The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman: The Truth About Elon, Zuck, & Building Great Companies!
Wed, 21 May 2025
Over the next six weeks, we’re bringing you the most unmissable moments from The Diary of a CEO, a masterclass in work, business, and entrepreneurship. These are the lessons that built some of the most iconic companies in the world, shared by the visionary CEOs behind them. We begin with Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. In this powerful conversation, Reid breaks down the surprising trait that separates good entrepreneurs from the greats and why ignoring it could be your biggest mistake. He shares the story of whats like working with Elon Musk, what most people get wrong about ambition, and the brutal trade-offs that come with building at scale. You’ll learn how different leadership styles create different outcomes and what it really takes to build companies that last. Visit - www.linkedin.com/DOAC Listen to the full episode here - Spotify - https://g2ul0.app.link/kXUCbNYywTb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link/AkpmkV6ywTb Watch the Episodes On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What insights does Reid Hoffman share about entrepreneurship?
There's a reason I love today's conversation. It is with the founder of a platform that we probably all use called LinkedIn. And the guy that made that platform is Reid Hoffman. The reality of running a small business is that switching off is never really an option. Even when you try, the ideas, the excitement and all the responsibility is always there.
And because you're always switched on, it's only fair that your hiring partner should be too. LinkedIn Jobs, who are the sponsor of this moment's episode, has been that hiring partner for me and for years because it's always working away in the background. My team can post our jobs for free, share them with our networks and reach top talent all in the same place.
So let's get into today's conversation. On all these great people you've worked with, specifically, you know, during that PayPal period of your life, one of the things I was reflecting on is they're all independently successful people, but they're all very different people. And that in and of itself is evidence that there's not one version of success. There's many different types of success.
Presumably, there's many different types of entrepreneur, leader. Yes. Give me a flavor of the different types of entrepreneurs you've worked with. Because I sat with Walter Isaacson, and he talked to me about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, et cetera. And he was like, Steve's really great at hiring people. Elon's not as good at the people team building part, but he's better at this part.
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.
His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people were 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.
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.
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 possibility. You know, Anil, very professional, understands the workplace mark.
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 – I was wrong. He was right. But it's not a good equity, you know, kind of play. Yeah.
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