Reid Hoffman Quotes

Everyone, you know, during crises times, is much more focused on, okay, how do we get the boat completely seaworthy, sailing along well, and everything going well? And so as long as you're communicating how the general strategy of the company and how the work they can do to add to that and to make that more successful and the thing that they can contribute to that, that is generally very motivating for employees in crisis times.

The entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.

When you’re doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.

The value of being connected and transparent is so high that the roadbumps of privacy issues are much lower in actual experience than people's fears.

By 2030 over 2 billion jobs will disappear.

...Silicon Valley's success comes from the way its companies build alliances with their employees.

I actually think we need to put our energies, as entrepreneurs, as technology inventors, as government, to being much more inclusive. I think the key thing is actually working together.

The underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform.

Help the people in your network. And let them help you.

We believe that when the right talent meets the right opportunity in a company with the right philosophy, amazing transformation can happen.

There's a lot of people in the world that would love to trade places with American citizens, and we are very fortunate to be here.

I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.

Companies hire a lot during boom times because they're trying to adequately accelerate into the future.

One of the really key things to look at in terms of crafting strategy when you're in an economic crises is how do you maximize essentially your liquidity position? Your ability to both take kind of profits and revenues and business and then convert that into a stronger lead. And so those companies that can do that can actually, you know, get a march on their competitors.

I get energy from one-on-one conversations most often, and I lose energy from group conversations most often.

What I think Peter Thiel imagines is that Donald Trump has a policy, that Trump has an idea of what to do. haven't heard any of those ideas. All I hear is sloganeering, vitriol, personal attacks.

At Silicon Valley, I'm extremely sympathetic to the revolutionary response. I not only agree with it emotionally. I agree with it practically. And the only thing I disagree with is, I don't think Donald Trump is that. Trump is blow it up for no good reason at all. You want to actually do revolution with a target, with an idea, with building a new system.

Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.

World-changing startups need to be premised on accurate contrarian theories.

I think I knew how frightened people were [when Donald Trump was elected], and I think I knew that people were worried about their future. I don't think I realized that they would be willing to risk kind of a 1920s Germany in order to blow it all up, not realizing that we've accomplished a lot as Americans, and we want to keep the good things and revolutionize the new things.

Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.

This is classic when you begin thinking about what is a great founder is, you navigate what is apparent paradoxes.

Trust and mutual value creation helps both employer and employee compete in the marketplace.

We have made a huge amount of progress over the last 50 years by enabling trade, by enabling kind of collaboration and learning. And actually, in fact, when you look at your average 30-year-old today, they're much better off than a 30-year-old 20 years ago, 30 years ago, because of progress in technology and health care and all the rest of this.

A networker likes to meet people. I don't. I like accomplishing things in the world. You meet people when you want to accomplish something.

The future is sooner and stranger than you think.

Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.

Democracy tends to be a collaborative process, a committee, a consensus.

The thing that changes your professional life, your capabilities, your learning, your understanding, your opportunity flow, your ability to make things happen, is the center relationships you have with powerful and effective people around you in the industry, in the activity that you want to be doing.

I think most of [people] are not very well educated themselves to understand the Winston Churchill line - democracy is the worst of all governments until you consider all the other ones.

The key thing for all businesses, and especially of course technology businesses or businesses that employ technology as a key kind of strategic advantage, is you always have to be investing in the future.

People will be discovering that the Internet helps their career. One of my theses is that every individual is now a small business; how you manage your own personal career is the exact way you manage a small business. Your brand matters. That is how LinkedIn operates.

A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.

The CEO's job is always about leadership. It's about leadership in a vision, in terms of where you're going, it's about making sure that you have the right organization and staff, and that you have kind of clearly communicated what some of the plays are and what some of the goals are in terms of the business and how do you organize together in order to make that happen.

Entrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.

What great founders do is seek the networks that will be essential to their task... Usually it's best to have two or three people on a team rather than a solo founder.

There are opportunities that you get during crises times. Crises times are a great time to start a business.

When you turn a company profitable you've gone from a company whose days are numbered to a company whose days can be infinite.

Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that's really powerful.

There are two reasons [ business people are not publicly anti-Donald Trump ], one is well-intentioned, which is the classic kind of American notion. We want to be inclusive, we want to have our shareholders, our employees, our customers, whether they are Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian, to feel comfortable with how we're doing business. And so that tends to be apolitical. People say, "No, no, I just simply shouldn't get involved in politics."

If you don't start out aiming for the big game, you almost never can get there.

You should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.

Make sure a certain percentage of the people that you're hiring are generalists so that you can be, kind of reconfigured in the workforce pretty easily.

First mover Advantage doesn't go to the company that starts up, it goes to the company that scales up

All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.

Donald Trump has shown that he will essentially attack individuals, make Second Amendment jokes.

I wish to be focused on kind of the business stuff I'm doing, how do I contribute to our economic progress, how do I help create a future for American industry, American middle class, these kind of things. Those things actually really matter to me.

You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.