?

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Reid Hoffman0:43

One is you have to understand that you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid failure. When we started LinkedIn, everyone said this won't work. But just because you don't have 100% chance of succeeding doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. But there's also a set of skills that are rare that you can actually teach to entrepreneurs that makes you much more likely to be successful. The first is, and then how do you know when to quit the job? What's your view on work life balance? And if you were advising anyone to build wealth in 2025, what would you say?

Here are some simple tips. So one is read. What is your take on AI? It gives us superpowers. Now there will be costs to it, but like electricity, it does electrocute people, but it's essential for human society.

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Interviewer1:22

And is there anything that the average person should be doing to capitalize on the opportunity that AI presents?

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Host1:26

100%. This is what you do. So quick one before we get back to this episode. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. Means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode.

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Interviewer2:17

Reed, as I read through your life, it's remarkable in its almost impossible that one individual could be involved in so many companies that have had such a big impact on society, but at the same time someone be able to seemingly see the future over and over and over again. So, because as I read through your life, I thought this can't be one individual, this can't be one lifetime. It begs the question to me, what is in your view the causal factors that set you up for such a life?

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Reid Hoffman2:49

That's interesting. I've never been asked that question before. Probably it's a combination of the fact that my passion is who are we as human beings and where are we going? So from a very young age, I think I got it by reading science fiction, like what is the scope of humanity? Isaac Asimov's Foundation and that kind of stuff. And then I ended up growing up in Silicon Valley, born at Stanford Hospital, so I got exposure to technology can change the world. And so focusing on the intersection of humanity and technology. Of course, science fiction has some play, but most of the technology in science fiction is just fiction. We have wormholes and intergalactic travel, but as far as we know, there is no such thing as wormholes for intergalactic travel. All current contemporary theory of physics would suggest that there isn't. There may be wormholes, but not for putting a Star Trek spaceship in and going somewhere. And then probably the other part is I played a lot of board games when I was a kid, which gave me a very deep sense of strategy. So approaching life with that.

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Interviewer4:20

This one here, you probably remember this one.

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Reid Hoffman4:22

Yes, I do remember that. Right. And the names on the cover.

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Interviewer4:26

Borderlands. What age were you when you started playing Rune Quest? You were very young.

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Reid Hoffman4:29

When I started playing Rune Quest, probably 10.

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Interviewer4:35

And what is the link between the life you lived and the board games you played as a 10-year-old?

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Reid Hoffman4:40

Well, mostly role-playing games is about strategy. An adventure is both a narrative experience and a strategic experience: how do you save the town from the bandits? It gave me a deep sense of how strategy, tactics, and problem solving work, and how to do it as a group. When I was a kid, I heard that Chaosium had offices down the street from a friend, so I walked in and started hanging out. The chief editor wanted to get me out of the office, so he handed me a pre-development draft of the game. I took it home, redlined it, and brought it back on Monday. He was irritated, but then he saw it was good work. He wanted to use it, but I was a kid and didn't understand about payment. He wrote me a check for $160, which was my first paycheck. My dad was opposed to fantasy role-playing games, but when I brought home the paycheck, he changed his mind.

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Interviewer7:05

And is your work still in here today?

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Reid Hoffman7:07

Uhhuh.

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Interviewer7:08

So edits that you made to this game are still in here. At what age?

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Reid Hoffman7:12

That was 12.

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Interviewer7:13

Wow, that's incredible.

And how much did he pay you?

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Reid Hoffman7:17

It was like $160 or something. Not bad for a 12-year-old.

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Interviewer7:21

Yes. No, no, no. My dad was originally opposed to fantasy role playing games. He was like, what are you doing? Go be on a path to a real life. And then when I brought home the paycheck, I was like, well, maybe that works.

And what were your dreams at that age? What did you think you were going to be when you were older, 12, 13, 14?

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Reid Hoffman7:42

Frankly, I had no idea other than since both my parents are lawyers, when I was asked at 12 what I wanted to be, the answer was not a lawyer.

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Interviewer7:52

Really?

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Reid Hoffman7:52

Yes. Because lawyers are essentially modern gladiators paid to be the gladiator of their paycheck. It's quality work and important for society, but I wanted to create things. I didn't want to be a gladiator going to verbal battle for contracts or litigation. I wanted to build things. So I didn't know what I wanted to be, and maybe I still don't. But I evolved to have a two to three year plan that iterates.

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Interviewer8:47

And being born at Stanford Hospital is pertinent as well. I don't think people in the UK and around the world necessarily know the significance of that.

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Reid Hoffman8:53

Yeah.

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Interviewer8:54

But can you explain why that's important?

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Reid Hoffman8:55

Silicon Valley is a network of a generative platform. Networks amplify productivity. That's one of the reasons I conceptualized and founded LinkedIn. Cities are engines because they create networks of suppliers, talent, capital, knowledge, communication, and strategic lenses. Silicon Valley is not about individual genius; it's about being in the network. Being born at Stanford gave me perspectives: technology as a lens into the future, and that an individual can create a technology company that can be a lever to move the world. All of those things were part of the luck of being born at Stanford.

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Interviewer10:18

The luck.

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Reid Hoffman10:19

Yes. Well, you don't choose where you're born.

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Interviewer10:22

But a lot of people were born there and they didn't go on to do the things you did.

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Reid Hoffman10:26

People like to tell stories of manifest destiny because I am great. I would have been great anywhere. That's self-delusional. I think I'm smart, hardworking, strategic, and have rare skills, but any great achievement also has luck. For example, I had exposure to Silicon Valley. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to achieve what I did.

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Interviewer11:13

So, what would you say then? Because there are people listening all around the world. We just got Spotify Rap, and globally we have an extensive audience. What would you say to people in Cape Town, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand? Can you still be massively successful?

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Reid Hoffman11:38

Yes. But you have to think so. I see you have a few of my books. My first book, The Startup Review, came from a commencement speech I gave at my high school. I said, be the entrepreneur of your own life. There's a chapter that says the bad advice you're usually given is just follow your passion. The problem is, your passion might not give you a strategic advantage. You have to apply the rules of entrepreneurship: you have to be passionate, but also look at market realities and competition. If you're in Cape Town, you can do many great things. But if you try to create a search company to compete with Google, don't do that unless you have something unique. You're competing with the network of Silicon Valley. So think about what you can do that they don't. For example, Spotify started in Scandinavia, Shopify in Canada. They found a long under the radar strategy. You have to be aware that your competition is global.

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Interviewer15:26

There's an element of self-awareness required here.

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Reid Hoffman15:29

Yeah.

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Interviewer15:30

And it's funny because when I was younger, I didn't have that self-awareness. I thought I could start a social network from my bedroom without experience. How important is self-awareness as an entrepreneur, and how does one cultivate it?

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Reid Hoffman15:47

I think self-awareness is generally a good thing for all human beings. You still have to be irrationally ambitious. Sometimes self-awareness and immense ambition don't go together, but it's better when they do. You have to be very aware of your competitive space. Almost everyone who succeeds in a substantial way is good at being competitive. If you're blind to competition, you're hosed. If you're successful, it's because you're lucky. But you have to be aware of the competitive landscape. That's also true for individuals. You can be competitively blind as an individual and still be successful, but if you're competitively blind leading a business, almost always that's hosed. That's why investors always ask about competition. If you say you have no competition, they think you're competitively blind.

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Interviewer17:38

Is there any such thing as an entrepreneur? People ask me, can anyone be an entrepreneur? There are so many different types of companies. Do you think anyone can be one? There are people listening who are managers, working in a law firm, they have an idea. Is there a framework to decide if they should pursue it?

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Reid Hoffman18:09

Yeah, I'll run through a framework. The short answer is no. Not everyone should be an entrepreneur, just like not everyone should be a professional musician or athlete. You have to look at your competitive advantages. Does your disposition, skill set, path give you a competitive edge? Entrepreneurship is a highly competitive game. You have to be able to take substantial risks. Successful entrepreneurs realize that when you start a company, you're default dead. You're trying to get to default alive. You need to be able to get capital, be in a market that allows it, pitch well, and create a flywheel of capital, talent, and business realization. You also have to learn things you didn't learn in a large company: how to launch a product from scratch, set up a team. You have to be an infinite learner. The game changes. I use a metaphor: Marines take the beach, army takes the country, police governs the country. You need a strategy for each stage. You have to have persistence and flexibility. You need a dual lens of right now and long term. You shoot for the moon, but you're in a garage. You have to have a plan and lots of micro plan B's. Many successful businesses do major pivots, like PayPal started as encryption on cell phones. You pivot when your current plan's chances are worse than the first plan.

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Interviewer25:44

So, with your analogy of invading the beach, how do you know what beach to invade? How do you know if you've got a good idea? Most people have a business idea. How do they know if it's good? And they often see someone else is already doing it, so they think it's already been done.

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Reid Hoffman26:07

There are two kinds of ideas. First, with over eight billion people, you're not the only one who thought of it. The question is, are you the person who can pull it together and take the risk? Startups are risky. Even when I started LinkedIn, I told people we had a 20-25% chance of success. Anyone who says 100% is lying. Within ideas, one kind is where people generally think it's a good idea. You can measure it with customers. The bad news is so can a lot of other people, so you need a competitive strategy. The other kind is where people think you're crazy when you start. That means your competitive field is much smaller. For example, LinkedIn and Airbnb. When I started LinkedIn, people said it won't work because individuals won't put their profiles. But I knew some people would see the potential and invite others. Airbnb was my first investment at Greylock. My partner David said it was a bad idea because of risks. But I saw that if it worked, it would be huge, and the fact that everyone saw risks meant we had years of no competition. That's the kind of investment I like. You cannot validate that with customers. If everybody thinks it's a good idea, it's probably not a big idea. You want smart people to think it's a bad idea. That's contrarian.

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Interviewer34:08

I was going to say, so if everybody thinks it's a good idea, it's probably not a big idea.

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Reid Hoffman34:11

Yes. It's much more challenging to be a big idea.

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Interviewer34:15

Interesting. Because it's funny when people pitch you, they say I've asked everybody and everybody thinks it's great. That's probably an indicator that it's not big or they're bullshitting.

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Reid Hoffman34:25

Yes. And I'm looking for both in my creation and funding of ideas. It's not dumb people who think it's a bad idea, it's smart people. That's contrarian.

