Reid Hoffman
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So even if there's a bunch of smaller models that are specifically capturing other kinds of market opportunities, which is part of what I've been doing and investing in AI since 2014, 2015, there's going to be a set of those things that are all a whole bunch of startup opportunities.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So I think that the A versus B is a good dramatic framing, but it's really on which specific opportunities, because there's going to be wins and opportunities across them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah. I think the mistake that people make is they think precisely it's like the one model to rule them all. It's like Sauron's ring. And actually, in fact, already today, like for example, one of the things that
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
happens with all the model providers at Microsoft and OpenAI, which I've seen, is they'll sometimes sub in, like GPD 3.5, as it was before, to see what the answers are, because there's a cost of compute. Even as you learn to bring the cost of the compute of the larger models down, the larger models are always going to be a lot more expensive.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And by the way, they're going to be more expensive kind of probably loosely on the order of magnitude, right? So it's like, well, it's 10x larger, it's 10x more expensive. And so when you're trying to say, hey, I'm trying to make business models work,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And so what I think you're going to see is networks of models and like kind of traffic control and escalation and all the rest. And agents are not going to be one model. They're going to be blends of models. And that's one of the reasons why you say, well, there's actually, in fact, a lot of room for startups. Because it's not like we say, well, we take GPT-7 and we just serve it for everything.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's like, well, it's going to be super expensive. And there's a whole bunch of things about serving it more cheaply. And for example, one of the really great technical papers that I love from Microsoft is, all you need is textbooks.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's like you can train very specific models on kind of like high quality data, along with, by the way, the larger model helping train it, that all of a sudden you have a functional smaller model. And, you know, the question will be a blend of these things. So I think the multi-model approach is, I think, going to be, you know, quickly universal.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Donation and investment. I led the first commercial series, first commercial round.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So it's a 501c3 is the governor thing, that's what started. And when Elon and Sam were starting this and said, look, we need philanthropic support, and we're trying to make sure that there is open access to AI, which is gonna be an instrumental technology, and we've got some great technologists who wanna come do this, we started as a 501c3 for doing it. That persists, as far as I know, till today.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Co-founder.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Then one of Sam Altman's pieces of genius was that he kind of said, look, we're gonna need scale capital and I'm trying to go out to raise, and the commercial round was 600 million, I'm trying to raise 600 million in philanthropy and it's not working. So I have this idea, which is the 501c3, which is doing this kind of research mission of AGI for humanity is also producing commercial benefits.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And we can create initially an LP, which has a kind of a revenue right on the commercial things that investors can invest in. And Reed, it'd be really helpful if you led this because, and I was like, well, but you don't have a go-to-market plan. You don't have a... product plan, business plan. He's like, yeah, but we need to show that we're actually serious with the business.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I said, all right, fine, I will lead it from my foundation. Because even though none of these things we like to see as investors were there, but I was like, look, okay, I'll lead it as an investment, I'll manage it as an investment, but I'll do it as an investment for my foundation in order to do this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And, and what, you know, you know, kind of that was kind of as we were beginning to get into, you know, like, kind of, we, we hadn't seen anything, they were still doing Dota and, and robot hands and much of this. So it was like, we're betting on the scale thesis of generating something magical. And so we hadn't seen GPT-3 yet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And of course, once that started coming, then it was like, well, we need a bunch more capital, let's do a strategic strategy. you know, connection and let's talk to all the hyperscalers and let's work out a deal by which one of them invests in us. And then, you know, the Microsoft Open AI deal came together with, you know, converting the LP into a subsidiary of the nonprofit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
kind of saying, look, there's all kinds of benefits that both OpenAI and Microsoft can get from a business deal. And so that's what's led to the structure that I was familiar with before I left the board.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, what is the, I'm not very charitable about those lawsuits. I would like to be, because Elon's one of the entrepreneurial heroes of our time and generation. But I think it's the, I think it's, you know, frankly, I think probably the most charitable thing to say is sour grapes. Because, you know, for example, I know Sam offered him as much of the investment round as he wanted, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Like he could have done the whole thing. He could have let it, you know, it was kind of like, hey, look, we still love you. And he was like, no, it's not a company that I control. It's going to fail. So I'm not interested in investing. And I was like, okay, right. And so now you're getting these lawsuits that are like, you know, like I was misled.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it was like, you were offered everything at every opportunity other than converting OpenAI into a company that you completely owned. And so, you know, I think it's without basis, without merit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think it was a jurisdiction issue, Jamal. Oh, that makes sense. I can track that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I, by the way, put in $10 million at the same time, and I don't have any shares from those $10 million.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, look, I can understand the emotion of that, but it's not like Elon's short of money, right? And so if you go, look, I'd like to have shares like I did, invest in the other thing. I didn't get any shares for the 10 million that I put in. And by the way, it's not just legal technicalities. It's actually really important that you're not doing private enrichment off philanthropic donations.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And so, you know, it's... But isn't that what's happened? No, from a viewpoint of... they're held separate, right? And so, you know, and the 501 continues to control the, you know, kind of control the kind of the mission and destiny and so forth.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And so the question about its mission is still guiding things and you're essentially investing in that mission and you recruited people, you know, on that mission. And so, you know, I think that the, you know, you know, I think, like I said, sour grapes,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, I met David because Peter had known him from Stanford and hired him in. And David very quickly, because he has a strong learning curve as he plays these things, kind of got the instinct of what the game we were playing with PayPal was. And it's part of the reason why I think each of the execs have had kind of key contributions to making you know, kind of PayPal successful.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, as a content creator too. Look, I think that it tends to be a little bit of a, we do want content creators to benefit economically from the work. It's part of the reason why we have copyright. It's part of the reason why we have payrolls, you know, other kinds of things that I think are very important. And I think it's a complicated thing that needs to be sorted out.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Now, that being said, I think we also want to say that we can train these models, like, you know, like training is like reading and like reading things is, you know, like when something's available to be read and you've engaged in the right economic thing for reading it, I think that's a kind of a reasonable fair use thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Now maybe we update the terms of service, maybe we update copyright law and other things to say, okay, that now changes. I think we don't want to forbid changes in the future. This is one of the problems we get, it blocks innovation when we do that. It blocks innovation in kind of Hollywood, it blocks innovation in music, it blocks innovation. So you want to allow some new changing landscape.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I think this is a changing landscape that arguably is reading. So I think that, Both of those things are true in terms of what do we want to sort through. I think that one of the reasons why this is kind of like, when I give advice to various news organizations and so on, I say, look, don't try to hold out for money on the training side of things.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
because we're gonna create synthetic data, we're gonna do all kinds of other things that are gonna mean that no one's particular data is really going to matter. What you should be is on freshness, on brand, on other things, and we should work out ongoing sustaining economic arrangements like that. That would be my two cents suggestion for it. And I do think we wanna design an ecosystem
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
that includes that, and when I was involved in those conversations at OpenAI, they agreed with that. Microsoft certainly agrees with that in terms of how do we make sure that economics are fairly apportioned and so forth for what we're doing for this phase of, and ongoing, but there's a current new technological wave that's coming, and how do you do that?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So that's a messy answer, but unfortunately it's a messy subject.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, the thing I think that's happened was, you know, very early days, you had things like, you know, we're doing an agent and if Pi had launched before ChatGBT, it'd probably be in a different circumstance, but like ChatGBT got the, oh my God.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Pi is the inflection agent, yeah. And so by the time that Pi, we got the trend right and the interest of the market right, but we got the timing, you know, too late, happens with startups. So it was like, okay, we need to pivot. We need to pivot from a B2C model to a B2B.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And we have a unique model, but let's sell that to other people who already have audiences, because we're not going to be able to easily grow our audience. And then, you know, once we had that as a conversation, there were employees like, well, we want to do the direct agent thing, and that's what we want to do. And maybe we'll go somewhere in order to do that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And we're like, okay, how do we fund this? And how do we make that work? And how do we make it work for investors? And we said, hey, there's a deal structure that could work, which is with a kind of outside party, you can get paid enough in a non-exclusive IP license and an ability to selectively hire folks. And then you can dividend some of that out to investors.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So investors get back kind of a 1X and then kind of an ongoing position. So as investors, it's great to have a kind of optionality on its B2B business in order to play that out. And this is a structure that works for everybody in this pivot to B2B. And that's essentially the structure that we did. I see.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And David's was this kind of like maniacal focus on the kind of the cycle of how the product worked on eBay. And like, there was just a whole bunch of stuff I learned from him. It's part of how I track, you know, kind of you know, people I respect is what do I learn from them? And that was one of the things that I would say I learned from David at PayPal. That's nice.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So it was funny, because I kind of made an off-the-cuff, you know, kind of remark about Lena Kang, which turned into a whole news cycle.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I'm like, no, because I don't believe in that kind of corruption of politics. The only way she's going to learn about it is either she asks me or she watches this television show. And so... So she's done a good job on the price cartels, she's done a good job on the anti-competes, both of which I think are very good for competitive markets.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The problem is I think she has a misunderstanding of these large tech companies. And for example, on the M&A thing, her theory is you gotta prevent the aggregation of power, so you gotta fight every acquisition of note. And the problem, of course, is that actually quells venture capital investment.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's just like, okay, part of the returns is if I'm going to invest in something that might be competing with one or more of the large tech companies, I need to have acquisition exits as part of being able to fund enough capital to really make that acquisition, that investment possible. Because if it doesn't work, I want to be able to at least recover my capital by an investment.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So the right way to look at it is, is there competition amongst the top tech companies. Because if one of them is like squashing all the other ones, that's a problem. If we're five large tech companies heading to three, then I'm much more sympathetic to our point of view. But we're actually five heading to 10, right? Or five to seven heading to 12.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Because like Nvidia is now in the mix and others I think are coming in the mix.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yes, and so you have this ability. So the thing is, is they're competing on the acquisitions just like they're competing in the marketplace.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And if you're trying to quell the whole thing, because your theory is like they should just, you know, the startup should just be able to grow up to compete, that actually means that those will never get the capital that they need in order to do that, which means you're actually having the opposite of your intent, right? What you're doing is you're actually making there be less competition
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Because, you know, capitalists can't say, if I'm gonna put 100 million, 500 million, a billion dollars into this company, I at least have a chance of getting my capital back, or I can possibly create a competitor. And that's the reason I was speaking out against it as an expert. It was interesting.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think it's TBD. But the reason I'd take the opposite point of view and say no, the thesis for no is that they are very strong American companies that get, in most cases, over half the revenue from overseas. They create technology platforms that beneficially differentiate the US versus many other countries in kind of global circumstances like the internet and other kinds of things.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think that they are competing ferociously with each other. You know, Jason just mentioned that, you know, it's kind of like, look, we've already got like chat GPT competing with Google search and other kinds of things. And I think it's competitive pressure, right? This is, I think what capitalism is about is competitive pressure that essentially creates the thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And that's the reason why, like, if it's, if, if we were shrinking, like it was Google Uber Alice, or I actually frankly think that the, Everyone likes to talk about Google. I think the prime candidate is likely to be, and I'm speaking as an individual and as a venture capitalist here, is Apple with the App Store, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, no, for sure. And look, especially when, you know, we all know it's nonsense. It's like, look, you could just give the consumers the option to allow sideloading. You could just say, it's technically very simple to do. And you can say, look, we don't want you to sideload because we view it to be safety and security, but we're giving you the option, right? Fine, give people the option, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So I think in mandating breakups... you know, like I think is a, look, I think we should operate through competitive networks and competitive ecosystems. I think it's part of what's smart about capitalism. And I think mandating breakups is only when essentially capitalism is failing on specific things. You wanna do the least,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
the least you can to get back to competitive networks in terms of how you're operating. And so when you say, hey, look, iOS has this kind of monopoly, and you say there's no side loading, you have to use App Store, you have to use the payment mechanism, et cetera, et cetera, it's like, well, that quells a ton of startup innovation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We all know this as investors, because we look at anyone who's prospectively doing a business like this and say, no chance, you're not going to succeed. And so then you say, well, what's the least thing that we can do, right? And, you know, a classic Andy Truss was like, well, let's break off the app store from Apple as well, right? Unclear that that would really fully work.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You know, that's like socialism mandating how the thing should work. Let's try to get it so that we allow competition to determine these things. And like, for example, saying, hey, like you have to allow consumers the option of sideloading. You have to allow consumers the option of installing an alternative app store, right? Like that kind of stuff. I think, you know, what's the minimal set?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think that's the kind of intervention we want to have because I think there's all kinds of benefits that come from- But why do you think that the case against Apple has made less progress than the case against Google? I think it's less politically easy, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's kind of like everybody loves their iOS phone and there's less of a blue and red kind of combo tackle where the blue feet people are like, hate big companies. Apple's less offensive, basically. Yes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, like most of us, I was pretty dismayed by the debate performance.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Because when I talked to him, detailed, thoughtful analysis with no notes on Gaza, questions about AI, and what kinds of things, what did I think about what the progress, the thing they were doing with the voluntary commitments, the executive order, and what kinds of things should happen in the future, and all that kind of stuff, being on the game a little slower, Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Then then, you know, a 50 year old would be. But but, you know, like cogent and totally worth it. And then you kind of looked at the debate, oh my gosh, this is a disaster. And so it was like, look, is the debate a one-off thing? Were you ill?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Like trying to reconcile the two and spent a little bit of time trying to figure that out to what was going on because it was the first time I'd seen something like that. And, you know, you know, I don't you know, I'm not enough of a D.C.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
insider to know exactly what the set of conclusions were other than I, you know, I plotted, you know, Biden for having the kind of integrity to go, look, I'm maybe I'm ill, maybe I'm old, maybe I'm slower, but. You know, it's about the country more than it's about me because I'm, you know, not, you know, it's important to be about the country, not about yourself. I'll step aside.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And ultimately, it's a decision. There's nothing that anyone can force. Pelosi couldn't force it on anyone else. It's ultimately his decision. He came to that decision. So, you know, I applaud that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, it's hard to know. I mean, I think they were definitely leaning towards an open primary, and then all the people who would be the most natural contenders all endorsed Kamala. And by the way, you say, well, kind of democratic process. It was like, well, there was a democratic process that picked the Biden-Harris ticket, which turned into the Harris-Waltz ticket.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And so that's not anti-democratic. But I think if you look at the sequence of events, it was kind of like, well, you know, we're going to sort out, you know, what we're going to do. And then, you know, all of the key folks, you know, Shapiro and Whitmer and everyone else all endorsed Kamala. I was like, okay, let's just, let's get back to, you know, kind of the choice of two candidates.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And so I, you know.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, I mean, from post fact, seems not, right? With the level of kind of energy and all the rest, it seems that with the pure polling and kind of level energy and kind of what's going on. They're happy with what they got. Yeah, they're happy with what they got.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
so for the president for the president yes we do live in a republic all right and there are there is various like you know some people have much more influence than others um whether it's media platforms whether it's um you know economics and ability to spend whether it's you know a history and a brand and and and other things and so you know this melee and and and kind of
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
you know, whole integration set of things. Now, ultimately, you know, voters are going to decide in November, right? So, you know, people do have a, you know, and I think that staying to our democratic process is what's really key. Like, you know, people go on the polls.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You know, I think we should want to live in a country where everyone does, you know, everyone who is legally allowed to vote does vote. And I think that that's you know, ultimately a good thing. Now, you know, are there things that I would like to change? Sure. I'd like to change. I'd like to have ranked choice voting. You know, I'd like to have open primaries.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There's a set of things like, like actually my principal frustration in all of this stuff is, you know, what's, what's one of the fundamental things that the two parties agree on that, that, that, that shouldn't be is that there should be only two parties. Right. And I think that's, I think that's something that you, you need to fix and you can't fix it
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's the Will Rogers line. It's politics is the art of saying nice doggy while you hunt for a stick.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Unfortunately, I think with independent candidates, because the whole system is really set up for kind of two parties and independent candidates are almost always spoilers one way or the other. I mean, like on the RFK stuff, I understand there was a bunch of Democrats who were trying to prevent him from getting on the ballot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I actually prefer him on the ballot because I actually think his anti-vax stance really fit very well. with Trump. And so I think he was going to take more from Trump.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I wouldn't be surprised if we look at all the money that goes to all the different organizations, if Organization X kind of had some kind of ballot thing. My voice and instruction was always like, no, no, no, don't do that. That's anti-democratic. But you can't control everything just like you invest in a company and CEO sometimes the dumb ass that you can't do anything about.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think it's, I frankly think that everyone who follows the legal process to get on the ballot should be on the ballot, and we should follow the legal process. I'm very much of a legal process kind of person. What I'm opposed to is calling Raffensperger and asking for 11,000 votes, which is not legal. So yeah, sure, is that bad, and do I advocate against it? The answer is absolutely yes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But it's – follow the legal process.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, but you want them to remove RFK from the ballot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'm just trying to figure out.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Can't you agree with that? Look, yes, fundamentally from a viewpoint of like, for example, my direct actions, and yes, you fund a whole bunch of different groups and you have different groups doing different things, but you funded them to do this thing that you were thinking of and things happen. It's just like companies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My thing was actually, in fact, making people aware of RFK's anti-vax statement, his anti-science stuff, because I thought that would be relevant in the polls in November. That was the actual strategy that I believe. And I think that would differentially hit Trump more. And so, therefore, it would be a spoiler. right, as these independents are.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, part of it is that, and this is, you know, among the things I was learning from Peter, was that Peter and Max recruited just a tremendous focus on intense learning curves. So it was one of the things that Peter later was like, okay, I guess you have to interview for being on sports teams and so forth, because this teamwork thing does matter, but like high performers.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
By default, I would oppose it. I don't know any of the details.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So I know Josh Shapiro. I think he's great. I've broken bread with him and he was meaningfully considered. I think we should be so lucky that he would run for presidency someday, some year. I actually didn't know Walt at all and was initially kind of surprised because I was like, oh, I thought it was probably going to be Shapiro.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I was like, well, I think it was probably a close call down to those two. And it looks like in making decisions, I think Harris made a good decision with Waltz. So I think it's a... Now, on the anti-Semitism topic, I do worry that
