People generally worry about social networking more than they need to. In kind of consumer internet investing and on social and professional networks, I kind of look at time spending and time efficiency. You know, time saving sites. So on time spending sites, things where you play lots of games or that sort of thing, you might worry about a productivity loss if people are spending a lot of time doing that. So if there's a lot of kind of addictive gaming going on during work hours, that won't be as helpful to you.
Reid HoffmanYou remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesn’t get found. It emerges.
Reid HoffmanIronically, in a changing world, playing it safe is one of the riskiest things you can do.
Reid HoffmanIn software speed to market, speed to learning is really key. In hardware if you screw it up you are dead. So accuracy really matters.
Reid HoffmanBenevolent, enlightened, wise dictators are the most efficient form of government. The problem is what comes afterwards.
Reid HoffmanIf I ever hear a founder talk about oh this is how I have a balanced life so on and so forth - they're not committed to winning.
Reid HoffmanThe key thing that I find that when you're kind of in boom times and you're hiring bunches, if you can hire, you know, always maintain very high standards and even if you, you know, can't find enough of, you know, what is typically called A players, then don't hire the people. All right? So, you know, use that as a way of standards.
Reid HoffmanSilicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big.
Reid HoffmanHaving a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.
Reid HoffmanNow, in economic crises times, the kind of things you're looking at is it's generally harder to get capital, revenue growth may be more, revenue lines may be unstable or growth may be less easy to predict that you're going to get to. And so what you do is you take a certain conservative approach of when, as all entrepreneurs should do, you plan for both good luck and bad luck, you put extra time on, "Okay, if I have bad luck, what do I do about that?"
Reid Hoffman[Hillary Clinton] is also smart, she talks to people, she hears, and she says, "OK, I need to update, we need some much bigger changes."
Reid HoffmanWhen I'm raising money, this fundraising, I'm thinking about the next fundraising. I'm thinking how I'm set up for it.
Reid HoffmanIt is impossible to dissociate an individual from the environment of which he is a part. No story of achievement should ever be removed from its broader social context.
Reid HoffmanIf you have to conduct layoffs, which is always a regrettable thing, there's kind of three things that are very important. One is to communicate well with your employees in order to help them understand why it is you're doing, and how. Second is to make sure that the employees who are part of the go forward, understand kind of what happened and are not like the ground doesn't keep moving. It's like, okay, we did that, we're moving forward, here we go. And then for the employees that you unfortunately have to let go, try to provide as much support for them as possible.
Reid HoffmanI find that the interesting challenges, because there's obvious things where, you know, don't be unethical, don't be evil, you know, don't break the law, don't do immoral things, those are all straightforward and don't create ethical dilemmas. The thing that's interesting is when you actually have multiple interests at stake and you have to kind of navigate your way through it.
Reid HoffmanWe understand that most of the middle class doesn't know what to do, doesn't feel like they have economic progress, and [Hillary Clinton] goes, "OK, I realize that's my top agenda item. That's the thing I need to do."
Reid HoffmanIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.
Reid HoffmanThat's part of the reason why we also need to focus on, how do I give to society, how do I participate in society, how do I make society a better place, because, by the way, it's good for me, but it's also good for all of us in the environment in which we live and work.
Reid HoffmanBecause in our boom times, everything is growing, usually, you know, the kind of things that come to mind are Wild, Wild, West, or land grabs, you know, these sorts of things, in order to make something, you know, kind of to grow into the future and to get all the growth that you need to have. So you tend to hire a lot because you're running fast to the future.
Reid HoffmanI don't normally think of like most successful moments, because like most entrepreneurs, I tend to think that however how high of a mountain I've climbed, I'm always looking at the next mountain to climb.
Reid HoffmanOpportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They're attached to people. If you're looking for an opportunity, you're really looking for a person.
Reid HoffmanWe've been working for years on how we can use technology to help people make their own jobs, become entrepreneurs, create their own small businesses. Those are the kinds of things that I and a bunch of other people at LinkedIn actually work on.
Reid HoffmanThe key thing for a CEO to keep their head in the game is recognize that there's turbulent times, plan for, you know, bad luck as well as good luck, keep people focused on what the key, you know, business wins are, and you know, provide the energy that people always need in order to, you know, to go into battle because, you know, work is hard and go into work and do that well. And provide a good leadership beacon for that. In other words, it's the same thing that makes good leadership in any other time.
Reid HoffmanSo usually you have to have product distribution as more fundamental than what the actual product is.
Reid HoffmanBefore dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.
Reid HoffmanOne of the phrases I frequently look for is infinite learning curve.Because each entrepreneurial pattern is to some degree unique and new.
Reid HoffmanWhen you think about being contrarian, you have to think about - how is it that smart people will disagree with me, disagree with me ...from a position of intelligence, and there is something that I know that they don't know, that will actually in fact play out to be true.
Reid HoffmanManaging risk is a key variable, frankly, all aspects of life, business is just one of them, and one of the things that most people do in terms of managing risk, that's actually bad thinking, is they think they can manage risk to zero. Everything has some risk to it. You know, you drive your car down the street, a drunk driver may hit you. So what you're doing is you're actually trying to get to an acceptable level of risk.
Reid HoffmanSuccess...is no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.
Reid HoffmanI'm sympathetic to the people who go, "Whoa, we'd like to have the benevolent, wise dictator. It will all work much more efficiently," but the reason that we remain staunch democrats - with a small d - is it's a decades long, it's a centuries long, it's a country long process for being inclusive.
Reid HoffmanFinished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.
Reid HoffmanPart of the reason we like democracy is it's the portfolio of decades, which is to say you don't also get the disastrous dictator who completely destroys a society, engages you in wars and so forth.
Reid HoffmanMy greatest influences are actually probably a set of different teachers. And these teachers, most prominently at my high school, but also a few others, helped kind of instill in me, thinking thoughts about how life is meaningful in terms of how we all kind of live in a network of people and how you interact with those people is part of what makes life essentially meaningful and then kind of concepts to think about, how do you add value to other people's lives? How do they add value to yours? And how do you kind of form a community together in the network?
Reid HoffmanThe key thing in any kind of guiding of the business is how do you create a strong organization that is kind of accelerating into the future. And when you're in trouble, the question is, what are the techniques that you can, you know, trim, refinance, sell, et cetera, in order to get this business back to that characteristic.
Reid HoffmanI think we realized the depth of frustration through the current political process. So we said, "OK, we know there's a serious problem here, we know we need to work on it," and now it's "Oh, we need to work on it a lot faster."
Reid HoffmanWhat makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
Reid HoffmanOne of the things is when you think, "Wait, I'm fearful of retaliation, I'm fearful of oppression because of someone who is going into a public office, who might be vengeful for their own personal reasons, that's actually not a reason to hide - that's a reason to step up, right?"This is part of what we learned from the 1920s.
Reid Hoffman