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Interviewer34:41

You want smart people to think it's a bad idea.

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Reid Hoffman34:42

Yes. Because then you have something contrarian. Contrarian isn't I don't understand technology and I think it's a terrible idea. It's smart people who think it's a bad idea. And then you have a theory of why they're wrong.

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Interviewer35:06

So, I'll give you the LinkedIn example. Literally, John Lily, partner of mine at Greylock, super smart guy, sat down with me. I said, here's what I'm doing. What's wrong with it? He said, you'll never grow the network. The first person comes in, no one else is there, no value. It's never going to grow. I knew that if you had a thousand people, 900 would be like John, but 10 to 100 would see the potential and invite others. So by persistence, it would grow to critical mass.

The model of LinkedIn obviously I know more today than back then. In 2003, was it a social network with a news feed, or more of a public CV?

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Reid Hoffman37:32

It was a public CV with a search capability and ability to communicate. The network effects were less important than today. We knew we would get to growing network effects. You may start with no network effects, but you have a plan.

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Interviewer38:04

So am I right in thinking that around then there were social networks focused on people conversing, whereas LinkedIn by design didn't matter if anyone was chatting about what they ate. So a new network could penetrate the market that was less dependent on social networking because if you put your CV up, it doesn't matter if you don't come back for four days? You can get an email that brings you back.

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Reid Hoffman38:34

Exactly. Once your profile is up, you're giving value to the network just by being there. That's a virtue, not a bug. It helped solve the critical mass problem.

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Interviewer38:49

I could never understand how LinkedIn did that, but now it makes sense.

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Reid Hoffman38:53

Yes. Building a social network is asking for hell in your life. But I'm kind of a specialist. I was one of the first investors in Facebook and Fster.

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Interviewer39:08

Oh, right. I didn't realize you were invested in Fster as well. You were part of the PayPal mafia. I know you used a different term.

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Reid Hoffman39:15

Network. It has less pizzazz, but we weren't really a criminal group.

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Interviewer39:21

But mafia's cool as well. People love the term. And through that time, you worked with Elon, knew Peter Thiel from university. Everybody asks about PayPal and why it was so successful, and why so many alumni went on to become multi-billionaires. Seven people from that early founding team created Tesla, YouTube, Reddit, SpaceX, LinkedIn. Was it talent density?

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Reid Hoffman39:58

Well, it certainly was a component. It's a couple of things. One, high density of talent willing to take intensive risks and do contrarian things. Another is that when PayPal went public, it was a technology winter, one of two tech companies that went public that year. Then it got bought by eBay, so all of a sudden you had a talent group with money and a network that believed in the consumer internet, while Silicon Valley thought consumer internet was played and was going into clean tech and enterprise. So the PayPal people could fund their own ideas, like YouTube, LinkedIn. That was part of the Web 2 movement. I coined the term Internet 2.0, but Tim O'Reilly made the better term Web 2.0. So we were all investing and talking to each other because VCs didn't get it. That's part of why the PayPal network had such a massive suite of success.

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Interviewer42:25

You know, I often hazard a guess at what the fundamental game of business is for a startup founder. I've guessed that it's recruiting the best group of people, binding them with a culture that gets the best out of them, and setting them a worthwhile vision. But from reading your work and hearing you today, sales is so important, whatever your go-to-market is. For example, in social networks, it's usually viral marketing or viral growth plan.

So when I say sales I actually mean like selling to

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Reid Hoffman42:59

Oh yes employees. 100%. Yes. And like you must

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Interviewer43:02

You said like partners investors.

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Reid Hoffman43:04

Yes. Cuz you have to come on board my vision. Invest in my vision. Because by the way a partner when you're a startup is also investing your vision.

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Interviewer43:13

Yeah. Yeah. Right. How do you be good at that? There's a limited set of skills that you can actually teach to entrepreneurs versus the entrepreneurs just learning by doing.

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Reid Hoffman43:25

One of them is pitching, right? One of them is understanding the how do I communicate my vision in a way that other people can go that's really exciting. I want to join your vision with you.

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Interviewer43:39

And if I was a young entrepreneur telling you right, I want to be better at pitching my vision so I can get worldclass people to join me, world-class investors, partners. Is there any advice you could give me on things I should and shouldn't do?

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Reid Hoffman43:49

Uh yeah, absolutely. And by the way, there's we could spend the entire podcast only doing this. I mean, there's a very deep well, but here's some simple tips. So, one is the mistaken lesson that most people learn is to try to do reality distortion. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Uh silicon chips to make ice cream shakes. It's the thing. No one's thought of it. It's really big, right? And people like, 'Okay, what you're convincing me is you're crazy.' Right? Like you're literally like, 'Please leave now.'

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Interviewer44:21

Yeah.

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Reid Hoffman44:22

Right. So, you have to realize that all pitches are dialogues, right? And you want to be listening to smart people and you like generally speaking, everyone you want to be recruiting, you want to be recruiting smart people. You want the absolute best talent working with you. You want the absolute best talent working in your company. You want the absolute best. So you want people who are who are thoughtful and asking good questions. Like for example, I pitch insanely aspirational businesses, but I don't pitch them saying, 'Oh, LinkedIn is guaranteed to succeed. There's no universe in which LinkedIn won't be the transformer of professional work and careers.' What I do is say it can get here. Like we have a real chance at this. Now, we have to navigate these risks, but if we navigate these risks, we're going to be here.

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Interviewer45:11

Mhm.

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Reid Hoffman45:11

Right. And then people say, 'Ah, you're credible. You have a huge vision. You're compelling. I think you can do this.' Right? And then they come on board with you. So, one of it is to pitch the huge vision, but show that you're aware of the difficulties of getting there. Right? Now, you don't have to go through all of them. You just have to go through enough of them or a big enough one that the person goes, 'Okay, great. I get it. You're seeing it.' Right? Another part of it is to say, 'This is part of the reason why competition is important is like I understand what game I'm playing.' Right? Here's my theory. This is what competition plays in. This is why I think the market will favor me. This is why I think technology trends will favor me. This is why I think I have a very unique edge. And you know in bookscaling which I think is another book on your thing uh most consumer internet plays are uh what we call Glengarry Glenn Ross markets which is first prize is a Cadillac second prize is steak knives and third prize is you're fired.

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Interviewer46:12

So you have to be pitching why you're possibly first.

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Reid Hoffman46:16

Yeah. Right. Because there's only going to be a couple of winners.

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Interviewer46:18

Yes. And so like this is why we can win.

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Reid Hoffman46:22

Right. And so um now there's also mechanics in pitching which is you know how do you tell a story of it? Part of the thing I tell entrepreneurs is to even if the person doesn't ask you the risk, tell them what the risks are and how you're navigating them because it'll establish trust, right? So like for example in in pitching investments now this I didn't know until I started learning it in terms of a mechanic of pitching is and entrepreneurs tend to go oh when I need money is when I you know write out my PowerPoint and I hit you know knock on the door and say hey give me some money. That's a foolish time to start the conversation. Much better to start the conversation when you're not saying give me money. So if you like as much as you can in all of these things, start the conversation well before you're getting to a potential contract of any sort, a partnership or a investment or even an employment contract. Like so for example, always be recruiting doesn't mean oh I want to hire you right now. It's like okay find great talent. This is one of the things I learned from social net and brought into PayPal. Find great talent and start talking to them, right? Even if today you don't have the right position to hire them,

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Interviewer47:34

right now obviously there's a whole bunch of great talent, you could waste a whole bunch of time, you want to be talking to people that, you know, you either really would love them to join at some point not too distant future or they know other people who would be like that. Because by the way, part of when you um when you meet great talent, you realize how to like cuz cuz you're always you're always adding new great talent. You're like, 'Oh my god, we need people like this. How do we bring them in?' So for example, one of the things that I learned that was, you know, from social net that I brought to PayPal was at social net, I was trying to hire people who had 10 plus years experience doing the thing that we were hiring them to do before because the classic kind of wisdom that you get from business schools is make sure they have experience on their CV.

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Reid Hoffman48:22

Look, they have to be able to do the job, right? No question. But if you said two years of experience and an insane learning curve, that's much better.

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Interviewer48:32

An insane learning curve. By that you mean someone that's rapidly learning, self-eing.

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Reid Hoffman48:37

Yes.

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Interviewer48:38

Okay.

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Reid Hoffman48:38

And learning on the job and going and figuring it out. And so when I went to PayPal and like was I when the company was founded, I was on the board of directors. I was like, 'This is what you're looking for, not this.'

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Interviewer48:51

Okay.

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Reid Hoffman48:51

Right. And so back to your like PayPal mafia question, that's cuz we hired those kind of people, right?

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Interviewer48:57

Interesting.

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Reid Hoffman48:57

But it was a very limited set of people in the company who had had more than a couple years experience working within payments, within banking, within you know because it was the I don't know learning curve. When you look at your portfolio of investments and the entrepreneurs you meet, do you think young entrepreneurs realize how significant hiring is to their eventual outcome? because they tend to focus on like how good the product is or sometimes capital. But I just looking at my own portfolio, I I often find myself like feeling like an old man because I'm telling them that like spend more time hiring, not just hiring your friends because they're willing to come work here.

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Interviewer49:34

Yes.

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Reid Hoffman49:35

A proxy for a founder. If you're not spending a third of your time hiring, you're very much underdeling. This is the thing. It's like look uh life is a team sport. Companies are team sports, right? If you could just do it yourself, you wouldn't hire anybody. No, you're hiring people. So, like you say, well, I've got a really good, let's, you know, you use a European football analogy. I've got a really good striker. Great. Well, we don't need to worry about the halfbacks or defensive or, you know, goalkeeper. No, no, you have to hire all things. And you go, well, I'm a really good halfback. That's great. You need the others, too. I think when I was young, when I was 18, 19 years old, I somewhere in my brain thought my outcomes were going to be determined by how hard I worked and how good my ideas were. And it wasn't until I accidentally hired someone fantastic that I realized Yes. the absolute tremendous impact that an A player can have on everything. Yes. And that's was just such a mental shift for me.

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Interviewer50:31

Yeah. Literally, I think Zuckerberg puts this in a very good way. He wants to hire people he would work for. And why why is that? Because that's a demonstration of high talent.