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
you know, broadly, we're seeing, you know, kind of more rise of anti-Semitism and that's extremely important to fight, you know, because I think, and I think there are people in the, you know, it's a weirdly like, there's some lefties who are doing it and there's some righties who are doing it. It's both a blue and a red issue in different shape. And I think it's very important that we,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
you know, we stand against that as a country. And so, you know, I've been, you know, kind of mostly just trying to say, hey, look, we gotta be anti-racism, anti-Semitism, and also anti-genocide. And we gotta figure that out.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What'd you think of her handling of that? I think that's rational, right? Like you should be anti-genocide both of Palestinians and of Jews. Right. And and like it's obviously a very, very thorny topic. Yes. Right. So so I think, you know, saying that I'm going to try to protect civilians on both sides, anti-genocide, I think that's a human caring place to be looking out for people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it was kind of like a, and that was part of the reason why there was such intense learning curves you know, kind of innovation and capability. You know, probably the most stunning memory I had at PayPal is we, you know, we're all young, we're all, first time we're kind of doing a startup that matters, you know, kind of making this stuff happen.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Look, I think we should speak out against both the far left and the far right. I think it's important to do both. you know, since, you know, I'm playing the Democrat here on this conversation, I'll ask you guys to play the, or especially Sachs, play the Republican and speak out against the far right too. But the short answer is, yes, there are amongst the extreme left, that's not everybody in the
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
misunderstandings about why it's important to defend anti-genocides like, from the river to the sea. It's like, yeah, that's a genocidal statement. Don't use that one. Understand what language you're using. And to be like, look, we've had a great genocidal moment with World War II, and we're still trying to recover from it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Two, questions around what I think is a foolish wealth tax, even though it's, by the way, narrow to like 80%. And then on the price gouging stuff, you know, one of the things is I started scratching at it, you know, it was interesting. I think this week Kroger said, yes, we did actually artificially raise prices to profit from the pandemic, you know, and yeah, you should stop price gouging.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's not quite the same thing as price capping. And apparently there's laws that affect even in Florida, right. Or in Texas where some of, you know, you guys are living. So like, it's kind of interesting. It's like, okay, I need to understand this issue in more depth, but I don't think it's as simplistic as the political headlines are having it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Look, I agree that you have to have good monetary policy. And so I think we probably agree on that. And I think some printing of money is part of the normal functioning economy, but too much is...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is bad and I don't think look I think price it look part of the reason why we just talked about antitrust stuff earlier you do have to look at places where there's a there's a possibility of kind of commanding stuff from your your privileged position and like you know the like I want to go we all agree we all agree that monopolies have to be controlled no no no debate there but that's not what's caused the inflation right because we've had inflation of commodities not just monopoly products but commodities like just food staples eggs you know
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And we do this merger with x.com and, you know, like pre the merger closing, You know, Elon is saying, oh, I got this CEO, Bill Harris. He's the best ever. That's part of the reason why you should give so much percentage of the company to x.com and the merger, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, and look, I, generally speaking, as I was saying earlier, I'm like, make sure the network sorts it out versus centralized control. Totally, totally. So it's kind of like you have to look at, is there a place where you're going, okay, that's the reason I focused, her words were price gouging.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And if you're focused on the kind of gouging side of it is like, oh, there might be a market inefficiency that you're essentially correcting, then that's I think the same kind of thing we were talking about with like the FTC and the Apple App Store and so forth. If it's like the, I'm just gonna set a fixed price on eggs, right? That's a bad idea.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And by the way, there's bad ideas like the wealth tax thing that I disagree with. Her economic thing also had housing, which I think is a good kind of thing to kind of lower costs for Americans and kind of make that kind of stable work. Like, I think she's been good on immigration.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think the Langford Cinema bill, which was from the Republican side, was something they were fully prepared to endorse. And Trump killed it because he wanted to campaign on it. It's like, look, we care about the actual running in the country. I think there's a bunch of good things, but if you said, do I defend price capping? The answer is not as an independent principle by itself.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And by the way, are there people lefties? Like, you know, a lot of what Elizabeth Warren says about capitalism, I disagree with, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, as I understand it, on that tax as it's proposed, is you have to have 80% of your net worth liquid.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Look, I think it's definitely a quelling impact and it's definitely stupid and definitely shouldn't happen. Okay. So it's stupid.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And then after the merger, literally the first meeting I had with Elon is Bill Harris is a complete disaster. We need to fire him right away. Like before we get to the first board meeting, we need him fired. And I'm like, Uh, Elon, you need to talk to Peter about this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But one thing, by the way, look, in the spirit of the All In podcast, I wanted to be clear about like there's stuff on the Dems and some of their economic policy for the far left people that, you know, kind of, you know, they're advocating for that I'm opposed to. You know, Sachs, I'd love to hear from you what parts of Trump's thing you're opposed to. Here we go.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And why? Look, the information did an actual data poll as opposed to us being talking heads saying, we say that Silicon Valley does X or Y. And the information's poll showed that there was much broader support for the Democratic ticket than the Republican ticket.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think where that came from. But the information, a news source that ran a poll, did it objectively, ran the whole thing to try to answer the question, came out with more folks in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket than Trump did. Why do you think that is? I believe that. Why do you think that is? Well, because look, taxes is an important issue.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I think if you ask any Silicon Valley business person, they say, look, lower capital gains, promote long-term investment. Ask me, that's what I would say too. But you kind of go, well, what actually, in fact, you most need for business is stability, rule of law, not grifter capitalism, where it's like, give me an ability to launch my own NFT, et cetera, et cetera.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That's what they go, we want that. And by the way, we can navigate a higher tax rate. It'll be less fast on growth and everything else, but we can still invest, create businesses, et cetera, et cetera. But we can't do it with kind of a corroding the rule of law. Like, you know, I think both, David, both you and Chamath spoke out against the January 6th stuff. I'm curious where you're on that now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's still top of mind for me. That's the reason why the kind of the rule of law thing is my red line, not a tax policy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, it's kind of not relevant whether or not I did or not. What I funded was an ability to have, you know, kind of a woman who doesn't have power, who's being threatened by a rich man with a lot of money and power to try to silence her, to have her day in court where 12 everyday Americans can come to a judgment.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And their judgment was that there was an assault and there was slander about the assault. And they did it twice. And so that was the reason I funded it. And I think that that's important. The laws apply more importantly to rich and powerful people than it does to poor people. That's the important about, the one thing I love about America is a rule of law system.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I think that's what's most important and that's what's really fundamental. That's my red line relative to the kind of lines in the sand that we're talking about. And that's the reason why in the various kind of lawsuits that seem to be that that's what's being emphasized, then I'm happy to support them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So, look, I think it's, you know, it's definitely possible to have some versions of law affair, although I think most people use the term when it's the legal process and the law enforcement that they don't like. You know, I think that in the Bragg case, you had, you know, an indictment and 12 jurors. There's jurors, I think, as I recall, one of the jurors said he got
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That juror got their principal news from Truth Social. It was a unanimous conviction. I think that you have Vice President Pence who comes out and says, Trump asked me to overturn the election illegally. That's your own vice president. So I don't think that that kind of suggests that there's this rampant political persecution, that there's a lot of fire where there's all this smoke.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It doesn't mean that every single thing
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think if he broke laws that says he should go to jail, I think the laws apply to powerful people as much as they apply to everyday people, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Actually, I don't think if you look at the – look, speaking factually, Trump's lawyers are always trying to delay the stuff, right? I think they were trying to follow every legal process and Trump's lawyers keep asking for deferrals.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Look, after January 6th – This was last year and the year before, asking for deferrals, setting out trial times. Like all of the stuff was from his side trying to delay it. If it got delayed into this year, that's a bad judgment on his part.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Okay, Reid, your thoughts? So, look, the first thing is January 6th, I think, is a red line. I think it's you did incite a riot, whether or not the legal process for it. Let's let Reid finish. Yeah. You know, I was fair enough. Go ahead.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Right. So I think it was the, you know, there was an incitement of a riot. I think that the rioters went in and, you know, killed police officers, were looking to kill Vice President Pence. You know, from the court testimony, courts are the best proxy that we have for finding truth in this stuff.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's one of the reasons why, you know, by the way, and when, for example, the Supreme Court says, no, that's great. That's legal process.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think there was one died from his injuries very soon after.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's just not true. Well, and then there's the one who committed suicide, too, which is a question of causation. I don't know how you can attribute that. Yeah. So anyway, so you got the, you know, the storming of the Capitol. You know, he says these people are American heroes. He's going to pardon them. He's going to hire them into his administration. Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And if that's not encouragement for other people doing similar things, you know.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, we'll get you the Trump speech. There's all kinds of wonderful things in Trump speeches.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'm fine to do it. I mean, it's... Totally your choice. Yeah. It's one of the things I like about your all-in podcast is, you know, kind of like, let's try to speak truth. Okay.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We have not. Pleasure to meet you. Likewise. Pleasure.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, I got asked that question unsurprisingly by many public market investors over the year. And I basically told them and say, hey, look, it's sustainable for two years, which for you guys means forever. Yeah. Eight full quarters. Yes, exactly. So that's infinity, right, in terms of time.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You know, NVIDIA has a very sharp, you know, kind of lead on the importance of the chips for the training clusters. You know, they're effective on inference. But I do think that as you kind of scale the demand, there'll be a lot of inference chips coming in. You know, I think... Chamath, you're invested in one of those.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I think there's going to be a bunch of those kind of coming in and the bulk of the demand will be on the inference side. And then NVIDIA will have this challenge of, do I try to keep my prices and my margin? Or do I do what, why we like competition? Do I have to respond to the competitive market?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And then that I think will play out, you know, start playing out probably in a year, two at the latest. and then kind of go. So I think it's not sustainable. The pure heat is not sustainable, but I think it's, you know, NVIDIA's got a very strong position and, you know, I definitely, I would recommend people not be short on NVIDIA. Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, one, board members speaking for Microsoft is forbidden. So I'm not speaking for Microsoft, just speaking for me.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's just one of the principles in the Microsoft thing is the company speaks for itself, board members don't speak for them. But I think Satya is the best public market CEO of our generation. I think he is stunning in kind of blending common combination of strategic insight with also kind of being kind of return on capital, sensible risk taking, et cetera.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The actual thing between your guys' questions in terms of, because I can comment on how Satya thinks with this stuff, is he's both thinking about it's a platform change and you have to be there for the platform change, for productivity, for cloud, et cetera. And, okay, let's rationalize the capital to when are we expecting revenue?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
How do we get revenue sooner to have that as a good productive cycle? How do we be not trying to just spend like drunken sailors, which is easy to do, but to be targeting business outcomes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it's part of the reason why he's very focused on what are we doing with Office, what are we doing with Cloud, what are we doing with... As opposed to... You rarely hear him talking about AGI or never digital gods because it's kind of the question of I am focused on this in a business sense. And I think that's kind of the way he's doing it. But there is obviously a...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
you know, kind of a, it's hard to predict the future when it's novel and unknown in platforms. And it's part of the reason why you have all the hyperscalers now, you know, kind of fully engaged and intelligently engaged.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Because if you say, well, if even it's just the new platform by which, you know, kind of software, everything with a computer unit in it, whether it's a phone or a speaker or a computer or anything else, Anything with a kind of a CPU or a GPU gets more intelligent. You can't miss out on that platform. And so that's, I think, the thing that's motivating everybody.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But it's obviously how to do that smart is one of the things that everybody is, I'd say, obsessing about every week.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah. Look, from the very founding of OpenAI, I was never claiming it was going to be open source. I was claiming it was going to be one safety open access and not differential or controlling access for that. And I think they've stayed true to that principle, which is, I think, what the genesis of the word open is there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And look, I think the key thing is there's going to be winners all over the place. I think there's going to be winners in the open source side.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I don't know if Lama is going to win from its open source thing as much as it's just trying to say, hey, we're training these models, so we're going to put them out there because our closed system, closed loop, doesn't require selling for tokens and so forth. But there's also Mistral and other folks who are doing competent models
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And then I think that the, but you know, there'll be wins in different ways. So it's not like, I think like for example, you know, I think there's going to be a bunch of different startups they're going to win, whether it's coding agents or, you know, kind of very specific applications within medical or other kinds of things. And I think they will, you know, generate big companies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I think large companies like, you know, the hyperscalers are going to succeed as well. Now in the pure model competition, The question is, when do we start seeing a asymptote to scale? And my guess is, and kind of the GPT landmarks is each order of magnitude, my guess is the soonest will be GPT-6. And it may even be after that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And that's part of what the bet that OpenAI and Anthropic and the hyperscalers are all making is that that return to scale. And then that has a lot of downstream effects because even if you say we can train smaller models to do effective things, part of what's going to be really instrumental for training those smaller models is the larger models.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
President Trump was threatening personal and political retaliation because I tried to help Harris get elected.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Okay. And yes, we've had that conversation more times than I can probably remember and count. And is it easy just to? You learn to. Really? Yes, you learn to. Because as you have the okay, what does that mean? Take those other things, push them off the table, focus. Or, by the way, occasionally you go, you're right. I'm really sorry. I'm just so distracted by this right now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
competitors haven't identified it and you get a long head start on it, that's an instance of luck. Not all the successful companies are that way, but that can be very good and very useful on that. But you have to be very aware of what the competitive landscape looks like. Now, that's also true of individuals, right? Because it's like, well, who am I competing against is a relevant question.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Would you mind if I'm fully present tomorrow?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Look.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, if you're having that conversation, if the person doesn't look, the two people need to believe in each other and what they're doing. If the person doesn't believe in you and what you're doing, right, you have a long-term problem.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Beato.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So... Anyone who believes, as I do, the only way that you can possibly get to an optimistic future is envisioning what some of the things are and head towards it. But you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid failure, by trying to avoid pessimism. Anyone who says, OK, it's important for me to understand that perspective about AI, they should read Super Agency.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
We have a book blurb from Yuval Harari, which says, This is a brilliant, positive vision of the future. I disagree with some of its main arguments, and everyone should read it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But you can be kind of competitively blind as an individual. And still be very successful because of the way it works. But if you're competitively blind leading a business, leading a startup, almost always that's hosed, right? That's one of the reasons why, like, you know, all investors in Silicon Valley always ask about your competition.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And if you say, I don't have any competition, you're like, well, if they disagree with you, they're not going to invest because they go, you're competitively blind. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah, I'll run through a framework to help the folks. The short answer is no, not everyone should be an entrepreneur, just like not everyone should try to be a professional musician. Not everyone should try to be an athlete. Not everyone should be – you have to look at what your competitive advantages are and does your –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Dispositions, skill sets, path give you a competitive edge, in this case of being an entrepreneur, right? Because any game that's competitive, right? And entrepreneurship is a highly competitive game. That's part of the, you know, it's as competitive as trying to become, you know, a globally renowned actor. It's as competitive as trying to become the CEO of a major bank or anything else.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So it's a competitive game. So for an entrepreneur, what you have to do is you have to say, okay, well, I have to be able, one of the classic ones, to take substantial risks. Now, it's not being risk blind. Entrepreneurs are actually not risk blind. Or occasionally they are, and occasionally they're lucky and it works. But almost all the successful ones realize that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
that when you start a company, you're default dead, right? By default, the company is out of business, right? And so you're trying to get to a point where it's default alive versus default dead. Then there's a whole bunch of different things that go into that game. So one is, well, can you go get the capital? Are you in a market that allow you to get the capital?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Can you move to a market that allows you to get the capital? How do you pitch the capital? How does pitching capital go? And then you get this kind of flywheel going between capital, talent, business realization, capital, talent, right? And you're doing that. And the business realization obviously includes customers, includes go-to-market, includes building products and services, et cetera.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, it's dynamic. So you say, well, I went and worked at a large company and I learned a bunch of things. Like, well, yeah, but you didn't learn how you're default dead. You didn't learn how to launch a new product. You didn't learn how do you start with a small product and grow to a larger product. You didn't learn how do you set up a team from scratch.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, a team from scratch when the vast majority of human beings like more certainty in what their week looks like. Like, I'm going to come work at a place because I can continue to work at a place. And as long as I'm capable of what I'm doing, I keep my job, right, in terms of what I'm doing. And so I understand the certainty. So entrepreneurs have to do all that sort of thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So in addition to kind of risk-taking, you have to be good at bringing many resources from different vectors into your vision and working with you. So there's investors, there's employees, there's customers, there's advisors, there's partners. You have to bring the right set of those people along with you in this iterative process. This kind of iterative journey.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You have to be able to grow yourself and learn because the game changes. Like one of the metaphors I use to train and conceptualize young entrepreneurs is – and there's a bunch of different parallels between military strategy. It's part of like the board games thing and business strategy. But it's like Marines take the beach. Army takes the country. Police governs the country. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Three very crude, broad generalizations about how you do it. So you go, what's your marine strategy? Because you must, as a SEED Series A, you must have a good strategy how you get on the beach, how you get initial product market fit, how you're heading towards scale product market fit. OK, you're there. How do you win the country? right? The market, right?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
What, how do you get to scale product market fit? How is that going to work? How are you going to play against competition different in these two? How do you get up to scale? You have to learn this game is different than this game, right? And you're learning new things as you're doing it. So you have to have this kind of, um, what I refer to as being an infinite learner.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like you're learning what the new game is. Because by the way, no entrepreneur shows up at door one, at day one going, well, I know how to do marketing. I know how to do sales. I know how to do product development. I know how to do engineering. I know how to do engineering operations. I know how, like, no, no, no. You have to bring all that in.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You'd be learning what you need to learn in order to do that through that. And that's part of how you grow into that. And then by the way, Once you've established a business, because another thing that brings in a lot of competition is people say, oh, that's a valuable business. I'd like to possibly have that. And then a new generation of heavy competitors come in.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So can you kind of keep your position and grow your position in a market? Which is the police part, right? The police part. Yes, exactly. And so you have to look. And each of these three is different games. And there's more games than that. But it's a way of kind of simply understanding it. always being learning, being an infant learner and changing your mindset. And so...
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Frequently, like, for example, when I'm talking to an entrepreneur, especially the first few times, is I will push them on their vision to see if they're learners. Now, one, they should have persistence and grit because, like, no, I've thought about this. I've got a good plan. This is how I'm going to go to market. I understand what the competition looks like.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because if they go, oh, you're right, I should totally change that, you're like, okay. You have to have some grit and persistence. But on the other hand, if they're not, like, going, oh, yeah, no, if we encounter that, Yeah, we'd have to do something about that. Like if our competitors started doing that, and maybe we'd do this, right? And so they also are learning. They have flexibility.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So you want that combination. Like one of the things about startups is... you have to bring kind of this dual-lensed focus of things that seemingly are a little contradictory. So like persistence, flexibility. Another one is right now, long-term, right? Now you have to do right now, but if you don't have a long-term of how you're building something that's insanely ambitious...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You're never going to get there. If you shoot for the hillside, you're never going to get to the moon. You have to shoot for the moon. So you're shooting for the moon, but it's me and my two friends in a garage right now. It's interesting because the middle bit, does that matter? It does, but it's a, remember like the Marines, Army, Police. Army, when you're doing the Marines, is the middle bit.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Right, okay.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So it does, but it's not – by the way, and one of, again, mistakes, and that's part of the reason why there's another chapter in Startup View is AVZ planning. The mistakes is, like, you have a plan and then you have a plan B. It's like, no, no, no, you have a plan, and then you have a lot of micro plan Bs, right? So you're kind of like, well, if that doesn't work, then let's try this.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
If that doesn't work, then let's try this. You know, and you're iterating through them. And when you know to do a major pivot – because, by the way – Many successful businesses also do major pivots. PayPal started as encryption on cell phones, right? That's where it started, right? So you do major pivots.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's when you go, oh, my current plan, which I've iterated for my first plan, is worse than my first plan. Like the market circumstances, its chance of succeeding, those are now worse.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's when you think about, okay, let's do a major pivot.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah. Yeah. There's, call it two kinds of ideas. And frankly, by the way, you think there's over 8 billion people in the world. The fact that you think you're the one person who's thought of this idea, you may not be doing math well, right? So thinking you're the one person who's thought of the idea, that's a mistake, right?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
The question is, are you the person who can pull it together in the momentum
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
and and pull together and it's still by the way that may be well okay that gets down to 100 people okay well am i the one who's in motion right now am i the most person who's willing to take the risk quit my job and do it um and you never really get down to one right so so startups are risky businesses like one of the things let's get back to the entrepreneur is like
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I think the greatest chance, and even when I was starting LinkedIn, after having started SocialLand, after having co-founded PayPal as a board member, even when I was starting LinkedIn, what I would tell the people was like, look, we have about a maximum of 20%, 25% chance of being successful. just to be clear.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
We're going to try to grow that to 100%, but we're a couple people in a garage right now. There's all kinds of things that can go wrong. Anyone who's telling you it's 100% now, they're lying to themselves or they're lying to you. I'm very realist and ambitious in my strategy. You should never think you're starting something 100%. Now,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Within the ideas, you go, there's roughly speaking two kinds of ideas. One kind of idea is People generally think that's a good idea. They think it's a good idea because you go to customers and customers say, yeah, I'd like that. Right? They go, oh, well, hey, AI is going to create a whole bunch of new SaaS businesses. Right? Oh, yeah, that makes sense. They have new technology transformation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's interesting. I've never been asked that question before. Probably it's a combination of of the fact that my passion is who are we as human beings and where are we going? So like, that's from, from a very young age, like I've been like, and I think I got it by reading science fiction, right? It was kind of like, what is the scope of humanity?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Or people in e-commerce, they're going to want to buy this kind of stuff. Okay. You know, it makes sense. So there's a stack of things where... They're pretty measurable as ideas. You can measure them with customers. You can do feedback and polling and other kinds of things. Now, there's good news, bad news on this category. The good news is you can de-risk is there a market for your idea mostly.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Not entirely, but mostly. The bad news is so can a lot of other people.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Right? And so in this category, there always tends to be competition. And your competitive strategy, generally speaking, needs to be why against – like in this category, you should be expecting competition. Why am I going to win out sufficiently against this competition in a global arena? Yeah. I have invested in those businesses.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Greylock invests in a bunch of those businesses because we're one of the best VCs at Enterprise and the planet, blah, blah, blah. Then the other kind of thing, which is the one I tend to start and the one I tend to most invest in is – People think that you're crazy when you're starting your business. And by the way, that can be a – by the way, and frequently you are, right? Yeah.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But people think you're crazy, which means most people think you're crazy, which means your competitive field is a lot less, right? So, for example, I'll give LinkedIn – as an example, and I'll give Airbnb as an example.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So LinkedIn, I go and I say, hey, individuals will join this network and bring in their, and establish a public identity and profile and bring in their network and use that even as the vast majority of the billion people registered for LinkedIn are, you know, basically working companies, right? They're not starting companies. Like it's a great platform for entrepreneurs.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Entrepreneurs get it right away. But I'm like, well, I'm working in a company. Am I going to seem disloyal to my company if I establish a profile here? Interesting. Because back when we started it, no one's going to use that. Why?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, because they're worried about will their company fire them or not give them a bonus or something else because they have a LinkedIn profile because they're saying they're disloyal.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Literally, everyone said to me, this won't work because you're individual focused. You need to be selling products to companies. Okay. Right? Right. And so I was like, no, no. I think I'm right about the way the world can and should be. Right? And so I'm going to take that risk. And that's the contrarian risk. I'm going to take that risk, and I'm going to play it forward.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And if I'm right, I will create something that will transform the industry, that will be amazing for individuals, amazing for companies, et cetera. And we can go, obviously, whatever length you want to go through the LinkedIn journey, we can do that. Now, Airbnb is an investor example. So Airbnb was my first investment at Greylock.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I was at Greylock because David Z, who was the Greylock partner, who was my most valuable board member at LinkedIn, convinced me that I should do venture at Greylock. And I'm very close to David. And so I bring in Airbnb as an investment. And David looks across the table from me and says, look, every VC has to have a deal they're going to fail on. Airbnb can be yours.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. Because Airbnb at the time had so little volume in its transactions that the founders could have called everyone who used Airbnb that week if what they did is dedicated making phone calls, like five minutes of phone call through the week. That was how small it was. And David's argument at the Greylock Roundtable was – Look, this is very strange.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Staying in other people's houses, you know, like the danger of something going wrong. Cities are going to hate it. Hotel lobbies are going to try to outlaw it within cities. You know, like this is just going to be a train wreck all over the place. And I was like, no, but I want to take the bet. And he's like, great. Like, we hired you as a partner. We think you're smart. Go ahead. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like, you know, Isaac Asimov's foundation and, you know, this kind of stuff. And then, um, I ended up growing up – I was born in the Stanford Hospital. I ended up growing up in Silicon Valley. And so I got the exposure to technology can change the world. And so focusing on thinking about kind of this intersection of humanity and technology and, of course, obviously science fiction has some –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Now, to David's credit, six months later, the transaction volume at Airbnb is like this classic hockey stick. It was years of very small. And then it grew to being very big.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So that hockey stick hadn't started yet. And David came to me and said, okay, because like the always be learning is also useful in venture capital. He came and said, okay, you were totally right about Airbnb. And I was totally wrong. What did you see that I didn't see?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like how did you know when I was sitting there blowing smoke at you saying this is going to be a total failure, you said, nope, I want to do this. I said, well, look, you were right about all of the risks, right? about that could happen with Airbnb. You are absolutely right. Any of those things could have made the business worth zero. But this is the reason as investors, we do a portfolio.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because yes, Airbnb could be zero, but if it worked, it was going to be huge, right? It was going to transform an industry. This is the kind of investment I like doing as an entrepreneur or as an investor. And I said, look, we had a plan for each of those risks. We had a plan A, we had plans B, we're going to try to navigate.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It isn't that we could guarantee the risk, but the fact that everyone else saw those risks meant that we had years of no competition, that we could establish the network, we could establish the marketplace. And then once we're there, we are the marketplace for how that works. And that's the kind of investment I like doing. That's the same thing with LinkedIn, as I founded it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Same thing with Airbnb as an investment. And so that category of investment, you cannot validate with the customers.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. And I'm looking for both in my creation of ideas and in my funding of ideas. It's not dumb people who think it's a bad idea. It's smart people who think it's a bad idea. You want smart people. Yes. Because then you have something that's contrarian. Because that's what contrarian is. Contrarian is that I don't understand technology at all, and I think it's a terrible idea.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's like, well, who cares? You don't understand anything. It's smart people who think it's a bad idea. And then you have a theory of the game that's a good one, not perfect, can be very risky, about why they're wrong. So I'll give you the LinkedIn example. Literally, John Lilly, partner of mine at Greylock. I recruited him into Greylock later. He was the CEO of Mozilla that I was on the board of.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Super smart guy, friend of mine. I sat down with him about LinkedIn because this is how I go when I'm starting a company. I go to all my smartest friends and I go, here's what I'm doing. What's wrong with it? I don't want to have the conversation of them going, oh, it's great. Useless. Doesn't help me. Right? What's wrong with it? Why will this go – why will this fail? And so I sat down with John.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
We had breakfast at a breakfast place in Silicon Valley. I said, da-da-da-da. And he said, okay, you know, look, I'm your friend. It's never going to work. Right? And I said, okay, well, why do you think it's never going to work? He said, well, look, you'll never grow the network. Like the first person who comes in, no one else in the network. Not valuable for me. Why should I invite someone in?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Until you have like, I don't know, 500,000 people, a million people, there's no value in the network. So there's zero value. So it's never going to grow. You're never going to get anywhere, right? And it was a very smart, perspicacious thought that was probably the key thing for starting LinkedIn was, how do you get to millions of people in the network?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because that's the only place where the value proposition kicks in, right? I knew that if you had 1,000 people come in, 900 of those people would be exactly like John. They'd go, eh, I don't see anyone else here in this network, et cetera. But I knew that some of them, somewhere between 10 and 100 of them, would go, oh, I see what this could be, and I kind of want to play with it.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I'll invite Stephen. I'll invite some people in. And then as it very slowly starts going, then all of a sudden there's enough people in. It's interesting. It's curious. And you could grow to being valuable.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I knew that by persistence through those initial exploratory people, people who are curious, people who want to experiment with it, people who got the vision of it, et cetera, et cetera, that all of that, I could grow to your initial critical mass. And then-
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
play to that too although most of the technology in science fiction is just fiction right it's just like we have wormholes and we do intergalactic travel it's like as far as we know there is no such thing as wormholes for intergalactic travel right i mean all current contemporary theory of physics would suggest that there isn't i mean there may be wormholes but they're not for you know put your star trek spaceship in it and go somewhere and then probably the other part of it is
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Really?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Public CV. It was a public CV with a search capability and ability to communicate with people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
talk about themselves or to share their life etc and we knew that we would get to growing network effects like for example again part of the you know marines army police is your network effects may very much evolve you may start with no network effects that's fine yeah but you have a plan yes yeah yeah so am i right in thinking because around then there were social networks emerging that were very focused on people conversating with each other whereas linkedin but by design
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And that's a virtue, not a bug, because it was part of how we solved the critical mass problem.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah. Well, I'm kind of a specialist. Yeah. Right? You know, one of the first investors in Facebook, one of the first investors in Friendster.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. You...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Network. It has less pizzazz, but we weren't really a criminal group.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, it certainly was a component. And so it's a couple of things. So one, that high density talent of folks who are willing to take intensive risks, want to do contrarian things, believe in what their contrarian thing is against common sense wisdom. That's one part. Another part is when PayPal went public, it was a technology winter.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It was one of two technology companies that went public that year.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Right? So all of a sudden – and then it got bought by eBay. So all of a sudden you had this talent group of people that had a bunch of money in their pockets and the network within – and that believed in the consumer internet – So the network of Silicon Valley at that point had thought the consumer in it was played. They were going into clean tech and to enterprise.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So if you ask, if you try to ping a venture capitalist, I have a new consumer in it idea, they wouldn't even take a meeting with you. They would take a meeting if it was clean tech and they'd take a meeting if it was enterprise software, right? Now, then you get all the PayPal people coming out going, hey, I can fund my own initial idea. I've got this great idea. YouTube. LinkedIn.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I can fund it and I can get it going. And then – and this is part of the Web 2.0 movement. I coined the term Internet 2.0 and then Tim O'Reilly made the much better term Web 2.0. Right? And so – These folks going, no, no, the consumer internet is – like that was just the first wave on the beach. The tsunami is still coming, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so we were all out investing and we were talking to each other because, frankly, we're like, well, these VCs don't get it. Like this is coming. And then, of course, you started seeing YouTube and you started seeing LinkedIn and you started seeing – and it was like, OK – Like we will – like these are important things that we're going to invest in.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I played a lot of board games when I was a kid, and so it gave me a very deep sense of strategy. And so approaching life, yeah, Zach, wow.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And that's part of the reason why the – that's the – because by the way, remember, you know, bad competition, right, is one of the reasons why not just talent, not just capital, but also competitive steering is part of the reason why the PayPal network or the PayPal mafia had such a massive suite of success.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And just from hearing you today, sales is so like... Whatever your go-to market is, and it can be sales, B2B, enterprise, et cetera. But like, for example, in... In social networks, it's usually a viral marketing or viral growth plan.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. You must. You said like partners, investors. Yes. Because 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 in your vision.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
An employee is investing in your vision.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
There's a limited set of skills that you can actually teach to entrepreneurs versus the entrepreneurs just learning by doing. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, 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, no. Silicon chips to make ice cream shakes. It's the thing. No one's thought of it. It's really big. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And people are like, okay, what you're convincing me is you're crazy. Right. Like you're literally like, please leave now. Yeah. Right. So you have to realize that all pitches are dialogues. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You want the absolute best talent working in your company. You want the absolute best. So you want people 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
When I started playing RuneQuest, probably 10.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 is 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And, you know, in Blitzscaling, which I think is another book on your thing, Most consumer internet plays are what we call Glen Gary, Glen Ross markets, which is first prize is a Cadillac, second prize is steak knives, and third prize is you're fired. So you have to be pitching why you're possibly first.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. And so this is why we can win. And so now there's also mechanics in pitching, which is 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 will establish trust.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So, like, for example, in pitching investments – now, this I didn't know until I started learning it in terms of a mechanic of pitching is entrepreneurs tend to go, oh, when I need money is when I write up my PowerPoint and I hit – knock on the door and say, hey, give me some money. That's a foolish time to start the conversation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, mostly as a function, again, like the role-playing games is like strategy, right? So it's kind of, you know, how do you kind of think about, like an adventure is both a narrative experience, but it's also a strategic experience. Like, you know, how do you save the town from the bandits, you know, that kind of thing. Mm-hmm.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Much better to start the conversation when you're not saying, give me money. So 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 an 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
This is one of the things I learned from SocialNet 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, 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
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 meet great talent, you realize how to – because 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 –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
one of the things I learned that was, you know, from SocialNet that I brought to PayPal was that SocialNet, 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. Look, they have to be able to do the job, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
No question. But if you said two years of experience and an insane learning curve, That's much better.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And learning on the job and going and figuring it out. And so when I went to PayPal, and when the company was founded, I was on the board of directors. I was like, this is what you're looking for, not this.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Right? And so back to your PayPal mafia question, that's because we hired those kind of people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
There 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. A proxy for a founder, if you're not spending a third of your time hiring, you're very much under delivering. This is the thing. It's like, look, 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 use a European football analogy.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I've got a really good striker. Great. Well, we don't need to worry about the halfbacks or defensive or goalkeeper. No, no. You have to hire all things. And you go, well, I'm a really good hat back.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so it gave me a deep sense of kind of like how does strategy and tactics and problem solving and how do you do it as a group, right? Because, you know, in fantasy role-playing games, it tends to be, you know, especially when I was doing it as a kid, a set of blokes around the table. I hear it's now a little bit more gender balanced, which is good, and especially for the blokes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You want to hire the best people you can. And by the way, if you can hire people better than you, oh, my God, it makes you much more likely to be successful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah. Well, but your theory of management is, look, if you can hire someone where your only management technique needs to be let them loose, that's best. Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So culture can matter. I would say, look, in terms of, and hopefully it's not a cliche, but hopefully a heuristic principle, references are more important than interviews. 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. They're not really great at selling themselves.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But, oh, my God, are they amazing in the field. 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 do whatever you can to hire that person. So if you ask me, you can only have references or only interview. 10 out of 10 times, I'll hire the person on the references.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Surely you're not talking about the types of references where they give you the references themselves. No, no, no, of course not. And this is one of the features of LinkedIn. You want to find references that will give you 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, e.g.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
not the one they give you to be a reference, So even if they say, oh, here's, you know, I'm Reed and 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And if you don't give me a weakness, I will believe that it's so bad that I should not hire this person. Right? So 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. Right? And you can think of it because we are all combinations of strengths and weaknesses.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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. I'm 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 has all strengths.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I mean, people tell themselves that, but that's self-delusion, right? And so you have that conversation with a reference and the reference will tell you something because they're not used to saying it. So they might say, oh... You know, Susan or Bob, they're a perfectionist.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