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Reid Hoffman50:44

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. When you're a young founder, you're somewhat insecure though. You think, 'Oh god, why would that person want to come work here or I can't afford them or you want to hire the best people you can.' And by the way, if you can hire people who are better than you, oh my god, it makes you much more likely to be successful.

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Interviewer50:59

Yeah. Yeah. It's my experience that young founders don't really think about that because they're also insecure. So they think, I can't manage that person.

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Reid Hoffman51:06

Yeah. Well, but but your theory of management is look, if you're if you can hire someone where your only management technique needs to be let them loose, that's that that's best. Like just go, right?

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Interviewer51:21

And is there any pra anything practical about hiring? You know, people say like hire slow, fire fast or uh other sort of like cliche advice around hiring that matters. Like how important is it that they're culturally aligned or

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Reid Hoffman51:33

So culture can matter. Um I would say look in terms of and I hopefully it's not a cliche but hopefully a heristic principle um uh references are more important than interviews right we get a lot of repetitive experience at being compelling in an interview and if you can't and by the way some great people aren't compelling in interviews right they're they're they're not really great at selling themselves but oh my god are they amazing in the field they're like an engineer like an engineer might be like and you're like okay but oh my god can they do great things in which case like like do whatever you can to hire that person. So if you if you ask me you can only have references or only interview 10 out of 10 times I'll take the I'll hire the person on the references.

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Interviewer52:23

You surely you're not talking about the types of references where they give you the references.

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Reid Hoffman52:27

No, no, no. And this is one of the features of LinkedIn, like you want to find references that will give you um uh good perspective. Now, even if you can't go find someone that you know or you have a tie to or is what you refer to frequently as an off-balance reference sheet, you not the one they give you to be a reference. So even if they say oh here's you know I'm reading here's my reference you know Bob or Susan you call Bob or Susan and you say this is a standard question I will use all the time but especially if I'm calling someone who's a given reference say look I believe every person is a combination of strengths and weaknesses and if you don't give me a weakness I will believe it's so bad that I should not hire this Right? So if if you say there's no weakness, I'll just go, okay, I understand I shouldn't hire this person. Thank you very much. Right? In that they will always almost always give you something. Mhm. Right. And you can think about because we are all combinations of strengths and weaknesses. Like I'm one of the best people to have on your side for creative strategic problem solving. Like one of my employees once told me he's like, I would never hire you to run a McDonald's. like I wouldn't hire me to run a McDonald's either. I'd be terrible at it, right? So that's combinations of strengths and weaknesses, right? And so everyone has them. There is no one who is all strengths. I mean, people tell themselves that, but that's self-d delusion, right? And so, so you have that conversation with a reference and the reference will tell you something because because they're not used to saying it. They might say, 'Oh, you know, he um uh you know, Susan or Bob, they're a perfectionist.' He's like, 'Oh, so they get their work done slowly because they're, you know, like you know, like you you push them because they're trying to get the one that's actually like more they spend too much time working.' You're like, 'Oh, that means they're unintelligent about how they do the work.' Yeah. Right. So, you can push them into where they're like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' Like they can get a little disorganized when they're stressed. Okay, great. Right. And then you can that gives you by the way because when you get that from reference one then when you're calling reference two you say oh I heard that the person is disorganized like can you tell me a little bit about that? Mhm. Right. Yeah. Got some ammo and they can't then say oh no I've never seen that. They'll probably give you a little bit more context.

I

Interviewer54:57

Yes. on all these great people you've worked with specifically, you know, you during that PayPal period of your life, one of the things I was reflecting on is they're all independently successful people, but they're all very different people. And that in and of itself is evidence that there's not one version of success. There's many different types of success. Presumably, there's many different types of entrepreneur leader.

R

Reid Hoffman55:19

Yes. give me a flavor of the different types of entrepreneurs you've worked with and and and what you know because I I sat with Walter Isacson and he talked to me about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc. and I was like Steve's really great at hiring people. Elon's not as good as at the people team building part, but he's better at this part. Yes. So, no entrepreneur wins at every game. Mhm. Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try to win to to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on. Same thing is true. So some people, for example, um uh like take a Neil Bush at workday, right? He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional. So it's a HR uh product for work. His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people were going to do cloud software. um for the first I think it was 500 people that worked day hired he would always do a cultural interview at the end because to make sure that the first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things so once you get through all the competence and all the rest of the stuff he would make sure that was a fit and that's part of how you get cultural coherence that's like one example right um another example um Elon is the um like I have a big idea And I convinced myself 100% that it's absolutely going to be the case like I am going to settle Mars. We're going to terraform Mars in our lifetimes, which is no. It's impossible. It no no human being on the planet, including Elon, is going to do that within Elon's lifetime, right? But I'm going to go all in. I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to be technologically sophisticated. I'm going to work against the odds, right? In order to make that work. That's a, you know, Anneil very professional understands the workplace smart. Elon like I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to and and his pitch though to my defense was I'm going to send a turtle to Mars. I'm like that's not a business and you're competing with national governments and like Russian subsidized rocket programs and so forth. This is not a good e I was wrong. He was right. Right. There's not a good equity, you know, kind of play.

I

Interviewer57:43

He pitched it to you as an investor.

R

Reid Hoffman57:44

Yes.

I

Interviewer57:45

Yeah.

R

Reid Hoffman57:47

At what point was SpaceX at when he pitched it?

I

Interviewer57:48

That was before he started it.

R

Reid Hoffman57:51

So, it was an idea.

I

Interviewer57:52

Yes. And I'm going to send a turtle to Mars. And then it became, I'm going to send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it to Mars because they'll grow. I'll be the first person who will send life to Mars. And you're like, okay. Right.

R

Reid Hoffman58:04

What did you think genuinely when he said that to you?

I

Interviewer58:08

I thought he'd gone off his rocker.

R

Reid Hoffman58:10

Really?

I

Interviewer58:10

Well, yeah, of course you would. Yeah. Like someone's my friend said that to me. I think I'd make a couple of calls just to check in. You know what I mean? Like, is Elon doing okay? Just told me about this turtle.

R

Reid Hoffman58:20

Yes. It's like that's not a business, right?

I

Interviewer58:24

Has your opinion of him changed over time in terms of his potential and ability as an entrepreneur?

R

Reid Hoffman58:32

No. No. I've always thought of him as one of the world's great entrepreneurs. um always.

I

Interviewer58:37

Yeah. All all the way back to PayPal days.

R

Reid Hoffman58:39

Really?

I

Interviewer58:39

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, he has done repetitively amazing things. Now, he pitches everything with the same level of certainty, right? Like, you know, I have this idea for online banking. I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities. I have this idea for creating a pneumatic tube for Hyperloop to all of them. He has the same level of I am 1,000% right that this is like guaranteed to be part of the future right and I you know and I may be the unique person to make it happen right so you have to have some discernment but he's his you know on base batting is pretty good for such major ideas but it's not it's not 100%. Yeah, people kind of excuse that though. Of course, if you get one that's big, that's fine, right?

R

Reid Hoffman59:28

Yeah.

I

Interviewer59:29

On the hiring side, has he been is he up there with the best or is he not a direct hireer of people like Steve Jobs was?

R

Reid Hoffman59:37

Um, he hires well. Um, matter of fact, you can't be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well. Mhm. Um I think some people are better hireers. Some people also have like are the kind of people that people would work for forever. Um Elon uh tends to burn people out a lot. Like there's lots of burnt out people in his wake. And when you go and talk to those people, what you hear is some people say, 'That was the best work experience ever and I never want to work for him again.' And other people say, 'That was the worst work work experience ever and I never want to work for him again.' So they're all, 'I never want to work for him again.' Right? So, you know, as kind of a a dynamic because he basically looks at them as disposable parts and, you know, go as hard as you can, right? And then afterwards, you're out. Don't care.

I

Interviewer1:00:36

Because he goes so hard.

R

Reid Hoffman1:00:37

Yeah. He goes hard, but he also thinks your only relevance to me is your relevance. Your only relevance to me is can you help me with my mission? And after you're done, after you can no longer help me with my mission, you're not relevant to me anymore.

I

Interviewer1:00:50

What do you think of that approach?

R

Reid Hoffman1:00:52

That's not my approach, right? LinkedIn mirrors my approach. I like literally I am referencable by every entrepreneur that I've ever worked with, right? as a board member and as an investor, right, who, you know, even ones that I've like fired as CEO and so forth, those people will say, 'He was really good to work with on these things.' They may also have some critical things. There's no problem with that, right? But like like literally like when I'm pitching an entrepreneur, I like call anyone that I've worked with, right? because you I I try to work with people in a way that even when we're at a at a at a difficult moment because I disagree with them intensely about how well they're doing or what they're doing or something else that I'm doing it in a collaborative constructive way. And so my goal is to work with people like anyone I want to work with Brian Chesy, you know, Mark Pinkis, etc. I want to be able to work with them for, you know, uh, the rest of our lives. What's interesting is I think these strategies fundamentally come down to what you think matters in life. Yeah. The most because you could optimize even you could optimize more for um, building more companies or something at the expense of something else. And it's a trade-off of something else. Like you could go harder.

I

Interviewer1:02:16

Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:02:17

But there's a trade-off happening here. And we often cuz Elon's done these crazy things like the cars and the neural links and this tunnels and the now the AI and the X and the spaceships and stuff. We go, 'Oh my god, that's so amazing.' And I do that as well as one person can do that much. But we almost never talk about the trade-off.

I

Interviewer1:02:33

Yes. Yep. You're 100% right. And we and and it's so this goes back to the point about self-awareness. It's like you it's so tempting for the like the brain to go, 'Oh my god, I want that. That's what I want.' Because you're not seeing the trade-off. Yes, you're not seeing the darkness.

R

Reid Hoffman1:02:48

That is 100% correct. And look, I respect it. I understand the burn people out like treat them as disposable assets that when they burn out, you just jettison them. And you can be very Elon's not the only entrepreneur who is very successful doing that, right? But for example, on the other side, um like if you go to uh Mark Zuckerberg and you talk to the people who work for him, they're like, 'That was great. That was the best working experience of my life. Of course, I'll work with them again. Interesting. Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming, rising through the ranks at the moment that have kind of been raised on the Elon philosophy of do tons of things. Do them intently. Do them with uh less of a regard for the I guess the human consequence.