He's like, oh, so they get their work done slowly because, you know, like 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 their work?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's like, oh, we're not just geeks by ourselves here, right? And... And so and the way that I got to doing this is I was enough because this is kind of the focused, you know, kind of kid I was is what I I'd heard that the Chaosium had their offices where we're down the street from a friend of mine's. And so I literally walked in the door and started hanging out at their office.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Right. So you can push them into where they're like, yeah, they can get a little disorganized when they're stressed. Okay, great. Right, and then you can, 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? Mm-hmm.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. So no entrepreneur wins at every game. Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on. Same thing is true. So some people, for example... Like take Anil Bhusri at Workday, right? He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional. So it's a HR product for work.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people are going to do cloud software for the first time. I think it was 500 people that Workday hired. He would always do a cultural interview at the end 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And that's part of how you get cultural coherence. That's like one example, right? Another example, Elon is the – Like, I have a big idea and I convince 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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, Anil, very professional, understands the workplace mark.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Elon, like, I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to. And his pitch, though, to my defense was, I'm going to send a turtle to Mars. And 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 equity. I was wrong. He was right. There's not a good equity, you know, kind of play there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So it was an idea. 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, well, okay. Right. What did you think genuinely when he said that to you? I thought he'd gone off his rocker.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
No, no. I've always thought of him as one of the world's great entrepreneurs. Always? Yeah. Yeah, all the way back to PayPal days.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And they're the maker of this game. They're the maker of this game. The chief editor, I think, wanted to get me out of the office. So he said he handed me the in-development draft of this and said, here, go look at this. And so I took it home as an obsessive kid. I like redlined it. I worked my way through it. And I brought it back. Like he gave me a Friday and I brought it back on Monday.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
He has the same level of I am 1000 percent 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 his on-base batting is pretty good. For such major ideas. But it's not 100%. People kind of excuse that, though.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Um... He hires well. Matter of fact, you can't be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well. I think some people are better hirers. Some people also have – like are the kind of people that people would work for forever. Elon tends to burn people out a lot. Like there's lots of – burnt out people in his wake.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 experience ever, and I never want to work for him again. So they're all, I never want to work for him again.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So as kind of a dynamic, because he basically looks at them as disposable parts and go as hard as you can. And then afterwards, you're out. Don't care. Because he goes so hard. Yeah, he goes hard. But he also thinks 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
What do you think of that approach? That's not my approach. LinkedIn mirrors my approach. Like literally I am referenceable 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
They may also have some critical things. There's no problem with that. But like literally like when I'm pitching an entrepreneur, I just like call anyone that I've worked with.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because I try to work with people in a way that even when we're 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 Chesky, you know, Mark Pincus, et cetera.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I want to be able to work with them for, you know, the rest of our lives.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. You're 100% right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So he failed on his get this kid out of the office mission, right? But he was then – and I still remember this look of vague irritation when I handed him this because he's like, oh, this kid is handing me this thing. Oh, fuck. I don't want to be a mean guy. And then he started looking at it and went – Oh, this is actually good work. And it was like, I want to use this work.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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? Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But, for example, on the other side, like if you go to 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 work for them again. Interesting.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, you have to have the nature of this thing because it's, you know, you're by nature dead as a startup. Work-life balance is not the startup game. Right. So like when we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families. So we said, sure, go home, have dinner with your family.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Then after you're done with family, open up your laptop and get back into the shared work experience and keep working.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
The people who think it's toxic don't understand the startup game and they're just wrong. Right. The game is intense. And by the way, if you don't do that, then eventually you're out of a job.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. 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 like a third of the company had kids, right? And so you're like, okay, like we all have to work this way.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So we can't say, oh, you third, sure, you guys can go home and you're out of the office and then call in or whatever. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Only in two circumstances. One, it's a small startup. 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah, that's fine. Right. Number two, you have some such intense competitive moat 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But absent that, that's the reason because 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. Like 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 served dinner at the office at PayPal, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 at, oh, yeah, we're going to serve dinner too. So people don't go home. Yeah, don't go home.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I was a kid, so I didn't understand. He needed to pay me to use it. That wasn't why. I was just doing it because I wanted to show that I knew how to do this stuff. And so he then wrote me a check. So it was like my very first paycheck. to be able to use the work in the publication because this is how copyright, that means he then owns all the work that I did so he could publish it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, choose what your life's about. That's fine. There's nothing that says you have to do that. 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? And people can choose that. Now, you have to understand the game.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's like, well, I'd like to be a world-class 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 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 choose the game.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And you say, well, it's toxic. Fine.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 do get people home for dinner, but everyone, including Reed, is expected, you know, online working after dinner. And do you pay people more for that than the average rate? So they get paid in equity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And this is one of the things, again, is 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I had awareness of strengths and weaknesses. Like, I know how to do the CEO job, right? And I think it kind of... 150 people or less, I'm as good as anyone else, right? Like that scale of CEO job is a scale that operates within my strengths and weaknesses.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 Wiener that I learned from him on, um,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
was, all right, well, you start thinking of recruiting not as you going out and individually recruiting people or helping your hiring manager 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So, like, for example, new employees start at one of the onboarding days, and they start as a group together. 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 the salespeople, the engineers, and they're going into their different groups. We're approaching it as the engine of the company.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And the things that I – you're only world-class, but things you're passionate about. The things I'm passionate about is like the technology strategy, the product strategy, 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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, eh, I like doing more of being a board member working with CEOs more than I like being the CEO once you get past 150 people. So that's what I should be doing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
What I need to do is I need to get LinkedIn to a point where it's already, you know, it's already kind of hit breakout velocity, right? And so you can recruit now a world-class CEO that you can work with, right? And that's what I should do. And, you know, like, for example, the entire time that Jeff Weiner was the CEO of LinkedIn, my primary office was immediately next door to his. Interesting.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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% chances 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 Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And yes, everybody, myself included, does have a big ego. But my ego is, you have to attach the right way. My ego is attached to LinkedIn succeeding.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So it's funny. I try to never – 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, yeah. But it's not like the way I think of myself. I don't think of myself as Reid Hoffman billionaire. I think of myself as Reid Hoffman technologist, Reid Hoffman –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Public intellectual, Reid Hoffman, creative strategist, Reid Hoffman, et cetera. So I try to... changed my life as in those directions, not in the wealth direction. Now, of course, I travel around in a private plane. I own houses in several different areas of the world, that kind of stuff. But I try to live a life within those high wealth things as much as an upper middle class person as I can.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Oh, it's like $160 or something. It's not bad for a 12-year-old. No, no, no. My dad was originally opposed to fantasy role-playing games. It was like, what are you doing? Like, you know, be on a path to a real life. And then when I brought home the paycheck, I was like, well, maybe that works.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So, for example, before I came here to do the interview, 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. Because that's the way that I want to live, right? And I want human relationships that are like that. I think human relationships are really important. I feel lucky to have –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 going through life with amazing people and that's part of what I mean by that. You've always been
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I heard that you got pepper sprayed when you were a kid because... Because I was a kid on my father's shoulder at a demonstration against the Vietnam War.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes, I'm aware of that. But not just billionaires. I've been called evil by a number of people on the left. Really? Yes, of course. Look, they are wrong that that is a necessary correlation, right? But I try to understand people. I understand their perspective. I disagree with it, but I understand it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
No, I'm not.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Look, so part of the reason why I think less people were public about it This cycle was because President Trump was threatening personal and political retaliation. And so you had to have a certain degree of courage to stand up. Right. And so encouraging the public area, not just encouraging taking risks and so forth, but in the public arena for doing that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 the right thing. And that's for you, not for me. Right. I mean, trying to get people into it. And so I was aware because they kind of did the simple mini max and they said, well, if Harris is elected, I won't get penalized for not having supported.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And if Trump is elected, I will get penalized. So I'm just going to stand out of it. Do you think you'll be penalized? I think that there is a greater than 50 percent chance that there will be repercussions from a misdirection and corruption of the institution's estate to respond to my having tried to help Harris get elected.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 he owns the Washington Post and I don't like him, that kind of stuff. I hope it's in that arena.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Frankly, I had no idea other than the following entertaining thing, which is since both my mother and father are lawyers, when I was asked when I was 12 what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was not a lawyer. Really? Yes. Well, because lawyers, obviously a bunch of – or a barrister on the side of the pond –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It could get much worse, but I don't really want to speculate on it because I don't want to give anybody any ideas. But I think I would safely win a bet that there will be political repercussions that are essentially undemocratic, un-American, And direct on you. And direct to me, yes. I think I'd safely win that bet. I'm hoping it's in what I'm terming the soft arena.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
No, no. My residence is outside of Seattle, and we have a constitution, that kind of thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes, exactly.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes, exactly. Well, but that's the problem. You can't allow that form of neo-fascism. It's 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. And if you're not going to stand up, who is?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Oh, yeah. Well, I think... He's going to bring a wrecking ball, and some of the places a wrecking ball are useful. So, for example, if you say, hey, on regulation, you want a new regulation? Replace two. That kind of refactoring is a good thing. Hey, we're 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I don't care. We're going to do nuclear. I can see a number of things that could come out that would be very positive, and I want those things to happen. As a matter of fact, part of being an American – I'm going to try to make the next four years as great for America as I can. My precise complaint with some of the people I'm in political opposition for is don't ever try to break the country.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 of that. And I'm hopeful for some of that from this administration.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Fundamentally, I think it's always a good time as entrepreneurs to be building companies. So one is, like, you have a good idea of the times now, go do it. Capital markets, harder, fine. Actually, if you can get capital, you get competitive differentiation from the people who couldn't.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 very good for entrepreneurship because I think he's going to reduce a lot of regulation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Some of that regulation will have very negative consequences on the society, which as a society person, I'll be concerned about, like climate. Like you get the new EPA person coming in, Environmental Protection Agency, and 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Lawyers are essentially modern gladiators who are paid to be the gladiator of whatever their paycheck is, whether it's a client or whether it's being a full-time employee and so forth. And it's quality work. It's important for society. But I was like, no, no, I want to create things. I don't want to be a belt on my sword and go to verbal battle for whatever the contract or whatever.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But for entrepreneurs building new businesses, like, for example, I've invested in a number of fusion and fission businesses because nuclear, because that's the clean energy that we're going to need to to, you know, just to bring more of the billions of people into the middle class and to try to remove carbon from the environment and so forth.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So, and I've known the regulatory stuff is ferociously bad for that. Well, actually, in fact, I have hope that they are going to They're going to reset that thing. And so all of a sudden, that entrepreneurship turns out to be, in retrospect, wise. But I think they're going to reduce regulation across the board for all entrepreneurs. So I think that's helpful in entrepreneurship.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Now, they're going to be probably much more close to the border. And immigration is an important part of entrepreneurship. You want to be able to get the best talent from anywhere in the world. It's one of the advantages that's helped build the US. That, I think, is going to be more uneven. Anyway, so it's like goods and bads.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, by entrepreneurs, you mean zero experience ever doing the thing they were doing before?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So David and Elon, obviously super smart, very accomplished.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. And now David knows crypto very well. So he's the AI and crypto czar and the PCaaS person. He knows crypto very well. He hasn't yet done anything in AI. He hasn't been mentioned as an investor or a – like when I talk to all the AI entrepreneurs as a desired person for them to work with and so forth. So he's very smart, so I presume he knows something.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But 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 is not even in the top 100 of the issues around how to promote and build and navigate AI. Yeah. But he's very good at crypto. He's done a bunch of good stuff there. And Elon obviously understands AI quite well.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I gave a couple of days ago here in London the Sir Isaiah Berlin speech, and one of the lines that I used in the speech was, There's competing freedoms. You could say there's the 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 Twitter and X, right, is just virulent, right? It's just toxic. It's terrible. Like, when I tweet anything – Including, hey, you know, I think the following thing is great entrepreneurship.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I get a, oh, you evil liberal, you know, I hope you, you know, kind of fail terribly and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. I was tweeting about this great entrepreneurship thing. Right. And that's the kind of theme there. in, you know, twitterx.com. I prefer what you kind of thing that you see on LinkedIn.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
or litigation or any of those things. And I was like, no, no, no, I actually want to go build things. And so I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up other than, and maybe I still don't know. But what I evolved to is I normally have about a two to three year plan that's iterating. And that tends to be what I do.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, Twitter is anonymous. It allows a lot of bots. It encourages, like it says, freedom of speech. Like if you're tweeting a rape threat, that's fine. It's freedom of speech. You're allowed to do whatever you want. Right. LinkedIn is you're tied to a named profile that's tied to your identity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
If you reported for saying something that's frankly uncivil, doesn't even have to be as bad as a rape threat. It's just uncivil. Like you're cautioned. Right. It's removed. And you're saying, hey, by the way, that's not fair for the platform. And if you keep doing that, we'll remove your ability to post. Right. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Look, I think there are... It's important to allow – one of the things I think that online platforms give us is the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. Like I think it's OK 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.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so you go, OK, 1,000 people get vaccinated. Or call it 100,000 people get vaccinated. And 50 of them have adverse conditions to the vaccine, right? That happens out of 100,000, right? But 1,000 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, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because by the way, you were 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I am allowed legally on X.com to say vaccines are evil plots, right, to control the American people, to sell drugs and make drug companies profitable and blah, blah, blah. And I can sell that. And you see all that rampant on Twitter, rampant, you know, in talk radio and, you know, and all the other things. You can say that. That's a problem, right? I'm okay with people saying it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
What I'm not okay with is promoting it and having it have broad reach.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 yeah look i am um i was on the support people being able to say lab leak yeah 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 reach yeah but there should be
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And look, how do we make decisions as a society of what expertise, like 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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. Now, that doesn't mean that even when all the experts say that's completely wrong, you should say you can't post it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Silicon Valley is a network of a generative platform. So one of the things that I have learned to think about is networks amplify productivity. That's not just as we get to why it is. I conceptualized and founded LinkedIn. But it's think in terms of networks. It's one of the reasons why cities are such – Like basically, if you really look at economies, it's city regions.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So the LinkedIn principles are not, you must say something that's scientifically true. It's you must say something that's civil.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I sat with a- Well, by the way, I generally think we agree on the constraints of the law, but I also agree on, I also think importantly civilly. And civilly means? Well, like no threat of violence.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, because the preaching of the church was odd.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes, 100%. I'm strongly in defense of that. Yeah. Right. I just think that... And like, so, you know, I don't mind... 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, what I'm going to do philanthropically.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I strongly prefer that those criticisms be backed with some knowledge and intelligence and some good argument point of view. And I really want it to be a civil discourse.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So the classic thing that humans make in reasoning is they go A or B. And your answer is both. So there's responsibility on both sides. 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 contributory here? Of course you can. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 Milley should be executed when he is the Joint Chief of Staff's general. That's a threat of violence. That should be removed, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I'm always open as an investor to interesting ideas. Here we are in a business podcast, so I'm always looking at stuff. Look, I think 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And it's because the city region creates a network, right? It's a network of – it could be suppliers and all the rest, but also talent and capital and knowledge and communication and strategic lenses onto the world. And so Silicon Valley has been – like people go, oh, I'm a genius. It's like, no, no, I'm in Silicon Valley, right? And that really helps. And so being born in Stanford –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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's only going to be at the time it was like Friendster, then it was MySpace, then it was Facebook. It was like, look, there's only going to be that. There's never going to be those.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 is multiple ones. And I think there will be more.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I think they're going to have more social networks and they're going to fit into different people's lives and they're going to have different community cultures for them. And so, And I think not only will they get multimodal, but they'll use AI in different ways and so forth.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So when I look to a future of social networks now. To give a little bit more of a specific answer, I tend to think social networks need to both have individuals as customers and societies as customers. So you need to think about that balance. You need to think about both in how you're designing them. And that doesn't mean no freedom of speech and autocratic.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because I actually think more or less you should allow people to post whatever they want as long as it's civil. And if you want to choose to have an anonymous social network, that's fine. There's a definite rule for – especially when you get to places where the government is oppressive. Go to Iran or Russia or something else. It's like, well, anonymity is important for saving your life. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But on the other hand, you should also be thinking about like, OK, what does this mean to society? And part of what we want in media networks is we want to be collectively learning. So if I'm posting that 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And do you think social networks have been a net positive for society? I think broadly. Look, it doesn't mean that they don't have some challenges. Like people criticize Facebook, for example, right? But actually, in fact, a billion people get on it every day. They share their experiences, pictures, lives with loved ones, friends, et cetera. All of that's very, very positive.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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? But, you know, that doesn't mean it can't also be improved and fixed over time.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
gave me this set of different, you know, kind of perspectives. One, technology is a lens into the future. Another one is, as an individual, you can go create a technology or a technology company that can be a lever that can move the world, right? And that an individual, you know, from anywhere can kind of do that. And all of those things were part of the luck of being born at Stanford. The luck.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah, we co-founded Inflection.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, it did a commercial deal with them. It's still going as a company.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
All right, because Mustafa moved over. Yeah, he moved over because he wanted to do a consumer agent, and Inflection is doing B2B software sales now. What is your take on AI?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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. To show as well as tell that AI is not just artificial intelligence, it's amplification intelligence. It gives us superpowers.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 when a lot of people get access to to a new general purpose technology. the transformation of society that comes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And it's like printing press or electricity or cars or mobile phones. It's this amazing 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 hells now just get amplified.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And it's the same thing like when a car was created, a doctor could now 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. Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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. It's going to destroy human learning and knowledge.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's going to disable the current people who are the custodians of knowledge, which are mostly priests, in society from being able to control the flow of information. We're going to have all this misinformation, et cetera, et cetera. Now, by the way, you don't have a scientific revolution without the printing press, right? So there's always this fear.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And you say, is the fear completely unwarranted? Well, look, human societies are bad at new general purpose technologies, right? So with the printing press, we had 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
There's going to be challenges and reordering and social 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. I have 100% confidence that the other side, this will be enormously amazing super agency. What I want to do is manage the transition as best we can.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Now, people say, well, shouldn't you manage the 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, et cetera. And we don't set the clock. Like, there's no one group that sets the clock.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 drumbeat for the globe for centuries? The answer is Europe embraced the Industrial Revolution robustly and early. It's part of what made the British Empire. And so that clock is set by Europe. different human beings all running at it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 pause. Look, it's a simple thing you look at.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 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?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. Well, you don't choose where you're born. But a lot of people were born there and they didn't go on to do the things that you did. People like to tell stories of manifest destinates because I am great. I would have been great anywhere that I was, right? And it's self-delusional. I mean, yes, I think I'm smart. Yes, I think I'm hardworking. Yes, I think I'm strategic.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Oh, that's a good question.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, it depends. 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 1,000. I can tell you stories where we've created AIs with IQs of 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 of like idiot savants.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 at a human being and say, explain to me a mixture of experts, creation of AI within AI. What does that mean? It's a technique by which modern AIs are created that have different kind of expertise roles in the combination. Like ChatGPT is created this way that create their output.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's a particular technical definition for the way of creating a world-class AI model. Then I say, okay, compare a mixture of experts. So use only thousands of people who understand how to do that. And I say, okay, compare that to 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Then I say, okay, compare those two to modern oceanography, right? Okay, now we're at zero human beings. There's no human beings going to do this, but I can go to GBD-4 and I can run this. GBD-4, because it's ingested a trillion words of knowledge, can write the comparisons between these three things. Because it knows all three. Because it knows all three.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's a superpower that no human being has. We have AI superpower today. But of course, no one's alarmed about that because they're like, oh, that's a great amplification intelligence. That really helps me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I think there's a very good chance that what happens is that what we're creating with all of every current AI technique that's under development is these amazing savants that are these great co-pilots. And that's what we're creating. Not Terminator robots, not super intelligences. There's a possibility of that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I can address the existential risk questions around the possibility of that because people think about that poorly. But I think the likelihood is that we're going to be having these kind of co-pilots that give us these informational GPSs, 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So you say one worry is transition. And another worry is whenever 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes, I think I have skills that are rare in human condition. But any great achievement also has luck. Right. And I can point it in any companies. I can point it at any individuals. And for example, one of the basic luck is like I had exposure and connection to Silicon Valley.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So you want to build them in the right hands first. That's all. I mean, look, there will be cost to it. There's never. Look, electricity, essential for human society. It does electrocute people, right? It does do things in the wrong hands too, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 in terms of impact? It might be, right? Do you think it is? Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I think there is, 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?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's the fact that it's agentic technology. Which means? It's creating agents that can operate on their own. We already have that, by the way. You can be running an agent with a connection to the internet on your computer and then can go buy stuff for you. You can do that today. It's doable. You have agent – it's just a question of what the shape is. So it's agentic. It's cognitive.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like it's very strange that we have a technology now that we can talk to in various ways. And so you have people mistaken going, ooh, 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
By the way, there are conscious things that can't – there's mute people and the fact that they can't tell you they're conscious. So conscious is 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And we know no depth of reason of neuroscience and other kinds of things about why that is. It's not just a human species parochialist view. And figuring out under what circumstance it would be conscious is a very interesting question that we need to figure out. Because it won't be that it has gray matter. It'll be something else. Or maybe we'll figure this out. So that's new.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
If I didn't have that, the technology destiny or the technology achievements I've done wouldn't have been able to do those or wouldn't have been able to do those the amazing way that I did them.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But by the way, the fact that we're facing a new challenge is not itself a new challenge.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
The basic answer is absolutely yes. And it'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?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 Some of the things are still not useful for it all.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like when I sat down to ask GBD4, how would Reid 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 market research tests that. And it's like, eh.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Let's go find a great entrepreneur with a great idea, right? And it's best when the idea is something you haven't thought of and few other people have thought of too, right, is the way to do it. So it got it completely wrong from how I – how Reid Hoffman, how I invest in AI and what I do very successfully. Now, he said, well, then it's useless for venture capital.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I was like, no, no, because I kept experimenting with it. And I said, okay. I fit in an entrepreneur's plan and I said, how would I do due diligence on this plan? And it came back with a pretty good list. It was like, yeah, yeah. One, I was absolutely planning on doing that. Two, I was absolutely. Three, yeah, I could see why you'd think that I was doing it. That's not important.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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. So it is today useful to everybody. You can use it for things that you care about today. So go start playing with it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I love Ethan Mollick'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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's part of the reason I wrote Impromptu, et cetera, which is 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 and you can say, counter this argument. Take the role of critic. Argue against me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And you can see it will immediately give you 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. 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. Make that argument.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But that's just the beginning. You can also say, like, for example, if I go, okay, I'm making this argument for 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, et cetera. It's happened a number of different times. how would a historian of technology analyze my argument?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
How would they criticize my argument? And then you get – 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. Why? So one of the things is Silicon Valley. So Silicon Valley has built itself up of multiple – the reason it's called Silicon Valley is because it started with silicon. It's now software valley. Silicon Valley almost never invests in silicon anymore. Silicon being the chips. Yes, being the chips, yes. So now really it's much more software valley.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's like we invest billions and billions of dollars every year into new software companies. So we went from silicon through networking equipment like Cisco, 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 2. Now it's AI.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so the principal thing is when you get this new general purpose technology – 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. So it opens up these things that weren't possible before.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But, but you have to think so. Um, and I see you have a few of my books there. Um, My very first book, The Startup Review, which came from the commencement speech I gave at my high school, the Putney School in Vermont. Because I was like, what do I say to a bunch of 17-year-olds, right? And I was like, well, be the entrepreneur of your own life.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so, like, the internet's a good proxy to the wave we have now with AI. Then it also, by the way, makes a massive transformative force on all existing businesses. So you say, well, I had a business of selling, you know, kind of e-commerce and doing, you know, mail order catalogs. Well, now there's e-commerce, right? So it transforms all of these businesses.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But these kinds of things. AI is the next one that affects all of them. So you have Greenfield, 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, yes. Now- Should you go try to build your own frontier model, which is a $10 billion computer?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's a hard amount of capital for startups. No, no, no. Try to figure out the degrees you use frontier models from OpenAI or Microsoft or Google or others as ways of doing this. But you still may build your own model. Lots of startup companies are building their own models. I invested in this customer service company called Sierra that Brett Taylor is doing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 I have a whole set of theories about what kinds of things will be really big. And some of my theories will be right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I've also discovered some other people who have amazing theories. And that's one of the things I really think I and we at Greylock love to invest in.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Start building it. If you want to, if you can, If you're technical, download an open source model, Lama, Mistral, other, start playing with it. What if you're not technical? Well, generally speaking, 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Too slow. No, no, speed matters. Speed matters in startups. But by the way, because we tend to so much lionize what is usually the man versus the person, most of these people are men, the individual, startups succeed because of their initial team. That's part of the hiring point we were talking about earlier.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so generally speaking, if you ask me would I rather invest in an individual founder or two to three co-founders, I'd rather invest in two to three co-founders. So going and finding a co-founder is a great thing. Because by the way, your throw weight, your capability weight is so much better when you do that. And so Mark Zuckerberg had Dustin Muscovitz, Adam D'Angelo, Chris Hughes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
One is, Reid, 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And what that means, there's a chapter in there that says the bad advice you're usually given is just follow your passion. And the problem is your passion might be very passionate, but do you have a strategic advantage there? Is that something you can do?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's a really important part of how things get created.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Suskefer, amazing. And they had a focused, bold vision, which is, yes, Google has invented the baseline of the attention-based transformer, but they don't realize that it's just scale, right? 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 great.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 and We program a scale computing learning system so it learns. And that only becomes available once you have scale compute. So you need the internet. You need the cloud.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 them my business card. That's not particularly useful.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But 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?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Who are the people that I should be trying to bring into my network that I have a project that I'm creating? And how do I meet those people? Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so applying the rules of entrepreneurship, yes, of course you have to be passionate about what you're doing because if you're not passionate, you can never be world class unless you're passionate about what you're doing. But that's not the only thing. And so you look at, okay, what are the market realities? What's the market? What does the competition look like?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, I don't think politeness and etiquette are really particularly good competitive advantages. I'm not saying the 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. I think building a network, like entrepreneurship is a team sport. It is not an individual sport. It's a team sport.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So you need to be building your team. But you've seen entrepreneurs be successful that were bad at that, right? 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Now, for example, you can get enough initial success going and 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And that's part of the reason you have the tropes is I want missionary, not mercenary cultures. Because the missionaries, 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, oh, they're all missionary cultures. No, no, there's mercenary cultures that have gotten big too.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
How do you define mercenary in this context? All I care about is making money. 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's bullshit though?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
There are bullshit missions 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 the Silicon Valley TV show on HBO kind of satired this in a particular way. It was like, I am creating a reverse double encryption system to change the world. And yeah, there is BS there. Just like any other –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
large-scale human activity, there's a lot of BS in different places.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 that are changing the world. So you have to say, I'm LinkedIn. This is how I'm going to change the world. I'm OpenAI. This is how I'm going to change the world. I'm Airbnb. This is how I'm going to change the world. Because humans are emotional story animals. Exactly.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And within those, what can your aspirations be? And there's a whole chapter on that in that book because that's, by the way, similar to how you plot out if you're founding a company. If you're founding a company, you have to think the same way about this, but think about it as an individual. So if you're in Cape Town – There are many great things you could do.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
insanely great ambition, right? I'm shooting for the moon. And, you know, sometimes literally, but most often, 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 entrepreneurship's a team sport, not an individual sport, and I have a plan for how I'm
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
bringing in like all of different elements, capital, talent, et cetera. Like, for example, one of the ways that I interview executives is I say, who are the three to five, the five, I love it, but minimum three world-class people who've worked for you before? And I'm going to call them and ask them what it's like working for you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, if it really matters, I will then reference check those three people on are they actually world class. Because only hire people who are going to hire world class people who play it. Now, similarly, who are the world class people who think you're world class as an entrepreneur?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
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 world-class people think that this person is world-class because they're edgy. 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.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
No, no, no. Like having someone and say, oh, that person's hard driving and they're difficult. That could be a very strong positive. I've invested in 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.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like when I started SocialNet, one of my connections from Apple – dropped me, who had started doing startups two years before, dropped me a one-line email that said, welcome to where 15 minutes is the difference between exaltation and terror. I'm going to change the world. Oh, shit, I'm going to die. Right? So resilience is super important because it is a dogfight. And multiple times,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Now, if you say, what I'm going to do is create a search company to compete with Google, don't do that. I mean, unless you really have some real unique thing. Because remember, you're competing with this intensely powerful, not just the company, but the network of Silicon Valley, which attracts millions.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, oh God, we're going to die. This is going to be worth zero. Can you spot resilience in someone? 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 respond to risk? Are they trying to persuade themselves that the thing that they're doing is zero risk?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
No, no, I'm guaranteed to succeed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah, because then if they've gone through the difficult things and they've been resilient in there, that's likely, not 100%, that gives a good probability they'll be resilient. Like traumatize people. Well, it depends on how they respond to the trauma. What did you learn from it? How did you respond to it?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because generally speaking, you need to be able to convert negatives into positives on the entrepreneurial journey. So it's like, look, that was really bad. And I learned from it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So part of the reason I wrote Startup Review was that the advice that universities frequently give is – You know, follow your passion. First, do the things that you're very passionate about. Oh, you want to go volunteer in Bhutan? Do it now, it tends to be. And it's terrible advice, right? That actually is the wrong end for the advice.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
The right thing – and it doesn't mean don't follow your passion. But the right thing is to start with how do I get to a place where I have established myself and have like the ability to – like economically, the platform to move. It could be enough wealth to be – to no longer need a salary. That was my own personal goal. But it also could be the I'm well-known.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I have a network of contacts of people who would want to hire me and so forth. And now I'm going to go spend a year volunteering in Bhutan because I really want to do that. So the answer is go be vigorous about the thing that matters for your entire life early. And take the big risks. Yeah, take the big risk early. Now, you might say, I want to be a doctor. It's not a particular risk. It's fine.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But then go to medical school. Establish yourself as a medical professional before you do that. So whatever thing that is the thing that you think gives you the platform for resilience in your later life, Go establish that now. And by the way, that's part of the thing of like wealthy. But wealthy, by the way, can be measured in I have a bank balance, right, or on stock equity portfolio.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But wealthy can also be the I have a great network of people who want to work with me, who want to hire me, who value my talents, right? So this whole range for things. But go establish that. first. And that can be take big risk. By the way, some people say, I want to take as few big risks as possible in my whole life because that's who I am. Fine. But go establish yourself first.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
amazing talent from around the world, capital, knowledge, and they're all sharing it with each other at a very fast clock speed. And so wherever you are, that doesn't work. Now, you do think about, okay, what can the thing I do? So, for example, you know, I love podcasts, as you know. I, you know, master scale, possible, et cetera.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Now, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you want to be an entrepreneur, then like, for example, it's like, okay, maybe you shouldn't start a business at 18, but maybe you should go join a startup. Start learning it. Start building the network. And it's roughly build the network is the broad thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, build the skills and get – like frequently doing a startup is very difficult economically. Usually you start with no salary, et cetera. Like having some reserves is a good thing to have.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, network is hard to lose if you really authentically built it. Right? It can be lost, though. It can be. But it's very hard. It's kind of like a nuclear bomb kind of thing. I mean, it's like, look, you may, like, one particular person on you may have a real difference of opinion. You know, you may move and then get fired. And a lot of your network is that.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But by the way, even if you've gotten fired, if you've got a couple people at that company that you had good relationship with, they may still be part of your network.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Soft assets are very important. People under-prioritize them. They tend to say, oh, I should take the job that offers me a 5% higher salary. And the answer is almost always that's not the criteria. that you should be looking at. Even 30% higher salary is not the criteria you should be looking at. You should be looking at where are my soft assets? Where's my knowledge? Where's my skills?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Where's my network? Interesting. Because the soft assets are what compound generally to the much larger. Like the fact that you took a job with a 30% higher salary is not necessarily the predictor that you're going to get the job with a 300% higher salary. It's the soft assets that are likely to get to the 300% economic outcome.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, you have to evolve it. So for example, you can, when you're in your 20s, you can say, well, I'm going to I'm going to take more risk. Like I can always take the jobs that have zero salary or lower salary because I'm going to live in the house with five of my friends. You know, we're going to have beans and toast for dinner, you know, as ways of doing it because I can take those risks now.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And then when you're 30, it's like, well, maybe I'm planning on having a life partner and being in an apartment or a house with them. And so it changes as you go through.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so I had the delight of doing interviews with Toby Lutka or Daniel Ek. And what you do is you look at part of their success, Shopify, Spotify, is how do I run my strategy from here? Like how is it that I'm competitive and can win a global field marketplace that Silicon Valley doesn't do?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Like, it's fine. You can do startups and have it, but it's a complete startup.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Probably a little.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But maybe worth it. on balance okay what is happiness to you because you've got the money you've got the success you've got the reputation you've got the the cv what is happiness for me is going through life with people i love and building great things but like by the way if i failed at everything i built and i was still going through life with people i loved great why is that so important