I

Interviewer1:03:35

Do them with less of a regard for work life balance.

R

Reid Hoffman1:03:37

Yeah. Well, you have to have the nature of this thing because it's it's you know, you're by nature dead as a startup. Work life balance is not the startup game, right? So like I like what when like when we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families. So we said, 'Sure, go home, have dinner with your family. Then after your dinner with your family, open up your laptop and get back into the shared work experience and keep working.'

I

Interviewer1:04:04

If you say that today though, you're toxic.

R

Reid Hoffman1:04:08

the people who think it's toxic don't understand the the startup game and they're just wrong, right? That the game is intense. And by the way, if you don't do that, then eventually you're out of a job.

I

Interviewer1:04:22

I mean, the people that say it's toxic are often those that have never had to do it.

R

Reid Hoffman1:04:26

Yes. And and look, that's fine. It's not that everyone has to work at startups. Working at startups is a voluntary choice, but that's the game for a startup. And so that's how we try to balance in the early days of LinkedIn. We try to balance how to be human because we like a third of the company had kids, right? And so you're like, okay, like we all have to work this way. So we can't say, oh, you third, you sure you guys can go home and you're out of the office and then and then and then call in or whatever. No, we'll all go for dinner and then we'll all plan on getting back to work after dinner. So you get time with your family, you get to have dinner with your kids. It's the right human thing, right? But we're working hard and Saturday morning we're working.

I

Interviewer1:05:11

Is there a way to build a startup in your opinion where you have work life balance? And I define work life balance maybe as being able to see your friends often, spend time with your family often.

R

Reid Hoffman1:05:23

Um only in two circumstances. One, it's a small startup. It's both comp. It's both an absence of competition. That's the general one is it's so small no one's really competing with you. That's fine. Okay. Right. Right. An ice cream van in a village. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Right. Uh number two, you have some such intense competitive mode that people can't compete with you. Like say for example, you have some like the only thing that matters in this business is contracts with these three companies and you have those three contracts. Okay, fine. But absent that, that's the reason because the the startups that you're if you're in a valuable space, the startups that you're competing with, right? Like we had to make the deliberate decision. The startups we're competing with aren't going home for dinner, right? They're serving dinner at the office. That's what we did at PayPal. We serve dinner at the office at PayPal. Right. Right. And that was a deliberate thing. We were one of the first companies that started not only serving lunch, but serving dinner. Right. And then other because this is the learning network you get with Silicon Valley. Other companies are looking like, 'Oh yeah, we're going to serve dinner, too.' So people don't go home. Yeah. Don't go home. Keep working. Right.

I

Interviewer1:06:36

To some people, this does it sounds somewhat toxic, right? It sounds like, 'Oh god, but that's not what life's about. This is like capitalism. This is people just wanting to make loads of money.'

R

Reid Hoffman1:06:45

Well, choose what your life's about. That's fine. There's nothing that says you have to do that. And and what gives you the right to tell other people that they can't do that? I mean, like, what are you patronizing? like people choose their own lives, right? So, and and people can choose that. Now, you have to understand the game. It's like, well, I'd like to be a worldclass Olympic athlete, but I really only want to swim two hours a day. Well, that's nice, right? Not going to happen, right? You have to understand the game you're playing. If if you're playing an Olympics game, like someone who's trying to compete in the Olympics and swimming, they're swimming seven days a week, 12 hours a day. Right. So that that choose the game and you say, 'Well, it's toxic.' Fine. Not for you.

I

Interviewer1:07:33

I think the important thing which I see some companies doing well is just to be honest about that when you're on boarding people and don't shy away from the fact.

R

Reid Hoffman1:07:39

Exactly. No, that's like in early days of LinkedIn when we were talking to people, we'd say, 'By the way, this is how we work, right? We work six and a half days a week, right? We um do get people home for dinner, but everyone including Reed is expected you know you know you know online working after dinner

I

Interviewer1:08:04

and do you pay people more for that than the average rate or

R

Reid Hoffman1:08:06

so they get paid in equity and this is one of the things again um is you know the the first I don't know some hundreds of people at LinkedIn all don't need to work anymore. because their equity is enough that if they choose not to work anymore, that's totally fine.

I

Interviewer1:08:25

Which is a a trade-off that was clearly worth making. Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:08:29

You stepped back as CEO after four years when you're at LinkedIn, right?

I

Interviewer1:08:33

Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:08:33

Why did you do that?

I

Interviewer1:08:34

So um I had had um awareness of strengths and weaknesses like I know how to do the CEO job, right? Um uh and I think at kind of uh 150 people or less, I'm as good as anyone else, right? Like that that that scale of CEO job um is a scale that I that operates within my strengths and weaknesses. Um when you start getting to call it 500 people, a thousand people, part of the CEO job ends up becoming like how do you govern the community of the company? Now it's not the only thing but like okay like you know what the kinds of things that Jeff Weiner that I learned from him on was all right well you start thinking of recruiting not as you going out and individually recruiting people or helping you're hiring managers recruiting people but you think about recruiting as a general strategy for the company and how does that general strategy work and how do you have like for example you get to this point in these scale companies where you start having onboarding days. So like for example, new employees start at one of the onboarding days and they start as a group together, right? So it's kind of like okay we're going through kind of how it works and we're integrating people into the different groups like you know the sales people they're all start and they're going into the different groups but like we're approaching it as as the engine of the company and the things that I you're only world class but the things you're passionate about the things I'm passionate about is like the technology strategy the product strategy um the um the kind of the big idea for what you're doing there and I love working with super high-powered talent And one of the things that I had kind of learned is well that's the reason I like working with founders. That's the reason I like working with CEOs because to some degree it's like okay you're the talent I'm working with on this company right in order to do that. And so I was like I like doing more of being a board member working with CEOs more than I like being the CEO once you get past you know 150 people. M. So that's what I should be doing. And what I need to do is I need to get LinkedIn to a point where it's already, you know, it's it's already kind of hit breakout velocity, right? And so you can recruit now a worldclass CEO that you can work with, right? And that's what that's what I should do. And you know I like for example the entire time that Jeff Weiner was the CEO of LinkedIn my primary office was immediately next door to his.

Interesting. So you stay close but you again this is another point of self-awareness which a lot of founders don't have but the great founders that I've met and interviewed whether it's I don't know Brian Chesy or whether it was some founders from the UK like Bennett Gym Shark and Julian from Cure one of the things that really defined them was they did a low ego move to move out of that CEO role which is typically associated with like the glitz and the glam because they knew that their skill set was in branding or marketing or something else

R

Reid Hoffman1:11:46

or just vision. vision for the the future of the company. A lot of CEOs don't do that because the CEO title comes with a certain

I

Interviewer1:11:51

Yeah, I understand

R

Reid Hoffman1:11:51

esteem. Um,

I

Interviewer1:11:52

and yes, everybody, myself included, does have a big ego, right?

R

Reid Hoffman1:11:58

But my ego is you you have to attach the right way. My ego is attached to LinkedIn succeeding, right?

I

Interviewer1:12:04

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big difference.

R

Reid Hoffman1:12:07

Yes.

I

Interviewer1:12:09

LinkedIn went public in 2011 with a 4.3 billion valuation and then Microsoft later paid 26 billion to buy LinkedIn. At the time it was reported you owned about 11% of the company which made you a multi-billionaire. How does life change when one becomes a multi-billionaire?

R

Reid Hoffman1:12:28

So it's funny. I try to never like like one of the funny things I never repost things that call me billionaire and so forth because I try to not have that identity. I am aware that it's an accurate descriptor. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um but it's not like the way I think of myself. I don't think of myself as Reed Hoffman billionaire. I think of myself as Reed Hoffman technologist, Reed Hoffman public intellectual, Reed Hoffman uh creative, you know, strategist, Reed Hoffman etc. So I try to um change my life as in those directions, not in the the wealth direction. Now, of course, you know, I travel around in a private plane, you know, I own houses in several different areas of the world, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. Um, but, uh, I try to live a life within those, you know, high wealth things as much of a as an upper middle class person as I can. So, for example, before I came here to do the interview, I I got here a little early, so I went to the nearby Starbucks, had a cup of coffee, pulled up my laptop, was working on it. Interesting. You know, cuz because that's the way that I want to live, right? Uh and I want human relationships that are like that. I think human relationships are really important. I feel lucky to have um relationships with some people who are these really, really amazing people. But by the way, there's amazing people who are like world celebrities and there's amazing people who the world doesn't know about. I just like I just like going through life with amazing people. And that's part of what I mean by that.

I

Interviewer1:14:02

You've always been associated with the left side of politics. Your parents were very uh left-leaning to to say the least. I heard that you got pepper-sprayed when you were a kid because

R

Reid Hoffman1:14:13

because I was I was a kid on my uh father's shoulder at a demonstration for against the Vietnam War.

I

Interviewer1:14:20

Okay. So that's I mean it's in your DNA.

R

Reid Hoffman1:14:22

Yes.

I

Interviewer1:14:24

The thing about being on the left is it's typically the left that have a opinion of billionaires that they're evil.

R

Reid Hoffman1:14:30

Yes, I'm aware of that. But not just billionaire. I've been I've been called evil by a number of people on the left.

I

Interviewer1:14:34

Really? Yes. Of course. Look, I I they are wrong that that is a necessary correlation, right? Um but I you look I I try to understand people. I understand their perspective. I disagree with it, but I understand it.

R

Reid Hoffman1:14:50

It's I mean, you're you're one of the few people that's still a billionaire and on the left, it seems.

I

Interviewer1:14:56

No, I'm not actually

R

Reid Hoffman1:14:57

in the valley, especially in this election cycle.

I

Interviewer1:14:59

Uh well,

R

Reid Hoffman1:15:00

it's the public facing people that we see on the podcasts and stuff. M

I

Interviewer1:15:04

look, so part of the reason why I think less people were public about it this cycle was because uh you know, President Trump was threatening, you know, personal and political retaliation. And so you had to have a certain degree of courage to stand up, right? And so and courage in the public area, not just courage in taking risks and so forth, but in the public arena for doing that. And so I literally had conversations with billionaires who were like, 'Oh, look, I really applaud what you're doing and I think what you're doing is exact right thing and that's for you, not for me, right? I mean, trying to get people into it.' And so, um, so I was aware and because they kind of did the simple miniax and they said, 'Well, if if Harris is elected, I won't get penalized for not having supported and if Trump is elected, I will get penalized. So, I'm just going to stand out of it.' And

R

Reid Hoffman1:16:01

do you think you'll be penalized?