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because I think part of the meaning of life is how you contribute to the people around you. It's like, again, sorry, I keep referring to Startup Review, but it was my first book as advice to young people, right? It's the I and the we. Like, do things for yourself, do things for me, do things for we, right? And I learn from people. I get delight from people.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I feel meaningful as I contribute to people's lives. And obviously, you know, there's people immediately around me. There's people in the whole world. I mean, like, you know, LinkedIn, a billion people have signed up for it. Like, there is, like, that's part of what I think is essential in the meaning of life. And for me, especially. Yeah.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Oh, um, I probably thought like it was important to be top of your class. Not that it was important to just do well, but it's important to be top. Right. And what I've come to realize is, you know, there's 8 billion people, right? Nobody is the best at everything. Some people delude themselves that they are, but nobody is. You could be the best at something.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, being the best at something, that's a good thing. But by the way, to really be obsessive about being the absolute best at that thing, well, maybe you're actually... You're less investing in other things. It's a little bit like your earlier question about managing.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You say, I'm an oracle, and I'll tell you you'll be four times as economically successful if you're a shit to the people you work with. Meh. No.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
For me, all the people around me are people I learned from. And that includes Michelle. Like I learned all kinds of things from Michelle. Michelle and I are actually both in some ways very similar people. deep belief in ethics, deep belief in the importance of being a good person. And in some ways, very different. Like I'm Mr. Scale, she's anti-scale, right?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
She thinks she's fine with my doing the scale things, but like she wants to go connect with local people in the community, right? Right? She's like, look, I'm volunteering at the senior center. Will you come volunteer with me? No, I don't do that. I'm happy to give money to the senior center, but that's not what I do. But that's her life. And I learned from that. Because by the way, life is both.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Life is both here and here. So it's one of the balance of different people. She is intensely going and she's taking this kind of, call it Quaker Buddhist approach to creating art, right? And that's just amazing. Like I love being on that journey with her, right? And that's her journey, right? But I learned from it.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And those are the kinds of things that are, you know, part of what I think the meaning of life is, is how we learn from each other.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so, for example, one of the things that – they're different in the cases because like, for example, in Spotify, that was, hey, I can get the record labels – to give me a chance to start doing the business by doing just Scandinavia, prove it, and then expand it. Whereas those record labels, the capital to do it in the US would never happen. And hence, you have Spotify.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Interesting. I've never been asked that question. It depends. I do think... Like one of the things that I treat as a very relevant fact is how someone treats the people around them.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. So like if a person is good to the people around them, then that's a person I am more likely to, much more, much, much more likely to want to go through. Because like a startup is like 10 years. Like I have passed on investments that I've literally referred to, and I won't name them because it's, But I've literally passed on investments that I thought this is going to make a ton of money.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And I've told my partners at Greylock, hey, look, this entrepreneur and this business, this is going to make a lot of money. If any of you want to do it, great. And I will support you. But I don't want to invest. I don't want to spend the 10 years of this entrepreneur. Right. Because it's just, you know, life's too short. Right. And I was right. Those businesses made a ton of money, right?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But it was, yeah, no, no thanks.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Not necessarily. Okay. Blitzscaling is a strategic response to global competition. Okay. Right? And so now there are certain industries where global competition is the norm, not the exception. You're building an internet property, right? Right. Or mostly like much software, not all software, but most like many software companies.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
In which case – and by the way, if you can get away with not blitzscaling, it's much better because blitzscaling is spending resources inefficiently to get to market size ahead of your competition, right? So like a classic example is like Uber would – Interview somebody, offer them a job, and then say, who are the three best people at your company that you worked with?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And send job offers to those three people without even interviewing them, right? Because that's blitzscaling, right? That's I'm going super, super fast. And that was a blitzkilling technique I learned from Uber. I was like, oh, yep, put that one in the tool chest for when you need to do that, right? Because outpacing the competition –
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
When you're in Glengarry Glen Ross markets, which is first prize Cadillac, second prize steak knives, third prize you're fired, it's the game.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And it's one of the things like when you and I were chatting a little bit before we started the podcast, like one of the places that things that places like London and the UK and Europe need to learn is when the competition is global, it's not the people down the street. It's the fiercest competitors around the world. And Silicon Valley has fierce competitors. China has fierce competitors.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You have to have a theory of how you're playing that game against those, the fiercest competitors in the world. And so blitzscaling is in part, like this is stuff I've learned from Silicon Valley and from the stuff I've done in China to say, like when you're in a global competitive business and you're trying to establish it and you have competitors who are doing this,
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And in Shopify, it's, hey, the Silicon Valley tends to go, oh, e-commerce is over its own by Amazon. We're not going to do any of that as a platform. Maybe this thing or that thing, but we're not going to do it as a platform. Well, but they're wrong and I can do a long place.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I think there's two things. One is you need to enable some of your company's ability to blitz scale as much as you can, right? Okay. So, because if the company, if company one is not blitz scaling and is competing against company two that is blitz scaling, company one's going to lose. I don't think we've got any AI companies that are blitz scaling. Company one is going to lose.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Company two might lose too, right? But company one is guaranteed to lose and company two is not guaranteed to lose, right? So if you're competing against companies that are blitzscaling, you must also be blitzscaling. It's part of the reason I wrote the book. It's part of the reason I give talks.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's part of the reason I help Sherry Kutu stand up the Scaling Institute here in London, et cetera, et cetera. Now, you say, we can't. We're not going to be able to. Well, then choose areas. where the competitors are not blitzscaling.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So it depends on two things. One, most centrally, competition. Do they need to be outpacing their competition?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah. But if yes, then, and especially if their competitors are blitzscaling, then absolutely yes. if the committers are not blitzscaling, it's called blitzscaling, enable us to outpace them. Because by the way, it does involve moving so fast, you're taking risks and hiring and capital raise and expenditures.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And then once I get to this network effect of a whole bunch of, you know, small and medium businesses doing their own, you know, kind of websites and e-commerce, then I am the platform for that. So it's kind of a long under the radar approach. strategy where you're not directly competing with Silicon Valley companies.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You're doing marketing that you would, like your Uber, you're launching in 20 cities at the same time. It's whoa, you know, et cetera. Because that does add risks, right? But you're saying those risks that it adds are less likely of a risk than not blitzscaling. That's kind of the trade-off. So competition is a central reason for doing it.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the way, most of the times where you can raise capital blitzscaling is because if it's a Glen Gary, Glen Ross market where first prize is Cadillac, second prize is steak knives, well then, generally speaking, investors are willing to invest at premium prices, give a lot of capital, et cetera, et cetera, because they'll go, we agree.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
that you're going to get a great market position if you blitz scale. And by the way, part of the problem is investors are not always right. But if some investors are willing to do it, and if they're going to do it in your competitors, then you absolutely have to do it if your competitor is going to do it. So competition is the first thing.
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
The second thing is, do you need to get to critical mass scale? So like your payments industry. And this is one of the things I learned at PayPal, which is basically payments businesses are dead unless they have at least a billion dollars of – you know, transactional volume through them per year. And that was back in 2002 when I was looking at it. I'm sure it's higher now, right?
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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Maybe it's 10 billion, whatever. But it's like, if you don't get to that scale, you're dead. You're irrelevant. So getting to that scale and getting through the highly unprofitable, getting the scale as fast as possible really matters.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so that's one of the places where you say, well, none of our competitors are doing it, but we should still do it because getting that critical mass and scale really matters. And so that's another time. And so that would be – I don't think that's probably the matcha company. That probably doesn't need – but those are the lessons you look at. But it's not blitzscaling for its own sake.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's one of the mistakes that people make when they go blitzscaling. Oh, we're doing it to blitzscales. No, no, you blitzscale as a set of strategic techniques in response to a market, in response to competition.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes, yes. And so that may be irrelevant. That may be the relevant thing of why it's a Glengarry... I haven't looked at the market at all, but a Glengarry, Guerlain, Ross market, a first-price Cadillac, second-price Staken Eyes, maybe that's because of brand establishment, in which case you have to be number one.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And by the time the Silicon Valley companies go, oh, there's a managerial opportunity, you've got it. So those are plays that you can do if you're smart and strategic. But you have to know, like, Toby Lutka, like, is deeply informed about what's going on in Silicon Valley. Like when he's charting a strategy, he's aware of that. He's got connections. He visits. I mean, I'm a friend of his.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So good news for you is I happen to know that 10 Downing Street is paying attention to this issue because I had meetings with them this week on that. There's things that they will be announcing, which I can't pre-announce. Okay. Right. But they know this is important and they're working on it. Okay. Yeah. And they're consulting, you know, people.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
The first is – and they're related. The first is – look, just because you don't have 100% chance of succeeding doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, right? So like when I said earlier, when we were talking about like, look, when I started LinkedIn, I thought we had a most 20, 25% chance of being successful, right? That's fine, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So, as a matter of fact, what you should be doing is aligning the fact that there is risks in what you're doing with the reason why you'll have less competition, while you have a higher runway before the competition intensifies.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Because part of it is if you have a theory, like we talked about this on LinkedIn, about why other people see that there is – like they think there's a 0% chance you succeed and you think there's a 20%, 25% chance you succeed. That's precisely – that risk window is your opportunity. So think of risk not as terrifying. Think of risk as potential opportunity. That's one.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And we've talked about threads of it, but thinking of it as opportunity. Because you see something other people don't see. You see the risks, but you have an idea for why that risk is something that you may be able to win on and they won't. So with LinkedIn, that was, hey, I have an idea about how the network will grow even though it's not valuable until there's a million people in the network.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's where that risk becomes an opportunity. So the second one also around risk is – Have a plan B. Have plans B. Understand that you have an idea and you risk you're playing it. And if it's not working out, how do you pivot? Don't think, oh, the whole thing is going all in and I'm just going to be roadkill if it doesn't work. No, no.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
That's the whole point of the reason I have this framework of ABZ planning, which is in the Startup View. By the way, Startup View is Advice I Give Entrepreneurs. shrunk to advice to individuals, right? Every single chapter applies to entrepreneurs and their companies, right? And like the ABC planning is don't just have a plan A where like, oh, if it doesn't work, I'm dead.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You're like, well, that's a bad strategy. Like sometimes you'll do it. Sometimes it's the only thing I have. I love this plan A. It's the only thing I have. And the only way to do it is to go all in and it doesn't work, I'm dead. Okay. It's very scary, right? When I do entrepreneurship, I have plans B, I have a plan Z, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I have thought through not every, because you can't think through everything, but maneuverability and how to measure, am I on track or not? Am I increasing my probability of success or not? Am I increasing my ability to get to the moon or not? And be doing risk management, smart risks, take smart risks, right? That's the thing, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So when I get around to advising companies I've invested in or friends that now is time to quit or now is time to sell, you try to sell, of course, but sometimes if you can't sell, that means quit, right? Is your new plans, your new plans A are much worse than your previous plans A. Your new plan A is much worse. Because you've pivoted, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And your new plan A is a much worse plan than your plan A. That's when you get to your plan Z. It's like plan Z is I quit, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And that's part of, like, if you're doing a global software play, you have to be aware that your competition is global.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, it could be you have a much better plan A, right? Like, okay, this plan A, that's okay. And then by the way, this is the part of the difference that I tell people between should I found a company or should I join one? It's like, well, one of the problems you have as a founder is you can't really quit. You're with the business, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's very dishonorable to quit before, you know, the business gets to whatever its designee is. Now, sometimes you're fired, fine. But you're, you know, as a founder, you're like, people have come in and joined us because of me being here and doing this. And I'm here until the business gets to a point where it's a massive growing concern. Now, once the company's public, you can go do something.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Or once the company is sold, you can go do something. Or once the company is like profitable and really strong, you can go do something. But you're there until then as a founder. As an employee, you're signing up for what I'm the alliance, I call a tour of beauty, which is I'm signed up to make a big difference in the company But I'm not here till the end.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And so as your employee, you can go, look, have I delivered against my tour of duty? Great. And at that point, a better opportunity comes along. So, you know, Matt Kohler, who, you know, now lives here in London as a partner at Benchmark. Like I recruited him out of McKinsey into LinkedIn. Three years in, he comes to me and says, hey, I've been offered this opportunity at Facebook.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I'm like, look, Matt, I love working with you. You're a close friend of mine, et cetera, et cetera. You should take that job at Facebook. That is the right next step for you, right? And because we're close and so forth, I think he probably wouldn't have taken the job if I hadn't said it. But like LinkedIn resembles my brain. I want people doing their best work, their best opportunities.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And Facebook gave him a great opportunity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. That's our Greylock Series B deck.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Oh, did he? Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah. Well, it's also my third company. I had SocialNet. I had PayPal. PayPal pivoted a lot. Right. And so I had a good sense of both how to be long-term and short-term when I started LinkedIn. And what is the key to being long-term in this regard? Well, you know, you're going to transform the industry. Oh, and what do you mean by key?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, you're thinking about, like, if I'm successful at landing on the beach, at expanding into the market, how is it that I'm going to be an industry-transforming company? Like, what's the thing that changes millions of customers' lives? You know, or if it's an enterprise company, you know, whatever. Like, lots of companies within multiple industries. How am I...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
an essential part of how they change the way they live, they work, they do business.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah, I knew that was all going to be... From before this deck, I knew that was possible. I have a probability for it. Now, what things surprised me... People build dating services on top of it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes. Well, I'm in a relationship, so maybe you haven't seen it. Yeah, but they're like, well, some people want to be dating people who have professional – like my dating set is I want people who have good CVs. Okay. I don't want LinkedIn to ever build that business. Fine if you're going to go build that business. No problem. I mean, and like, for example, like one of the – like this was, I think –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
A few months after we raised money from Greylock on the stack, one of the surprising uses is, like, I never had envisioned this use case to looking for a job. An engineer wanted to move to Denver from Silicon Valley. And so he didn't know what companies to look at. So this engineer went to LinkedIn and searched for profiles like his.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
then looked at what companies those people worked at, then decided which companies to go look for jobs at. It was brilliant. It's a very good way of saying, hey, I'm interested in going and working here. what kinds of companies that are interesting employ people like me?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Well, so I co-founded inflection. Yeah. So I'm definitely doing the co-founding thing. Right. Um, And, you know, I anticipate that will happen again. But will I be the CEO? It's not impossible. But it's kind of like because I have these amazing people like Mustafa Suleiman, who is the CEO that I can be the co-founder with, that's great.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So I think self-awareness is generally a very good thing for all human beings. And you still have to be irrationally ambitious, which is, I think, very important. And so sometimes self-awareness and just immense ambition sometimes don't go together. It's better when they do, but that's fine. What you do have to do is be very aware of what your competitive space looks like.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Then you need to build the network and skills by which you're working with other people who are the CEOs.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Only because I care about impact. So I don't – like I care that I've actually made a big difference to the ongoing story of humanity. But I don't care that – I mean, look, it's nice. Like I certainly don't mind that people go, oh, Reid Hoffman did these amazing things. It feels good. But I care much more about the substance. Like did I do really good things? Was I a very positive name? Now, I'm –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I'm not indicating I have no ego. You know, the appreciation for having done that, that feels good. But I don't do it for the appreciation. I do it for the thing. So do you make decisions based on legacy at all? Only by impact.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Did you decide not to have children? We did. And it was a joint decision, of course. And I think it was partially that we realized we're godparents to a number of children. Actually, there's three kids here in London that we're godparents to. And there's all kinds of delights in being a godparent, which is you show up and spend an evening and get to participate in the kids' lives.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
And then when it's like, oh, Time to change the diaper.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I'm sure there are.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yeah, if you'd asked me what book I was going to first write when I was an undergraduate, it was a book on friendship. I still want to write that book. I have been taking notes for 30 years. On friendship? On friendship, yep. What would that book be about? Friendship. But specifically, what part of friendship? Everything. Look, there's so few books on friendship.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You go into a bookstore and you say, where is your section on relationships? And every bookstore will go, oh, over here, right? Relationship with capital R, romantic relationship. Say, okay, where's your section on friendship? No section on friendship. Do you have a book on friendship? The answer is maybe we have one.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You're doing intense things with startups. Part of the reason I actually think you should work with friends, you should hire friends. This is kind of a little bit, you know, counter common wisdom is because you want to be spending your time with friends. And that does add difficulties, right? But you want to spend your time with your friends. That's really good.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Yes.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Intense disagreements on politics.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But we also met with, you know, as undergraduates, you know, in a... Like, I knew he was extremely right and he knew I was left. You know, I've become much more business-oriented than I was as undergraduates and he's become much more libertarian. But... You know, disagreements is a good thing. Can be a good thing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's an interesting thing. It's an interesting – if someone has an answer to that question, it suggests that they're not being a particularly good life partner. I think I have been and will continue to be a good life partner, so I actually don't have an answer to that question.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So just about everybody who succeeds in a substantial way is good at being competitive. And if you're blind to your competition, you're kind of hosed. If you're successful, it's just because you're lucky. And that's part of what I was referring to earlier in luck. If you start a business where you have the luck where –
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Does she misunderstand you in any way? No. I don't know if it's a misunderstanding because we put a lot of energy into understanding each other. I mean like for example, we've seen marriage counselors together and not because we're going – we're like fighting about something.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It's because helping – having a third party help you understand the other person well is like actually in fact a very good thing. Find someone who's really good and do that. I do that with my partner. Yeah. It's great. You should do it. It shouldn't be because we're arguing. It should be because – We are putting lots of energy into understanding each other.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
Of course. And by the way, I can point out things that... I have learned about her. Like, for example, like the local community is what really matters to her. Right. I didn't really understand that 10 years ago. Now I understand that. Right. I'm sure she has those kind of similar things about me.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But like the moment it occurs to me that there's something she doesn't understand about me, it comes up at a dinner party. you know, not too many weeks in the future because that's part of how we come to our dinners, right? We come to our dinners as if one of us is like, you know, I had this thought. We want to have those dinners.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
You try to have a really good relationship. You try to be as... Like, I think you should, in friendship and in relationships, you should try to identify the things in yourself that the other person may find challenging, and you should bring them up in advance. Right? That is a very good way to build deep quality friendships and relationships.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
So, for example, in startups, Michelle knew that about me. So when we had planned our wedding, you know, we were doing a small, you know, thing with, you know, just basically justice to the peace and so forth. We planned our wedding and it was very early days of LinkedIn. And I came back home and I said, we really need to delay it. Right. And we delayed it a couple of weeks. Right.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
It was like, we really need to delay. I'm doing this thing at LinkedIn right now. We really need to have it. I don't have time for that. And Michelle didn't go, ah. She went, OK. Let's make it work. Because I'd been clear with her about what the startup journey was like. Right. I had experience with it before. Now, sometimes it's like we didn't know it before.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
But like, look, I'm really committed to this. And it's really important to me that I do that. Well, that should be kind of life partner things.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
I hope not.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!
blown up right and what about this dealing with the stress when you come home something i've always struggled with is if work is stressful when i come home i can be absent and then you have to transition to this mode of partner but my head is still thinking oh my god cash flow this or whatever well occasionally that's one of the things that michelle go like you know i think you're not being fully present right like that's one of the one of the kind of as or keywords between us i think you're not being fully present and that's the stop thinking about whatever else you're doing and focus
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
The trade wars will create a massive drop in prosperity in the US. There is next to zero chance that the missions that they have declared will be successful because the only way to get $2 trillion out of the budget would be to massively reduce the deficit and reduce defense spending. We're not reaching the upper end of LLM.
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
It's like, let's stop building aircraft carriers. But of course, part of the political reason that doesn't happen is because the states and Congress people, like one of the things that happens frequently is the Department of Defense says, well, we should stop these programs. And Congress says, no, we're continuing them because this is where, you know, you're spending money in our district is.
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
And that's the kind of thing that if Doge had guts, they would go to.
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
Look, I think it's better for the world and better for Europe if Europe increases its defense spending. Now, I understand it was the right thing after World War II and the right thing with the Marshall Plan and the right thing to create interdependence to do that because you wanted to make sure that in this area that created two world wars. that you created strength of ties and bonds.
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
It's part of what the European Union's about, trade, mutual prosperity. But now that that's there, it's good for Europe to get to its rightful place, both in, for example, defense against terrible players like Russia and things, but also in the world to be another important force in the world, and that means increasing the defense spending. And that includes Ukraine?
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20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
Look, my view is that the Ukrainian people have the right to fight for their own self-defense. It is not for us to say, oh, Ukraine was always just part of Russia. That's for the Ukrainians to say, not for us. That's a repetition of evils that human beings frequently do. You should be clear about this. And people have a right to articulate their own self-determination, I think.
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Supporting him in that is, I think, a good thing.
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Well, it's another area that's a political third rail in the US because older people vote at much higher percentages. And so therefore, figuring out how to, like, for example, again, if you said if Doge had guts, they'd go look at this area to say, well, how should we rationalize this on a cost per quarter?
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quality month of life and you go, well, look, there's a whole bunch of money that's spent on these last three to six months of life. Let's reduce the spending on that and say that is not a public expense. And let's increase, for example, preventative and other things that are much more dollar focus.
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Now, again, unfortunately, I would predict that they're not going to do that because it's a political third rail and it requires courage and other things to go into it.
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So the right way, I think, to think about this from an American or any other perspective is to say China bans competition in China from Meta, Twitter, etc., And so the right way to say is like, look, if you're banning our companies, we should ban yours. Entirely a commercial question, not a question around like, well, that's a Chinese social media company.
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Because I actually believe that there's a different question when you say, well, what should be the rules of governance for social media companies when you get around the world? And I think there should be some transparency, responsiveness to local laws, et cetera. But I think that's the right thing to do.
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Well, it gets back to the tariffs question, which is you want people to be playing on a fair and balanced playing field. If you're country X is denying licenses to country Y, then country Y should do that to country X, right? As just a general thing to get back to a playing field. And by the way, there's lots of bad actors in the world. Yes.
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Sometimes, by the way, when the bully hits you, the only way to stop the bully from hitting you again or hitting someone else is to hit them back pretty hard, right? Because then they learn, oh, there's consequences. Sometimes the rule of the five-year-old playing ground is actually, in fact, the rule that countries live by.
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So this is maybe my greatest hope out of an administration that promises to be a wrecking ball to a history of regulation, because the things that we have done in regulating nuclear have been destructive to, for example, climate change, because you're using a lot more coal versus nuclear. I mean, we see great examples in France as how to use nuclear.
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Well, the technology has advanced over the decades in nuclear fission. You know, people have invented nuclear fission plants that are powered. It's called TerraPower powered on nuclear waste. So it's a way of consuming the waste and getting rid of it and converting it into power. There's all of these things that are really, really good to do.
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And a regulatory agency backed up by fearful public opinion, unknowledgeable, ignorant public opinion, but fearful too, hasn't done anything about this. And then you say, well, what's the best way we worried about running out of electricity We're worried especially about green electricity going and doing this.
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And so I myself have been investing in both fission and fusion over the last five to 10 years entirely philanthropically. I have no idea how to invest in this. When I do these investments, I write them to zero in my book. I have no idea. what the economic outcomes are of this, unlike like internet investing or software investing or what's the rational way of doing it.
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But creating the technology for the benefit of society and humanity is extremely important. I've been putting lots of money into this out of a desire for putting America in a much better position, helping the world with this new technology, etc.
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And given that it is an inevitable, it's a physics process. I worry about that. That's one of the, I think, likely outcomes of the next administration that will be a serious impact. Now, that being said, like you said, okay, bull bear on the next administration, they'll go, oh no, climate change is a fiction and it's a liberal conspiracy and you know, dah, dah, dah.
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And you're like, why would the liberals bother with a climate change conspiracy? I mean, it's just like the logic of this is not great. But what they might do, which I would hope, again, be hopeful for, is they say, look, what we really need to be doing is doing the Apollo projects on the right kinds of clean energy.
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And we're going to now go 10x down onto that, including all versions of nuclear, as well as everything else. And that actually might have a very positive impact over time in what we're doing with climate change.
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Well, it's a frequent misconception because there's obviously a growth of a electricity curve that AI has got climate impact. One, it's something like data centers, I think, or something like it's some single digit percentage of all power consumption, like three something. So it's not very big. And then AI within data centers is like a single digit percentage of that.
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So currently, AI is not accounting for any of the electricity that makes any of the difference. No, but it's growing. And you go, well, what happens if it continues to grow in a compounding way? And so and so everyone goes, ah, I can be I can be green and climate by posturing in the media, by saying AI is bad for climate. Pay attention to me, please. Lay, pay attention to me, please.
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This is a little bit like the people who are being anti-nuclear, which then caused a whole bunch of coal plants to be built, which caused a whole bunch of environmental degradation as a consequence of being anti-nuclear. It's a similar thing because AI has several points of being massively positive on climate. Here's a simple actual data point.
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So Google's engineers, some of the best in the world at running data centers, thought we have run our data centers as efficiently as possible. It was, I think, five, seven, eight years ago, DeepMind ran their algorithms on Google's data centers and figured out how to save 15%. of the electricity. So think about you're applying AI and intelligence to go, how do we run our grids more efficiently?
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How do we apportion costs? How do we do all this stuff? How do we add intelligence to all this? That's one. Two, maybe even more significant, which by the way, that means AI technology can actually be a net energy saver as we apply it to the inference cost to all the electricity we're doing in the future. Number two is, well, what's happening as a boon for green energy right now
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All of the major hyperscalers are doing multi-billion dollar commitments to green energy companies saying, if you can deliver the energy, we will give you the initial customer capital to build that. And by the way, we will subsidize because energy is always expensive when it's small and cheaper as it gets bigger.
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We will pay the expense at the beginning to start building your nuclear, to build your geothermal, to build your solar. in order to do that. So they are functioning as the R&D venture capital for creating green energy for the entire society in building their new data centers. So that's another thing where AI is coming out to building green energy.
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Look, the most far-fetched and unclear is it's also possible, but I think this is more of a science fiction thing is, well, kid, the patterns of intelligence and AI, and people are doing this work, like applying it to, can we get it to make fusion to work?
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Can it solve certain problems that then make sustainable green energy possible because of the intelligence that AI can bring in its massive computation to solving these problems? And people are working on that on fusion containment, right? Because if you can make fusion work, you can solve climate change. Can you just unpack that for me, sorry? How does fusion completely solve climate change?
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So fusion is the most scalable green energy. You know, the sun is powered by fusion. And obviously, there's various ways to try to use solar that I don't think we've tapped out on and everything from satellites with solar energy collection to various things on the ground. So I think there's a bunch of stuff there.
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That's actually, in a sense, an indirect fusion because you have this massive fusion reactor that's known as the sun. But microfusion is both super safe and can produce enormous amounts of power very cheaply. And once you have enormous amounts of power, you can solve significant world crises. So for example, how do you do decarbonization?
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How do you pull carbon out of the atmosphere in order to reduce global temperature back to that great band that humanity prospers in? And the answer is it takes a lot of energy.
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Well, if your energy is carbon producing as you're doing it and you're not net doing it, so you have to be carbon neutral to negative on this, then if you can produce it at massive scale, you can pull carbon out of the energy, let alone power all of the things that human beings want, houses and transport and all the rest. So it's more than the silver bullet.
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Well, I think it's a significant step forward. I don't know exactly where we will be in scale quantum computing. Usually, again, of course, the discourse with new technology always starts with the fears, which is a mistake that I'm always trying to correct. because it doesn't mean you shouldn't have concerns and anxieties and navigate.
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But like, for example, you go, oh my God, quantum computing, it's going to break security and our banking system is going to collapse and our public encryption and security safety is going to collapse. And oh my God, there's a disaster. Like, well, look, we'll have to figure that out because that'll be an issue once we get to what is somewhere maybe
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minimum 2000 or 5000 logical quantum bits, qubits. So that's at 2000 to 5000 or more is when you get into the encryption issues. I'd call it 150 to 250 logical qubits. So a complete order of magnitude down, quantum computers become great at helping invent new medicines, new drugs, new semiconductors, new physical materials, things at a micro scale.
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That's going to be the first thing from quantum computing. So the moment that we can get there, it'll have enormous prosperity benefits well before we have to navigate these things. And so I'm very hopeful about quantum computing. I just don't know the timeframe.
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So I think we have had people with that much power in history, but I think part of modern society is to create checks and balances, to create accountability within your government. So like, for example, Traditionally, when you have people who go into government, they put their business stuff in blind trust and do other things in order to avoid conflicts of interest.
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So I think the worry is not necessarily the power as much as the conflicts of interest and navigating the conflicts of interest with ethics and integrity, which I think is the thing to watch with the next administration.
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Yeah, look, and so I think we want that to be within the hands of democratically elected governments, or at least certain parts of it. And I think that's important. But by the way, you know, I mean, I think while there are things that I have been and probably will be in the future critical of Elon about, the electric vehicle revolution... owes itself to Elon.
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The revolution in space ISPs with Starlink owes itself to Elon. And by the way, the initial defense of Ukraine would not have worked without Starlink. So there's enormous positive contributions here. So it's a complicated topic. Now, that being said, I would want the halls of democracy and government and the conflict of interest within personal businesses to be kept very distinct.
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I think we may see some challenge in that.
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Well, they actually kind of go together. Elon has a conviction that what he believes is true is absolutely true, even when all of the evidence is against his belief. That allows him to do, I can see that we can colonize Mars and here we go, right? And that creates SpaceX, that creates Starlink, that creates... And so huge amount of kudos and power.
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But then that's similarly when he sees a conspiracy theory on Twitter...
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probably being created by russian intelligent assets to destabilize the us it goes oh that looks right to me and then he'll retweet it that's correct and so it's the same impulse which has created these amazing things but also has these destructive things should one not have policing on tweets i had this debate before with many american guests and i'm like that can be very dangerous and damaging to have someone retweet with his power and weight to the audience that he does
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The next large LLM that's trained with a larger computer will still have new magic in it. The scale game is still playing.
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Well, so I think there's a really interesting distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. If you're standing at the local corner and standing on a soapbox and saying, the moon is made out of blue cheese and the earth is flat and so forth, it's fine, go ahead. When we have our collective media systems, e.g.
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reach, it's important to have some ability to say, well, we should bring in studies and expertise into it. And by the way, this is what we've made progress with science. This is how we've made progress with law, is we use thoughtful groups of people to bring a notion of truth. In science, it's reproducibility of science experience.
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It's scientific panels which decide on things being advocated as true. In juries, you have, in the US, 12 people who listen to it and have to agree. That's the way we do things. And so we need to kind of figure out how to apply that also within, call it,
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Well, so, look, if I could, through a democratic process, because I believe in democracies, I believe in collective governance, get our society to agree to say, hey, what we should do is identify some topics that panels of experts can yield to a truth determination on. What I would prefer we do with all media, and by the way, it's not just social media. It's also cable news. It's also talk radio.
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We say, look, if you're going to speak your opinion, which you may do, you can say the world is flat. I can get on Harry's podcast and go, I believe the world is flat. And then what you say is, oh, by the way, expert opinion says that's completely false.
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And just along with my saying, the world is flat, expert opinion comes up and says, hey, by the way, if you're listening to this, you should also consider that expert opinion says this is totally false, right? And so it allows you freedom of speech, but it then allows a collective learning system. And it says, I would prefer that, but we need to get there through a democratic process.
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I was never a client of Jeffrey Epstein's. I never had anything directly to do with Epstein. Everything I did was fundraising for MIT. My mistake, which I publicly apologize for, is I relied on MIT's vetting. to say, hey, we vetted him and it's okay to do this. I obviously regret that. I've issued an apology about burnishing brands because the damage to victims and other kinds of things.
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But of course, the modern age is such that these things get reported and so then have a media impulse. So you have to be responsive to that.
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Yes, exactly. And the funny thing is, is the right wing says woke is cancel culture. And yet that's the shit they do. It's, of course, normally so destructive. I'm very careful about the things I say. I only say them when I have some ground for evidence that I can speak publicly to, that I can have other people validate why it is I'm saying it, right? That kind of thing.
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That's the standard that we should all hold ourselves to.
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So one of the things, in addition to quantum computing, which we already talked about, one of the things that I've been looking at is what other areas are people not paying nearly enough attention to that AI will make a huge difference for the human condition. And drug discovery is a really important one.
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How you use drug discovery as we invent new drugs for really key things like cancer, those will make a huge difference to the quality of human life, to lives saved, and to the economics. So we spend an enormous amount of our economic budget on medicine, and we'll have a huge saving there. I've been working on the intersection of bio and computing for over a decade now.
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Now is the time with AI that we will start seeing amazing new products.
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think it was the founders fun guys he said it was like an injustice if you do that that's a hyperbolic statement i mean look i think we want to get more people doing the big things doing nuclear fission and fusion doing drug discovery doing education doing other things that have an impact for billions. But by the way, sales process is also part of how the OS of our society is business.
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The OS of our society is like, how is government funded? Through the operations of business. How are universities funded? How is medicine funded? How is education funded? Through the operations of business. So improvement of business is a good thing. So improvement of sales and sales efficiency is also a good thing. So is it a less heroic, oh my gosh, I have cured some versions of cancer.
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Okay. So, look, obviously there's been a meme because as I was talking about with my friends, I am still extremely hopeful for American prosperity. I will remain living in Seattle, Washington as my residence. But when I was talking to friends, I said, look, I'd love to spend more time in the UK. That became a whole meme with the New York Times saying, he's moving.
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I have made fusion possible. Yes. And I think as a society, we should appropriately treat the people who are doing the heroes and things as heroes. But by the way, it's a contribution to be contributing to sales too.
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Well, I'm bullish for a couple of reasons.
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So one, amazing set of talent, universities, technical talent, entrepreneurs, a willingness to be bold, not just the bold that went and created the United States of America, because you could look at US as a entrepreneurial offshoot from Great Britain, but also kind of a global perspective, a willingness to be like one of the things that I loved in visits here in my days as a student,
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was the global learnings and global perspective I get from London and Oxford and Cambridge and other places. And so there is enormous potential.