I

Interviewer1:16:02

Uh I think that uh I think that there's a greater than 50% chance that there will be um uh repercussions uh from a misdirection and corruption of the institutions of state uh to uh respond to my having tried to help Harris get elected.

R

Reid Hoffman1:16:23

You must spend time at night thinking about what that might be because if I would

I

Interviewer1:16:28

Yeah. Well, look, it's a range. And look, I hope that it's only in the soft end of the range, like IRS audits or phone calls like, you know, Trump made saying, you know, deny Bezos that that DoD contract because, you know, he owns the Washington Post and I don't like him. You know, that kind of stuff. I hope it's in that arena, right? Could get much worse, but I don't really want to speculate on it because I don't want to give anybody any ideas, right? But like I think it's like I think I would safely win a bet that there will be political repercussions that are that are essentially undemocratic, unamerican. Um and direct on you and direct to me. Yes. Um I I think I'd safely win that bet. Um I'm hoping it's in the what I'm terming the soft arena.

R

Reid Hoffman1:17:20

You're not planning on leaving the US, are you?

I

Interviewer1:17:21

No. No. Well, my residents outside of Seattle and you know we have a constitution. You know that kind of thing. Because Mark Cuban was the same, right? Mark Cuban was very public and vocal. He's a billionaire. He was very pro- Kla Harris, very anti-Trump through the cycle. He took a lot of flack as well. Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:17:36

I mean, I follow everybody on Twitter, so I watched it play out. And it was kind of like he was stood in no man's land just taking shots from everywhere. And you were kind of in the same category.

I

Interviewer1:17:45

Yes. Exactly.

R

Reid Hoffman1:17:46

Would have been much easier for you to just shut the up or fall in line or something. You know what I mean?

I

Interviewer1:17:50

Well, but that's the problem. You can't allow that form of neofascism, right? is precisely when you feel fear. I have huge respect for Mark Cuban. When you feel fear, stand up because that fear that you're feeling, that's your feeling as a powerful wealthy person. Right. And if you're not going to stand up, who is? Right. Can you see any redeeming qualities in Trump? I know you're pro Kla Harris.

R

Reid Hoffman1:18:15

Oh, yeah. Well, I think he's going to bring a wrecking ball and some of the places a wrecking ball are useful. Like so for example if you say hey on regulation you want a new regulation replace two that kind of refactoring is a good thing. Um hey we going to need a bunch of energy in the future and we're going to need good clean energy. I understand everyone doesn't like nuclear I don't care we're going to do nuclear like I can see a number of things that could come out that'd be very positive and I want those things to happen. And matter of fact you know part of being an American you know I'm going to try to make the next four years as great for America as I can. Right. My precise complaint with some of the people I'm in political opposition for is don't ever try to break the country. Try to always be building the country. It doesn't matter if the person you agree with is in power or not. Be working towards a good collective future. And so I'll be doing all all of that. And I I'm hopeful for some of that from this administration.

I

Interviewer1:19:08

Do you think it's a good time for entrepreneurs to be building companies with Trump coming into power?

R

Reid Hoffman1:19:15

Um fundamentally I think it's always a good time as entrepreneurs to be building companies. So one is like you have a good idea the times now go do it. Yeah. Capital markets harder. Fine. Actually if you can get capital you get competitive differentiation from the people who couldn't. I mean it's like so you have to it's always like trying to figure out how to turn the negatives into positives in terms of what you're doing. Now I think Trump will be broadly um very good for entrepreneurship because I think he's going to reduce a lot of regulation. Some of that regulation will have very negative consequences on the society which you know as a society person I'll be concerned about like climate like you know you get the new EPA person coming in environmental protection agency you ask him what the job is and he says we need to drill more oil wells right you're like that's not the EPA that might be the commerce secretary or something else the energy secretary that's not the EPA so there will be a reduction of regulation because we do have climate change. We're living in it and it's going to get worse. So those will be places where there will be real damage from the wrecking ball. But for entrepreneurs building new businesses, like for example, I've invested in a number of fusion and fision businesses because nuclear because that's the clean energy that we're going to need to, you know, just to bring more pe more of the billions of people into the middle class and and to and to try to remove carbon from the environment and so forth. And I've known the regulatory stuff is is ferociously bad for that. Well, actually, in fact, I have hoped that that they're going to they're going to reset the that thing and so all of a sudden that entrepreneurship turns out to be in retrospect wise. Um, but I think they're going to reduce regulation across the board for all entrepreneurs, right? So, I think entre like that's helpful on entrepreneurship. Now, they're going to be probably much more closed at the border and immigration is an important part of entrepreneurship. you want to you want to be able to get the best talent from anywhere in the world. It's one of the advantages that's helped built the US that I think is going to be more uneven anyway. So it's like good goods and bads.

I

Interviewer1:21:18

One of the things that is very different I think in this administration with the people he's appointed is there seems to be quite a few entrepreneurs being appointed to fairly important high roles.

R

Reid Hoffman1:21:29

Well, by entre you mean zero experience ever doing the thing they were doing before?

I

Interviewer1:21:34

Potentially. I was referring particularly to um Elon Musk, David Saxs doing I think he's doing AI and technology. I think there's another guy who's looks like he's built a business before. Yeah. So, uh David Elon obviously super smart, very accomplished.

R

Reid Hoffman1:21:48

You work with both at PayPal, right?

I

Interviewer1:21:50

Yes. Right. Um and now David knows crypto very well. So, he's the AI and cryptosar and the PCAS person. He knows crypto very well. He hasn't yet done anything in AI like he hasn't been mentioned as an investor or a like when I talk to all the AI entrepreneurs you know as a desired person for them to work with and so forth so you know he's very smart so I presume he knows something but you know AI I think yet TBD what he knows and what he tweets about is anti-woke AI is the most important thing you're like that is not that he's not even even on the top 100 of the issues around how to you know promote and build and navigate AI um but he's very good at crypto's done a bunch of good stuff there. So that'll be and Elon obviously understands AI quite well.

On this point of speech as well, obviously there's quite a big shift in speech that's happened in the last I'd say two years really from Elon buying Twitter where I I saw a drastic shift in globally. Yes. In what we think is okay and not okay. What's your thoughts on the the change in speeds speech? Good, bad, positive, negative. Um, so I, you know, gave a couple days ago here in London the Sir Isaiah Berlin speech and one of the lines that I used in the speech was, um, there there's competing freedoms. You could say there's a freedom of speech to say whatever I want to say and then there's a freedom to try to offer something in civil discourse where I'm not going to get harassed by a whole bunch of antagonists, right? Um, and obviously they're both good virtues and what you want is the right blend right from them. I think that a lot of folks like for example what's happening on you know Twitter and and X right is um just virulent right it's just toxic it's terrible like when I tweet anything including hey you know um I think the following thing is great entrepreneurship I get a oh you evil liberal you know I hope you you know kind of uh fail terribly and you know blah blah blah blah like, okay, I was tweeting about this great entrepreneurship thing, right? And that's the kind of theme in, you know, twitterx.com. Um, I prefer what you kind of thing you see on LinkedIn. It's like, look, you can say critical things, but you try to say critical things within the theme of, oh, well, that entrepreneurial thing, I actually don't think it's going to be as good as you think, and this is why.

R

Reid Hoffman1:24:17

What's the difference in the in the design of the platform that results in two different types of behavior there?

I

Interviewer1:24:21

Uh well uh uh Twitter is anonymous. It allows a lot of bots. Um it encourages um like it says freedom of speech. Like if if you're tweeting a rape threat, that's fine. It's freedom of speech. You're allowed to do whatever you want, right? Uh uh LinkedIn is you're tied to a named profile that's tied to your identity. uh if you're reported for saying something that's frankly univil. Doesn't even have to be as bad as a rape threat, right? Just univil, like you're you're you're cautioned, right? It's removed and you're saying, 'Hey, by the

R

Reid Hoffman1:24:56

Way, that's not for the platform. And if you keep doing that, we'll remove your ability to post.

I

Interviewer1:25:02

Right? So, on the Twitter example, what Elon said is that if it's legal, then it's fine. Yeah, but is there an upside to having an environment where people can anonymously say what they want within the constraint of the law?

R

Reid Hoffman1:25:17

Look, I think there are it's important to allow one of the things I think that online platforms give us the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. Like I think it's okay for people to say such thing as vaccines are evil plots to put chips in people and they give us autism. It's 100% wrong, right? And every credible medical authority goes vaccines are good. And so you go, okay, a thousand people get vaccinated or call it, you know, a 100,000 people get vaccinated and 50 of them have adverse conditions to the vaccine, right? That happens out of 100 thousand, right? But a thousand people or 10,000 people might have died otherwise, right? That your lottery for everyone being vaccinated is a very good lottery. Everyone should do it,

I

Interviewer1:26:15

Right?

R

Reid Hoffman1:26:16

Uh because by the way, you are more likely to have died in the lottery than have an adverse condition. That doesn't mean there aren't people who have adverse conditions. So all quality medical professionals, medical researchers agree. I am allowed legally onx.com to say vaccines are evil plots, right? To control the American people, to sell drugs and make drug companies profitable and blah blah. And I can say all that and you see all that rampant on Twitter, rampant, you know, in talk radio and, you know, and all the rest of things. You can say that that's a problem, right? I'm okay with people saying it. What I'm not okay with is promoting it and having it have broad reach. So on this point of the vaccine, so just to clarify my position, I think vaccines are a wonderful invention that have saved a lot of people's lives. So that's my position, but I want to I want to interrogate a little bit

I

Interviewer1:27:11

With the with the vaccine roll out in particular. There's a lot of things that we didn't know at the time, right? So the lab leap thing I had Boris Johnson sat here

R

Reid Hoffman1:27:18

And he said, "Oh yeah, we think it's a lab lab leak." If if if I had said that on this podcast a couple of years ago, I would have been kicked off YouTube.

I

Interviewer1:27:27

Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:27:27

And so having a forum where you can even entertain ideas that are contrarian.

I

Interviewer1:27:32

Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:27:33

I also think is important. And I exist in the the sort of dichotomy of like speech is important but at the same time you know

I

Interviewer1:27:44

Yeah look I am um I was on the support people being able to say lab leak category because by the way I do think freedom of speech is a good thing and part of the reason I have freedom of speech is sometimes you have a contrarian idea that should have freedom of speech.

R

Reid Hoffman1:27:58

Yeah. But there should be and look how do we make decisions as a society of what expertise like how what truth is is we convene groups of experts like in a science we have a group of scientists review a paper before it's published we have scientists able to reproduce things in a jury we have 12 people who listen to the case and make a decision so we use groups of people as experts and different kinds of expertise for different kinds of things to make a judgment and we should also bring in expertise. Right.

I

Interviewer1:28:33

Right. Now, that doesn't mean that even when all the experts say that's completely wrong, you should say you can't post it. Like I loved what Twitter did pre Elon, which is they said, "Hey, you can post vaccines or this evil plot by the government to control you, but we're going to put a little box around it that says, "Oh, and by the way, experts disagree. Here's where you can go get the facts." So, you can say it, right? But we'll also put in in selective cases expert opinion.

R

Reid Hoffman1:29:01

And I think that's like for example a balance of how to do freedom of speech and freedom of reach because I do think look I should be able to say the world is flat. I should be able to go on and say the world is flat and by the way LinkedIn wouldn't take that post off because it's like well it's civil. I'm just saying the world's flat. I'm out of my mind, right? But I'm being civil. So the LinkedIn principles are not you must say something unscientific truly true. It's you must say something that's civil.

I

Interviewer1:29:29

I also think people shouldn't be deplatformed or cancelled because of their speech even if you disagree with it providing it's in the constraint like constraints of the law. I sat with a well by the way I generally think agree on the constraints of the law but I also agree on I also think importantly civily and civily means well like no threat of violence. Okay. Yeah, I agree with that. You shouldn't be threatening anybody with violence. Yes.

R

Reid Hoffman1:29:53

Um, I sat with a I'm going to say astrologologist. I don't even know if that's the right word. It's not astrology, was it? Who's what's cosmetologist? And he told me the story of Galileo discovering that the world was round and Galileo basically being threatened by everybody. Um, because it threatened the I think the Catholic institution at the time. And then well because the preach the preaching of the church was asad. Yeah. And so that's a cautionary tale although it's a long time ago in there are always going to be strong forces that are heavily incentivized around some kind of ideology. Yes. And that I mean that does happen today. Yes. 100%. And these forces are powerful forces. Um so allowing dissent even if it's coming from someone who is not credible. Yes. 100%. By strongly in defense of that. Yeah. Right. I just think that and like so you know I don't mind um people criticizing me. I don't mind them criticizing my arguments. I don't mind them criticizing my choices of who I'm going to support politically, right? What I'm going to do philanthropically. I strongly prefer that those cred those those criticisms be backed with uh some knowledge and intelligence and some argue good argument point of view. And I really want it to be a civil discourse.

I

Interviewer1:31:15

It's interesting because the human brain when we think about it from an evolutionary standpoint wasn't designed to deal with a thousand people tweeting at you that you're you're an And as a podcaster, as someone who's in the public eye yourself, who is a podcaster, but also a famous entrepreneur, you have to deal with that. Like you you have to deal with that in a way that's just we weren't designed to. Yeah. And I struggle with it. I struggle with when I first came into the public spotlight when I started doing Dragons Den Shark Tank in the US. Um opening my phone and being exposed to just a barrage of like noise on the brain. Yes. Now, whose responsibility is that? Is it my responsibility to like delete the app or is it the platform's responsibility to moderate people expressing their innate human jealous whatever it is you know

R

Reid Hoffman1:32:04

So so the classic thing that humans make in reasoning is they go A or B right okay and your answer is both okay right so there's responsibility on both sides like it's like oh no it's the responsibility of the individual it's like well like are you kind of saying I have zero responsibility there's zero I can do to be positively contributo here. Of course you can, right? So for example, like it's totally possible to say I have a freedom of speech network and if you are engaging in threats like for example, you're Trump and you're tweeting that Mark Millie should be executed when he is the joint chief of staff's general. That's a threat of violence. That should be removed, right? You know, so it's totally doable to say violence has no place on this platform or threats of violence. Now, violence is illegal. Threats of violence is not. Right. One of the theories I had many years ago and I I don't actually think this theory was based on anything other than I read it and it sounded good. So I used to say it was that over the next 10 years and I used to say this about six seven years ago on stage social networking would become more and more siloed into these smaller interestbased networks. And I was thinking the other day in the tax like oh my god that's actually happening now. You're having like blue sky and threads and you've got your Instagrams and your rumbles and we've got more and more social networks that are more like centered around different pockets of people. What is your theory of social networking over the next decade, two decades? I'm always open as an investor to interesting ideas. Right. Here we are in a business podcast. So, I'm always looking at stuff.

I

Interviewer1:33:41

Yeah. Right. Here we are in a business podcast. So, I'm always looking at stuff.

R

Reid Hoffman1:33:45

Um, look, I think uh they will grow to be an increasingly just as they've grown massively in the last 20 years, they will continue to grow to be an important part of life. I think there will be different social networks that fit different parts of our lives. Um, that's part of the reason like for example, like back when I started LinkedIn, it was also thought to be, oh, no, no, no one's ever going to do a business network. It's only going to be social networks, right? It was only going to be at the time it was like Friendster, then it was MySpace, then it was Facebook. It's like look, there's only going to be that. There's never going to be those. And then people say, well, there's only going to ever be one social network. And you're like, well, actually, in fact, we do have like Twitter and we do have Snap and we do have, right, there's there is multiple ones and I think there will be more. Um, so I think that we're going to have more social networks and they're going to fit into different people's lives. they're going to have different community cultures um for them and so and I think not only will they get multimodal but they'll use AI in different ways and so forth and part of that invention like one of the things I tend to think people say well what ideas are you looking at as an investor and I'm like look I'm looking for that great idea that I haven't thought of that someone out there amongst the millions of entrepreneurs has got that great thing and can possibly make it work that's what I'm looking for so when I look to future of social networks. Now, to give a little bit more of a specific answer, like I tend to think social networks need to both have individuals as customers and societies as customers. So, you need to think about like that balance of you need to think about both in how you're designing them, right? So, it's and that doesn't mean no freedom of speech and you know, autocratic because I actually think more or less you should allow people to post whatever they want as long as it's civil, right? And if you want to choose to have an anonymous social network, that's fine. like there's a definite rule for especially when you get to places where the government is oppressive, you know, go to in Iran or or or a Russia or something else. It's like, well, anonymity is important for saving your life, right? But on the other hand, you should also be thinking about like, okay, what does this means as society? And part of what we want in media networks is we want to be collectively learning. So, if I'm posting that, you know, vaccines are an evil plot for corporations to try to kill our children, you're like, well, you're trying to persuade people to do something that's bad for them and bad for society, so we should respond in some way. We may still allow you to post, but we may put a little box around it saying, you know, here's what experts, you know, here's what all of the doctors at all the elite hospitals, you know, survey says 99.999% of them, you know, there's only one out of all the doctors at elite hospitals who don't think like these vaccines are a good idea.

I

Interviewer1:36:29

And do you think social networks have been a net positive for society? I think broadly. Look, it doesn't mean that they're that they don't have some challenges. Like people criticize Facebook for example. Um but actually in fact a billion people get on it every day. They share their experiences, pictures, lives with loved ones, friends, etc. All of that's very very positive. Um I think Twitter unfortunately has taken a turn for the worst. I think if you go, you know, where is the largest site which has the most untruths on it? I think it's Twitter, right? Um, but you know that doesn't mean it can't also be improved and fixed over time.

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There's so many different takes that I've heard on AI. I've spoken to Mustafa Sullivan. I've spoken to lots of different I know you know Mustafa because you invested in his company, right?

R

Reid Hoffman1:38:13

Yeah. We co-ounded Inflection.

I

Interviewer1:38:14

Oh, I see. So you co-ounded Inflection which then sold to Microsoft.

R

Reid Hoffman1:38:17

Well, it's it did a commercial deal with them. It's still going as a company.

I

Interviewer1:38:21

Oh, okay. All right. Because Mustafa moved over. Yeah, he moved over because he wanted to do consumer agent and inflection is doing B2B uh software sales. Now, what is your take on AI and how should we be thinking about it? How should Dave and Jenny, the average person with, you know, working in a company or building a small startup think about AI?

R

Reid Hoffman1:38:39

So, I think AI is in a look, so I last year I published a book called impromptu which is the first book on AI co-written with AI, right? to show as well as tell that AI is not just artificial intelligence, it's amplification intelligence. It gives us superpowers. Right? As part of that, I'm publishing a book in January called super agency which is our human agency even with this agentic technology can and will be magnified. We will get these superpowers. And super agency is the time where um when a lot of people get access to a new general purpose technology um the transformation of society that comes and it's like printing press or electricity or cars or mobile phones. It's it's this amazing uh uh transformation of all of our lives because not only do I get the superpower by having AI, the fact that you have a superpower with AI also increased my agency. So for example, you're a doctor who now has access to AI, your ability to help tend to lots of people's healths now just get amplified. And it's the same thing like when a car was created, a doctor could now do have a broader range of places they could visit to go help. That part of his car is have that super agency. It's not just I can drive places now because the doctor can drive places that also increases her or his agency and also my agency through super agency. And that book's coming out in January.

I

Interviewer1:40:14

There's a lot of gloom around AI as well. There's fear all the time with new technologies. Is any of that gloom warranted?