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It doesn't mean there aren't challenges. Brexit was a terrible idea. And I think there are challenges. But the notion of how we rejuvenate economies, we go, look, how do we build the economies of the future? And so you can't try to hold on to the economies of the past. You don't want to say, well, I want to be doing coal mining in Newcastle. You're like, no, no.
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We should be good for those communities and people and try to help them transition, but we need to build the economies of the future. The question is, I think the UK is well positioned to make that progress and make that effort, but it has to be collectively investing in it, enabling it, bringing in talent.
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Well, you may have studied this more closely than I have, and so there may not be yet, but I know that the capabilities, the talent, the will is possible. Now we just have to organize and make it happen. I mean, this is part of the thing of, Occasionally, since it's part of my support for Entrepreneur First, I meet with these entrepreneurs. They're great entrepreneurs.
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They can create great businesses. We need to enable that. And by the way, once you create great businesses, that then has economy, jobs, revenue, tax revenue, et cetera, et cetera. That's the thing we need to be doing.
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I think it's important to have chip sovereignty within the Western ecosystem. For example, I would be less concerned. I'm an advocate for, I think, what the Biden administration did with the CHIPS Act as a good idea. restart the chips ecosystem in the US is a very good idea.
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I hope that while I expect that the next administration, because they'll say everything the Biden administration did was terrible, we're tearing it all down, that they'll tear it down in words and then keep doing the work, right, would be my hope. But I would be much less concerned about that if Europe had a good chips industry, because it's within the Western ecosystem and diversified.
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One of the things we learned from COVID is one of the challenges of globalization tends to be the, oh, we resolve to one point of manufacture, but then you're brittle. So when Italy went down with COVID, all of a sudden, the specific medical manufacturer that was oriented there suddenly broke for the rest of the world. So you want...
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several different places of source of origin for resilience and robustness against possible adversity. So ideally, in a good world, you'd have two to four or five places of semiconductor manufacture, and you would have at least one or two of those within the Western nations. And if that was the case, then we'd be good. So a single point of dependency on Taiwan has a bunch of global risk.
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And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm still based in Seattle, Washington. But of course, I come to the UK twice a year already anyway.
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So unsurprising to you, because you and I have talked a bunch, both. So both NVIDIA's business will continue to go very strongly because they have an amazing lead in amazing chips and there is massive demand for their chips for doing compute. And many players, Google, Amazon, others, including AMD, are building out chips as well. So you both have them developing.
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what is still a very valuable leading resource, and a bunch of other chips developing as well. We have kind of like electricity. We have infinite demand for compute at moderate pricing. So as long as we can deliver that, demand will completely fill.
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By the way, incorrect, but yes. We're not reaching the upper end of LLM. It's kind of like, look, the press cycles like to go, aha, we haven't seen anything in the last six months. We're at the upper end. It's like, oh, if it were, we haven't seen anything. By the way, we did see GPT-01, right? If we hadn't seen anything in the last couple of months, that doesn't mean it's the end of the cycle.
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That means we're still getting to what the next set of stunning things. I think the next larger computer, the next large LLM that's trained with a larger computer will still have new magic in it. And all of the people who argue against it are to some degree arguing their own book. Well, I don't have the compute. So the next level of compute won't make a difference. I don't have the data.
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So the next level of data won't make the next difference. Or the current data is all we have. And so we won't be able to do it. It's like, well, actually, in fact, we can create synthetic data. And there's a ton of data that's out there that's not part of the standard internet training corpus. The scale game is still playing.
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By the way, I will commit here to being on air with you twice a year. Yeah.
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Well, by the way, he's right that, look, we're going to have a ton of agents. And I think the agents will be composed of multiple models. But to count out the next level of scale models as being important in creating a number of quality agents is just incorrect.
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do you worry when you look at the pricing of some of the investments going down today that it's just a complete bubble well so when everyone understands that a technology transformation is happening a bunch of people make foolish investments it happened in the internet it happened in mobile right it happens
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But because there's some foolish investments doesn't mean there aren't also really good investments that change. And so part of the work for being a good investor is to on a probability basis, because you will make some foolish investments too, to make sure that you have some of the really good ones.
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And by the way, sometimes the decision of foolish or wise is doing something that may seem like it's a crazy price.
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When I did the series A of Airbnb, there were 60 million posts. At that time, the founders probably could have gotten on the phone all week and called every single person who had used an Airbnb that week if they were working through the call list. So it was a very small transactional volume. And the question is, would it grow? What would happen with cities?
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What would happen with market acceptance? There's a bunch of other things. But part of the way that I invest is I go, look, if I'm right, if the theory of this investment is correct, then it will transform an industry. And that's what I tend to do as an investor. It's majority of my investments, not all, there's sometimes other things.
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But if that plays out to be the case, and so then is my theory of my investment at least a reasonable probability, right? Like it has a reasonable chance of working. And that's why I did the Airbnb one. So that would be one example. But I also tend to be more careful about part of the discipline that I've learned from Silicon Valley is when you look at a seed, a series A, a series B.
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It isn't that price is irrelevant. Does the coherent sense of this make sense in terms of what future capital will need, how the entrepreneurs are thinking about their business? And so that's part of where pricing comes in.
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So look, I think one of the things that it's a responsibility of Americans to do, including myself, of course, is you try to make whatever administration as successful as possible for the people of America, for the country, for the industry. I will be doing that. I will be investing in businesses. I will be getting new American businesses generated. I will be doing those things.
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Well, in a well-functioning society, hopefully it's acquisitions rather than acquirers. Part of the thing, there's a thread of antitrust that misunderstands their own game. So, for example, the thread of antitrust roughly looks like this. It says, we should stop the aggregation of power in the large companies, so we should block acquisitions.
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And in some cases, limited specific cases, that makes sense. But in general, if you want competition with those large companies from startups, investors, say for example, I'm an investor who's going to put a billion dollars into a company that might compete with one of the large tech companies.
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I'm only going to put the billion dollars in if I have a chance of an acquisition exit because I'm going to need the billion dollars back possibly. That's a huge loss. So if I am blocked, if you have a regulatory authority to say we are never going to allow that, then I'm never going to do the investment that allows a company to potentially compete with those large tech companies.
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And so their theory, which is we're stopping the aggregation of big power, is they're creating more aggregation of big power because they're stopping the financing of competition.
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Well, I hope so. And by the way, I think it's good for society. It's good for competition. It's good for investing in the competition. And so that's part of the reason why I've kind of made public statements around this, because it's not that I'm saying, oh, antitrust is bogus. I'm saying you actually got the exact wrong theory of the game.
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Yes, shortly. Look, I'm an investor and all the rest. And I think Figma is an amazing company that's going to – I'm probably going to make substantially more money because the deal was essentially derailed. But there was a bad theory of the case.
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Great question. So what I think is that the AI revolution will both create enormous value for the large companies and enormous value for the small companies. And it's going to do both. And part of that is because I don't think it's a big tech question. I don't think it's a little tech question. I think it's a scale tech question.
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And I think part of what we do as investors and creators and creators in new industries, we invest in scaling technology. It starts small and it gets very large. And we want more large tech companies. The answer is not we want fewer large tech companies. We want more large tech companies.
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I actually almost never look at multiples.
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No. My investments are at seven to 10 years out. And so it's a belief in what seven to 10 years looks like. And almost everything I invest in is unprofitable when I invest in it. Have I invested in a business that's profitable? I can't remember.
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Well, what I would love to have, and look, I understand the economics. I myself follow the economics of going into software. A broader range of things, and I've tried to do some of that myself, so I don't just preach it, you know, a nuclear fission and fusion, a Joby and flying cars, because the world is not just digital, it's also real and physical. And so a broader range would be a good thing.
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What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months? Interesting. I guess what is the right way for governments to interface productively with cryptocurrency? And there's micro things. I'm a believer in cryptocurrency. I bought Bitcoin back in 2013. I've invested in cryptocurrency companies.
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Obviously, in the next administration, they don't want to have me helping them. I won't be involved in any of the activity that the administration is doing. And actually, you know, obviously I anticipate, unfortunately, I'll probably be critical of some of the things the administration's doing.
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I think it can be very good for society, but the ways that it can integrate well in society, there's evolving beliefs there. What should happen, what should not happen, but they're all micro things, not macro things. Maybe the most macro thing might be It's not a change of my belief as much as it's kind of like an open question.
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I watched some congressional testimony from people from the national security establishment that were claims that government labs were studying material from extraterrestrial spacecraft. And this was congressional testimony. And so it was like... huh? Is it an asteroid or is it a robot ship or is there nothing? Is it just craziness?
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But before I'd watched that testimony, if you had said, what do I think about UAPs? The answer is conspiracy theory. And maybe that's still the right answer. But I just watched that recently and I'm now got to go scratch at that a little bit and say, okay, what is this UAP thing and try to understand it.
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By the way, I never do that again, seven to 10 year horizon. So I bought a bunch of Bitcoin. I've just hold, I just hold it like I've never sold it. And I then haven't bought new Bitcoin. I would say end of 25. So I'm, I'd guess approaching 200,000. That's it.
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Well, actually, the interesting thing about this is people tend to think the worst thing you did was you invested in something and it went to zero. Actually, in fact, the worst thing is saying no to the things that went to the moon. Well, it's not doing the B of Airbnb and the C. Yes, exactly. Like those kinds of things. What one comes to mind with that? Well, Airbnb was one.
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I mean, where I have key lessons is where I have key lessons of missing an opportunity I should have said yes to. And I should have said, okay, not, look, I led the A, I don't need to go lead the B or the C. I should have gone, I'll lead the B or the C. I'll double down on the risk coefficient because I had the conviction. I just had the, oh, look, I'm already in it.
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I already led the series A. And so, that's clearly one. I think there's I got pitched early in Stripe and Square, and I didn't do the investments because I knew how hard payments was from PayPal. It's one of the things when you know too much and you know the risks too well, and those were terrible mistakes. I mean, there's just the list of things you miss that you regret is substantial.
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I hope to help do as many of the things that are like reduce regulation, increase energy for AI, have AI companies be prosperous for America and around the world. I will be doing all that kind of stuff. But on the other hand, I suspect that I will have some things that I'm still an opponent of.
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Lots. We could have a whole show on advice, but I'll say with one of the things my dad said to me when I was a kid, which is, he said, the difficulty of making decisions is that in the short term, it reduces your opportunity set because you've made a decision, but it's the only way you have long-term opportunity.
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A pleasure as always. I look forward to the next in my next trip to London.
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I do because of the principles of America, which is we should aspire to continue to be a place where we can speak truth to power, that we can criticize when things are wrong. And I will continue to do that.
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Now, that being said, one of the things that I think is part of the reason why I have been critical of some of Trump's supporters and some of what Trump has done is because there is, even in the first administration, there was some abuses of instruments of state for personal gain, for personal power.
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That is, I think, anti the spirit of anything in democracy, anti the spirit of anything in American. Those are the things that I would still continue to be opposed to in as much as they play out. Now, my friends argue, no, no, that's just the electoral path that when he talks about the fact that he is going to attack enemies within, or threaten to execute generals, or other kinds of things.
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That's just politicking. That's not something that we will actually see. I am hopeful that they are right, and I am hopeful that we'll get back to the business of America, which is business.
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20VC: Reid Hoffman on The Trump Administration | Elon Musk and DOGE | The US Defence Budget, NATO and The War in Ukraine | China, Tariffs and TikTok | The Future of Chips, Nuclear Energy, Quantum Computing and Climate
If the administration were to engage in a lot of idiosyncratic political persecution, whether it's individuals, politicians, military figures, businesses that were attacked entirely for political reasons and the balance of politics versus legitimate reasons. Because sometimes people do bad things, whoever they are, and that's fine. But that that was the cause of what's happening.
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That's, for example, I think one of the reasons why this whole tariffs thing, which could be enormously destructive, is I think, is like, well, how do I apply tariffs idiosyncratically, like against my political opponents, but not for my political allies? Economic corruption. What if foreign actors are
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Russia, others were transferring economics to people with political power in order to influence the U.S. and what they're doing. Easy ways to do that are like buy true social stock. Easy ways to do that are buy freedom coin or currency. Invest in businesses that, you know, people who are, you know, have a lot of political power are then essentially payoffs.
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All of those things would be in the category of disastrous things.
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Look, America benefits enormously from a global trade regime. The whole country gets a lot of economic prosperity. including things that support areas of the country that have more economic challenge. So you don't want to create trade wars. The trade wars will create a massive drop in prosperity in the US and in other places. Now, that being said, there are places that either have
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Like, for example, take Iran, who are bad actors within the international context, or Russia, and that actually, in fact, are creating violence and war and chaos in various countries around the world. And you use tariffs and other kinds of sanctions as a way to rein in that behavior. That's one zone.
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Another one is if you have countries that are behaving irresponsibly within the global economic system, And so, for example, with China, there's ways in which they slant the field so that they say, well, we can do economics in your country, but we can do business in your country, but you can't do business in our country. I think responding- Social media. Yes.
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So it's like, okay, if you're going to disallow our businesses to operate in your country, we can disallow your businesses in parallel to operate in our country. Just as an economic thing, as kind of nothing else for how to operate. And those kinds of things I think are useful.
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If, for example, people are using labor camps to produce products, adding tariffs as a way of saying, we're not going to allow that to happen, that's another good use. But those are like specific things, not general mercantile warfare.
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You're actually, in fact, trying to destroy our industry in the short term so that you can then raise prices later and capture it. That is mercantile warfare. Responding to mercantile warfare is completely fine.
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So I think a lot more of things as I actually think the US will be benefited by a substantial reduction in regulation. Okay. For every new regulation you want to add, remove two as a way of kind of modernizing and refactoring versus just accreting. Some of that will be AI, for example, an area that I'm committed to, passionate about, believe will be great for the world over time. We'll need power.
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How do you get that power? What do you do with regulatory? A return to nuclear power fission and fusion I think will be really amazing. The question around being deeply committed to growing business across the entire country I think will be really good. One of the things that I actually think is not only a competence but a moral requirement for American presidents is to say business is good.
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Now, you should invest in business across the entire industry, not just your own. So, it's not just improve real estate, right, or improve freedom coin, it's do the entire thing. And I think that's really important. So, I think all of those things are things that we could see as very good outcomes.
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Well, it's a little unclear. It kind of depends on how he chooses to use his time and focus. So if his time and focus was, let's make sure that all of the kind of players in US industry are greatly amplified, like availability of power and the creation of new data centers and power for do that, and that's across the entire industry, that would be an enormous boon.
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If the question around, okay, let's make sure that we are being rational about how we are willing to import talent, as we have done in the history of the US, to bring in talent that can work on this across the entire industry, that could be really good. If it was the, I want to make sure that we are inventing the future at the speed we need to be doing it, that's really good.
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Now, the challenges would be is what if he goes, no, no, the most important issue facing AI is woke AI. Because we have this calling card, which means a whole bunch of different kind of, you know, these people are evil and terrible.
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That's silly and not good, but easy to fix and not the most important issue when you consider what like AI means for American prosperity, well-being, a bunch of other things like that's an easy fix. Do you think Doge will be successful?
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Well, in a sense, I would want it to be because I think the refactoring of bureaucracy, the refactoring of efficiency, those are things that I think accurately have gone wrong. There is next to zero chance that the missions that they have declared will be successful because the only way to get $2 trillion out of the budget... would be to massively reduce the deficit and reduce defense spending.
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Those are the two areas, or for example, Medicare, Social Security. Those are the areas where the real money is. We want to posture that we just have too many federal employees. And by the way, maybe we do have too many federal employees, but it's not where the trillions of dollars in terms of what you can cut out of the budget, that's not actually where you can get it.
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Well, that's generally true for very large financial institutions. And by the way, I think it's an important thing. That's the reason why, like you say, bull bear case on Doge as well. Look, I actually think kind of going through, balancing the books, figuring out the economics, applying kind of fiscal discipline in the way that we do in companies is a very good thing.
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What I think is a false promise is to say, well, the really important thing is if we lay off
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So I think US defense spending should reduce, right? I think that would actually be a good thing. It's one of the problems that we have in American politics and that we have neither the political will to do that on either the left or the right side. Like, if I anticipate anything going to be happening in the next administration, it will be increase in defense spending versus decrease.
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Despite all that, we're going to have fiscal discipline and we're going to reduce costs and we're going to bring this. A massive amount of that comes from the Department of Defense. And the way that I would do it is I would try to, because basically the business America's business, it's you want to be investing in things that create the future businesses.
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The military industrial complex is not the business that you most want to be investing in. And so how do you essentially do that?
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Yes. If you said, where should Doge focus? The answer is, there's a lot of massive misspending within the Department of Defense. Now, part of that is not just the Department of Defense's fault. Let's take a specific. We should not be building aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers themselves cost billions. The planes on them are more billions. They put thousands of American lives on them.
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And in the modern world, you have to Sure, an aircraft carrier is great for bullying sedan, which is not a particularly good use of billions of dollars military. In a real conflict, one or two hypersonic missiles, which are like $2 million each, can take out an aircraft carrier. So if you said, what should I be doing to save money in American events?