R

Reid Hoffman1:40:20

Yes, but with an asterisk, which is every time a new general purpose technology comes out, the discourse when the printing press came out, the discourse was very similar to the current discourse on AI. It's going to destroy society. Um, it's going to destroy human learning and knowledge. You know, it's going to disable the current people who are the who are the the custodians of knowledge, which mostly priests, you know, in society from from from being able to control the flow of information. we're going to have all this misinformation, etc., etc. Now, by the way, you don't have a scientific revolution without the printing press, right? So, um, now, so there's always this fear and you say, is the fear completely unwarranted? Well, look, human societies are bad at new general purpose technologies, right? So, um, with the printing press, we had a nearly a century of religious war because of it. So the transitions are very difficult because we as human beings are difficult at new general purpose technologies and so the transition look the transition is going to have pain. There's going to be challenges and reordering and so forth disruption because of it. No question. What I'm hoping and part of the reason I write these books is say look let's manage this transition better than we've managed the previous transitions. Right? Let's I have 100% confidence that the other side this will be enormously amazing super agency. What I wanted to do is manage the transition as best we can. Now people say well shouldn't you manage this transition by being really slow and being really regulated? Well the challenge is is that these new technologies are developed competitively across the entire globe. Different countries different industries different companies etc. and we don't set the clock like there's no one group that sets the clock and if you don't like go with it like take the industrial revolution which also had a bunch of things why did Europe basically set the the the the drum beat for the globe for centuries the answer is Europe embraced the industrial revolution robustly and early right the um you know it's part of what you know made uh the British Empire Right? And so that clock is set by different human beings all running at it. And by the way, they have different theories of the good. They have different theories of how technology should be in society. They have different theories of what the risks are. Technologies like you know when these people published this pause letter that was like that's a mistake. Like other people aren't going to like it's a simple thing. You look at the people who care about humanity. If they all pause and the people who don't care about humanity don't pause your letter if you if you achieve your success will cause a bad impact on humanity. So you have to be developing it. You have to be going with the clock that's set by the world. Right? When I think about AI in simple terms, the the way that I've I've been thinking about it, and this is not a perfect analogy or whatever, but it's just a simple way to think about it is if there was one Steven Bartlett here that has an IQ of 100, and there was another one sat next to me that had the IQ of a thousand, what would this Steve do and what would that Steve do?

I

Interviewer1:43:35

That's a good question. Is that an apt analogy? Is that somewhat

R

Reid Hoffman1:43:38

Well, it depends. This is part of the thing is we human beings are very bad at imagining future technology. So I can tell you stories about where we have created AIS with IQ of a thousand. I can tell you stories where we've created AIS with IQ's of uh 200 of 150. And I can also tell you stories of AIs where we've created that are kind of the equivalent because today we have this as a form is like idiot savants like today's AIs are super intelligent. I'll give you an example. So if I go to a human being I try to look around a human and say explain to me mixture of experts creation of AI with an AI [clears throat] uh it's a it's a technique by which modern AIs are created that have um different kind of expertise roles in the combination like chat GBT is created this way that create their output it's a it's a particular technical definition for the way of creating a a worldclass AI model. Then I say, okay, compare a mixture of experts. Uh, so there's only thousands of people who understand how to do that. I say, okay, compare that to uh modern economic game theory. Well, there's probably some humans that can do that, too. We're probably now down to like 50 to 100, right? Then I say, okay, compare those two to modern oceanography, right? Okay, now we're at zero human beings. There's no human beings that can do this. But I can go to GBD4 and I can run this. GBD4 because it's ingested a mill a trillion words of knowledge can write the comparisons between these three things. Because it knows all three. That's a superpower that no human being has. We have AI superpower today, right? But of course, no one's alarmed about that because like, oh, that's a great amplification intelligence that really helps me. I think there's a very good chance that what happens is is that what we're creating with all of every current EA AI technique that's under development is these amazing savants that are these great co-pilots, right? And that's what we're creating. Not terminator robots, not super intelligences. There's a possibility of that. And I can address the existential risk questions around the possibility of that because people think about that poorly. But um but the I think the likelihood is that we're going to be having these kind of co-pilots that give us theseformational GPS's these cognitive superpowers that make us as human beings a lot better bad actors are going to yes that too yes that's the bigger worry so you say one worry is transition and another worry is whenever you're you're creating this new technology you want to say I want to empower all these people who are building better lives for themselves in society and I'd want to not empower criminals, terrorists, rogue states.

I

Interviewer1:46:43

And also you think I also need weapons that are sufficiently uh advanced at attacking my my enemies and everybody globally is thinking that. Yes. You know, China might be thinking about the the west and the west are thinking about China. Russia are thinking about this person, this person. The Middle East are probably thinking about a couple of people. Yes. So with with all developing weapons or defense systems, they're going to probably make those robots you talked about, the Terminator robot that can go to the battlefield. Yes. And that's super smart. They're going to probably make some cyber weapons as well. Yes. So those things end up existing and then they're in the wrong hands. The mistake happens. So you want to build them in the right hands first. That's all. I mean, look, there will be costs to it. There's never Look, electricity essential for human society. It does electrocute people, right? It does two things in the wrong hands too, right? Is this technology different though? Because there's been comparisons to the printing press, electricity, but is this

R

Reid Hoffman1:47:41

No, no, it's new. But by the way, each technology, the printing press was different when it was created. Electricity was different when it was created. Cars were different when they were created. Is this the most profound? Well, it's in terms of impact. It cert that's possibility. Um, I think there's I always think in probability distributions I think there's a good probability of it, but to some degree like it doesn't matter if it is or isn't the most. It is a profound new technology. It's as important at least as these other ones. That's the only thing that matters. Whether it definitely is or not doesn't really matter. And look what is different. It's the fact it's a gentic technology which means it it's creating agents that can operate on their own, right? We already have that by the way. Like the agent, you can be running an agent with a connection to the internet on your computer and then can go buy stuff for you, right? You can do that today. It's doable. You have agent. It's just a question of what the shape is, right? So it's agentic. It's cognitive like like it's very strange that we have a technology now that we can talk to in various ways. And so you have people mistaking going, "Oh, it must be conscious." Because they asked if it was conscious and it said it was conscious. And I was like, "No." But by the way, before this technology existed, that was a good test. It does, by the way, there are conscious things that can't there's there's mute people. And the fact that they can't tell you they're conscious. So conscious not perfectly they tell you they're conscious, but you tell me you're conscious. That was a pretty good test before. Now it's a little bit more complicated because I don't think any of the current AIs are conscious and we can go into depth of reason of neuroscience and other kinds of things about why that is. It's not a just a human species parochialist view. Um and figuring out under what circumstance it would be conscious is a very interesting question that we need to we need to figure out because it won't be that it has gray matter. It'll be something else or you know maybe we'll figure this out. So, so that's new. The cognitive superpowers are new. The fact that the speed of deployment is going to be unusual because now we have the mobile phone internet. So I create a new agent and tomorrow a billion people can use it, right? That's new, right? So, so all of these things are new. And by the way, new is anxiety producing and new is difficult to navigate and new can make transitions very difficult, right? But by the way, the fact that we're facing a new challenge is not itself a new challenge, right? For the average person out there that's I know they might be working in a hospital or might be a lawyer or or a doctor, whatever. Just someone with a a job that's heard this term AI and they're seeing chat GPT. Is there anything that they should be doing on an individual level to make sure that they can capitalize on the opportunity that AI presents?

I

Interviewer1:50:44

The basic answer is absolutely yes. And that's part of the reason why like like I do my podcast possible, I do super agency, I do impromptu because the strong advice I give everyone and literally I was sitting with the governors of the Bank of England yesterday and my advice to them among other things was personally go use AI, right? Don't just use it to make a sonnet for your kid's birthday. That's great. Don't just use it for a recipe for what happens to be in your refrigerator. That's great for something that matters to you that part of your expertise and so forth. Start using it. And by the way, you'll find that uh some of the things still not useful for at all. Like when I sat down to ask GBD4, how would Reed Hoffman make money investing in AI? It gave me an answer that was the smart business school professor's answer who didn't understand venture capital. It was like, well, study which areas have the largest total addressable market. Then look at what the possibilities for competitive disruption are. Then, you know, market research test that. It's like, it's not the way. Like, go find a great entrepreneur with a great idea, right? [laughter] You know, and and it's best when the idea is something you haven't thought of and few other people have thought of too, [laughter] right? Is a way of doing. So, it got it completely wrong from how I how Reed Hoffman, how I invest in AI, and what I do very successfully. Now, she said, "Well, then it's useless for a venture capital." He's like, "No, no, cuz I kept experimenting with it." And I said, "Okay, I fed in a uh an entrepreneurs plan." And I said, "How would I do due diligence on this plan?" And it came back with a pretty good list. Was like, "Yeah, yeah. One, that was I was absolutely planning on doing that. Two, I was absolutely three, yeah, I could see why you'd think I was doing it. That's not important. Oh, four, I would have gotten to it, but it would have gotten to it like four days down the road of doing the work, and now I know it now." So, it's useful there. It is today useful to everybody. You can use it for things that you care about today. So, go start playing with it. And I love Ethan Mollik's line, which is the worst AI you're ever going to use in your life is the AI you're using today. So, one of the reasons to start using it is to start getting familiar with it because like it is a stunning tool. And I'll give one since you're talking about everyday people, I'll give one kind of tip that I give everybody at the beginning. It's part of the reason I wrote impromptu, etc., which is um what is AI? AI is great at adopting a role that you tell it to adopt, right? So, here's a very simple one. You have an argument for something. You can paste it into an AI um and you can say uh counter this argument. Take the role of critic. argue against me and you can see it will immediately give you an you know a a capable argument against your position that is very helpful it's helpful for cognitive development it's helpful for learning it's helpful for our understanding you know what are the strengths and weaknesses but by the way you can also say take my side give me another argument for the thing I'm arguing for like make that argument but that's just the beginning you can also say like for example if I go okay I'm making this argument for uh um how general purpose technologies always have initial strong fear by people and how they're described as the end of society, the end of humanity, etc. And it's happened a number of different times. [sighs] Um how would a historian of technology analyze my argument? How would they criticize my argument? And then you get it. So you can get to like it's literally it's only your own creativity and your own inspiration of who what role should I be talking to? And once you start realizing that you can start using AI very powerfully for whatever you're trying to do.

Should entrepreneurs be thinking about building companies in the field of AI at the moment? You know, as a entrepreneur who's like roughly 30 years old, I look back and go, gosh, I wish I was of entrepreneurial age when the dot boom came around because everyone became billionaires and and is is that is this that moment in time?

R

Reid Hoffman1:54:58

Yes. So, the short answer is yes.

I

Interviewer1:55:00

Okay. So, what So, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm I'm 30 odd years old. Um I've got disposable income. I'm financially free. Mhm. I'd I'd love to take part in the next revolution. Yeah. Should I be flying out to San Francisco and buil building an AI joining an AI startup out there?

R

Reid Hoffman1:55:19

Yes. Why? So, so one of the things of Silicon Valley, so Silicon Valley has built itself up off multiple, the reason it's called Silicon Valley is because it started with Silicon, right? It's now software valley. Silicon Valley almost never invests in Silicon anymore. Silicon being the chips. Yes. Being the chips. Yes. Um, so now really it's much more software valley. It's like we invest billions and billions of dollar every year into new software companies, right? So we went from silicon through, you know, networking equipment like Cisco through like just stacks of different things getting to where we are now. AI is the new one. By the way, we did the thing with internet. We did it with mobile phones. We did it with web two. Now it's AI, right? And so you know the principal thing is when you get this new like uh new general uh purpose technology uh it opens up massive amounts of entrepreneurial space because one there's all the new things that can be built that were never possible before. Airbnb couldn't be done before the internet. There's just no way, right? So it opens up these things that weren't possible before. Um and so like the internet's a good proxy to the to the wave we have now with AI. Then it also by the way uh makes a massive transformative force on all existing businesses. So you say well I had a business of of selling you know kind of um of e-commerce and doing you know mail order cataloges. Well now there's e-commerce right? So it it it transforms all of these businesses. And so by the way, for example, the internet is part of what makes the cloud revolution. So now it's like, well, actually, in fact, it's not software on your desktop. It's not software on your your phone, it's in the cloud. And of course, it bounces back and forth a little bit. Then you have, well, no, actually, in fact, you've got this really great app on your phone and so forth. But these kinds of things, AI is the next one that affects all of them. So you have green field, you have potentially revolutionized any particular place where there's a product or service, especially that intelligence could be added to it, right? There's a possibility of a great startup idea there. So, so yes. Now, should you go try to build your own Frontier model, which is a 10 billion dollar computer, it's a hard thing. That's a hard amount of capital for startups. No, no, no. try to figure out like the degrees you use frontier models from you know OpenAI or Microsoft or Google or you know others as ways of doing this but you still may build your own model right um that lots of lots of startup companies are building their own models I invested in this customer service company called Sierra that Brett Taylor is doing and their thing is we're not building our own models we're just deploying other models so we have best of breed for what models are available to us you could do that as an AI startup There's a whole range and part of what I love about entrepreneurship and invention is like I have a whole set of theories about what kinds of things will be really big and some of my theories will be right and I've also discovered some other people who have amazing theories and that's one of the things I really I and we at Greylock love to invest in.

I

Interviewer1:58:41

Interesting. Oh, what's the best way for someone to go and learn about AI right now? Because like going to university feels like it would be

R

Reid Hoffman1:58:48

Start using it, start building it. If you want to, if you can, if you're technical, uh, download an open source model, uh, Llama, Mistral, other, start playing with it.

I

Interviewer1:59:00

What if you're not technical?

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Reid Hoffman1:59:01

Well, then, well, generally speaking, look, you can't do a technology, it's very hard to do a technology startup without a technology co-founder. So, then go find a technology co-founder. So for someone like me who's built my my career in building teams, marketing, social media, content, media, those kinds of things, who is really interested in AI, should I go and do you think I should go learn AI now and start trying to be a technical person or too slow? Okay. Yeah, I hope so. [laughter] Too slow. No, no, speed matters. Speed matters in startups. But by the way, uh like gen because we tend to so much lionize what is usually the man versus the person. Most of these people are men. Um the individual startups succeed because their initial team. That's part of the hiring point we were talking about earlier. And so generally speaking, if you ask me, would I rather invest in an individual uh founder or two to three co-founders? I'd rather invest in two to three co-founders, right? So going and finding a co-founder is a great thing because by the way, your your throw weight, your capability weight is so much better when you do that. And so, you know, um, uh, Mark Zuckerberg had Dustin Muskovitz, Adam D'Angelo, right? You know, Chris Hughes, that's a really important part of how things get created.

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Interviewer2:00:23

You invested in OpenAI almost a decade ago. Yes. Before everybody was talking about it, what did you see in that company?

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Reid Hoffman2:00:31

So, Sam Alman, Greg Brockman, Ilia Susge, um, amazing Um and uh they had a focused bold vision which is yes Google has invented the baseline of the attentionbased transformer but they don't realize that it's just scale like apply scale to this. We are going to bet the entire company everything we're doing on scale on it and we're going to be very focused on doing it. That's that's great. But people had said the word AI for a long time and it had never manifested in and I had passed on a lot of AI investments. But the thing that people need to understand about AI is it's a transformation to scale computing learning systems. So as opposed to we program it like we program the AI, we program a scale computing learning system. So it learns, right? And that only becomes available once you have scale compute. So you need the internet, you need the cloud, you need massive data centers and you need access to massive amounts of data which you get from the internet and other things and then you need a scale team to build it.

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Interviewer2:01:48

On that point of people, how important if you're trying to be successful as a young entrepreneur is networking?

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Reid Hoffman2:01:54

Uh almost always critical because you need that initial team. Now, you don't need networking of I should spend 12 hours a day, seven days a week, going to every party that I can possibly go of and shaking people's hand and giving my them my business card. That's not particularly useful, right? What you need to be is just like you have a strategy for your business. You need to have a strategy for how you're building your network around your business and your network around you. Like, who are the people that I should be talking to? Who are the people that I should be learning from? who are the people I should be trying to bring into my network that the project that I'm creating and how do I meet those people?

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Interviewer2:02:32

There's so many obvious things that people talk about when they're describing what makes an entrepreneur successful. They say hard work. They say have a big vision. But is there anything that's really underappreciated? Like when I say this, I'm talking about being a nice person or being etiquette or politeness or manners. Are there any things like that that you think make a big difference but people don't appreciate?

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Reid Hoffman2:02:55

Well, I don't think politeness and etiquette are sus are really particularly good competitive advantages. I'm not saying that one should be rude, but like an emphasis like if an entrepreneur is like I'm reading my etiquette manual. It's like don't spend your time like sure be nice but I think building a network like entrepreneurship is a team sport. It is not an individual sport. It's a team sport. So you need to be building your team, right? But you've seen entrepreneurs be successful that were bad at that, right? Uh not ultimately at scale. Oh, interesting. Right. Because it is a team sport, right? Like you know, it requires high talent people around you doing it. how for example you can get enough initial success going in capital that even though you're bad with your team people will come on board because they'll go oh I believe this is going to go somewhere and I can make a bunch of money doing it I'll come do it and so like for example a classic trope within Silicon Valley which is broadly correct and that's part of the reason you have the tropes is I want missionary not mercenary cultures right because the missionary is I believe we're going to change the world we're going to do it this way and by the way mostly of the big successful companies. Most of them are missionary cultures. They say, "They're all missionary culture." No, no. There's mercenary cultures that have gotten big, too. I'm not How do you define mercenary in this country? All I care about is making money. Like all like the only thing that matters is I'm selling something. I'm going to make money. That's all that matters. Do you sometimes think the mission is though? Just like to get people to feel something. There are missions that that are like the I'm just telling a story. I don't really care, right? I'm telling a story that's incorrect. Right? There are like like um the Silicon Valley TV show uh on HBO kind of, you know, um uh you know, satired this in a particular way. It's like I am creating a reverse double encryption system to change the world. Yeah. Right. you know that kind of and yeah there is BS there just like any other uh largecale human activity there's a lot of BS in different places do you need the BS in that context do you need to end it with I'm going to change the world uh well it's helpful the reason why people use the BS is because that's what people want to do people want to be in things changing the world so you have to say like I'm LinkedIn this is how I'm going to change the world I'm open AI this is how I'm going to change the world I'm married baby B this is how I'm going to change the world because humans are emotional story animals. Exactly. So yes, you need it. But of course, it's much better if it happens to be that you actually are trying to do that. You are actually in fact you have a good plan for how you might succeed in doing that because you know a fizzy like a fizzy drinks company Yeah. conglomerate even they try and end their like value proposition with we're going to change the world. Yes. Exactly. And you know it's It's it's a public company. They got shareholders who want to return. Yes. But even they I guess have to do it.

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Interviewer2:06:01

On the mindset front, what is the mindset, the factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset? What are the key things that you look for when you're investing in one?

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Reid Hoffman2:06:10

Insanely great ambition, right? I'm I'm shooting for the moon. And you know, sometimes literally, but most often like like if I'm successful, I will transform the industry. Right here. an awareness of like a good plan for how you might do that, right? An awareness that that entrepreneurship is a team sport, not an individual sport. And I have a plan for how I'm bringing in like all the different elements, capital, talent, etc. Um, like for example, one of the ways that I interview executives is um I say, "Who are the three to five?" the five I love it but minimum three worldclass people who have worked for you before and I'm going to call them and ask them what it's like working for you right because and by the way if I if it really matters I will then reference check those three people on are they actually world class right because only hire people who are going to hire world-class people who who who play it now similarly like who are the worldass people who think you're world class as an entrepreneur And like this is one of the things that actually entrepreneur first that we actually in fact learned was it isn't necessarily who everybody thinks. It's who some worldclass people think that this person world class because they're edgy. Yeah. So you look for that. It isn't that you look for people that everybody loves them. Everybody says, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with that person." No, no, no. Like having someone say, "Oh, that person's hard driving. They're difficult." That can be a very strong positive. I've invested a number of entrepreneurs that way. What about resilience? Well, resilience is also very important. Almost every startup goes through what I call a valley of the shadow moment, which is like, why did we think this was a good idea? Oh my god, we're like when when I started social, one of my connections from Apple dropped me who had started doing startups two years before dropped me a um a oneline email that said, "Welcome to where 15 minutes is the difference between exultation and terror. I'm going to change the world. Oh I'm going to die." Right? So resilience is super important because it is a dog fight. Um, and multiple times, PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, oh god, we're going to die. This is going to be worth zero. Can you spot resilience in someone? Um, you can have a high probability guess based on Well, it's kind of like, so you push them on things and see what they've done. Have they taken risk? How do they

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn F...

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