YouSaid · the spoken record

Reid Hoffman

lines on the record: 221
first: 2024-12-16
most recent: 2024-12-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“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, that you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid failure, by trying to avoid pessimism. Anyone who says, okay, it's important for me to understand that perspective about AI, they should read super agency. We have a book blurb from you of all 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, you have a long-term problem.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you learn to. Cause as you, like 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. Would you mind like I'm fully present tomorrow?”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, occasionally that's one of the things that Michelle Go like, you know, I think you're not being fully present. Like that's one of the kind of, as it were, 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. And yes, we've had that conversation more times than I can probably remember and count.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We delayed it a couple weeks. It was like, we really need to lay it. 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, okay. Make it work. Because I'd been clear with her about what the startup journey was like had experience with it before. Now sometimes we didn't know it before, but 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. That is a very good way to build deep quality friendships and relationships. So, for example, in startups, Michelle knew that about me. So when we had planned our wedding, we were doing a small thing with, you know, just basically Justice of 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. I didn't really understand that ten years ago. Now I understand that. I'm sure she has those kind of similar things about me. But the moment it occurs to me that there's something she doesn't understand about me, it comes up at a dinner. You know, not too many weeks in the future Because that's part of how we come to our dinners. We come to our dinners if one of us is, you know, I had this thought we want to have those dinners.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's great. You should do it. You shouldn't be because we're arguing. It should be because we are putting lots of energy into understanding each other.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if it's a misunderstanding'cause 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. 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an interesting thing. It's an interesting if someone has an answer to that question, it suggests that there 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Focus at the moment. Yes, always. But it always has been. Now, 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 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything. Look, there are so few books on friendship. 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 Capillari, romantic relationship. Okay, where's your section on friendship? Osaxon on friendship. Do you have a book on friendship? The answer is maybe we have one.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, um If you'd ask me what book I was going to first write when I was an undergraduate was book on friendship, I still want to write that book. I have been taking notes for 30 years.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 were godparents to, right? And, you know, there's all kinds of delights in being a godparent, which is, you know, you show up and spend an evening and get to participate in the kids' lives. And then, you know, when it's like, oh, time to change the diaper.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only because I care about impact. So I don't like I care that I have actually made a big difference. To the ongoing story of humanity. But I don't care that, I mean, look, it's nice. 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? a very positive net impact. Now I'm not indicating I have no ego. The appreciation for having done that, that feels good. But I don't do it for the appreciation. I do it for the thing.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I co founded Inflection. So I'm definitely doing the co-founding thing, right? And 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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?”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Haven't seen it, 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. And like, for example, like one of the, like this was, I think. A few months after we raise money from Greylock on this deck, one of the surprising uses is I never had envisioned this use case still looking for a job. An engineer wanted to move to Denver from Silicon Valley. And so I was like, didn't know what companies to look at. So this engineer went to LinkedIn and searched for profiles like his. Then looked at what companies those people worked at, then decided which companies to go look for jobs at.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like a social network. Yeah, I knew that was all going to be from before this deck, I knew that was possible. I have a probability. Now, what things surprised me, people build dating services on top of it. Yes.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 a industry transforming company? Like what's the thing that changes millions of customers' lives or if it's an enterprise company, you know, whatever, like lots of companies within multiple industries, how am I an essential part of how they change the way they live?”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What'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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“recruited him out of McKinsey on a LinkedIn. Three years in he comes to me and says, hey, I've been offered this opportunity at Facebook. 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 you probably wouldn't have taken the job if I hadn't said, but LinkedIn resembles my brain. I want people doing their best work, their best opportunities. And Facebook gave them a great opportunity.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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. No, once the company's public, you can go do something, or once the company's 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 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. And so if 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 now lives here in London as partner at Benchmark,”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it could be you have a much better plan A, right? Like, okay, this plan A, that's okay. And by the way, this is the part of the difference that I tell people between, should I found a company, 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, all right? It's very dishonorable to quit before”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You pivoted. And your new plan A is a much worse plan than your plan A. That's when you get to your plan Z. Like plan Z is I quit, right?”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I do entrepreneurship, I have plans B. I have a plan Z, right? 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 risk, take smart risks. That's the thing, right?”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a plan B. Have plans B. Understand that you have an idea and your 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, that's the whole point of the reason I have this framework of ABZ planning, which is in the start of you, which is, by the way, start 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 ABZ planning is don't just have a plan A where like, well, if it doesn't work, I'm dead. 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. Very scary, right?”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you see something other people don't say. 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. That's where that risk becomes an opportunity. So the second one also around risk is”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll give two The first is and they're related. The first is Look just because you don't have a hundred percent chances doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. So 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. That's fine, right? 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 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 zero percent chance you succeed and you think there's a 2025 percent chance you succeed, that's precisely that risk window is your opportunity right so think of risk not as terrifying think of risk as potential opportunity That's one and we've talked about threads of it but thinking of it as opportunity”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, good news for you as I happen to know that Tendowing 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, right? But they know this is important and they're working on it And they're consulting, you know, people”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And so that may be irrelevant. That may be the relevant thing of why it's a Glen Gary in the kid. I have looked at the market at all, but a Glen Gary girl on Ross Market, a first prize Cadillac, second prize stake guys. Maybe that's because of brand establishment, in which case you have to be number one.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that's another time. And so that would be, I don't think that's probably the matcha company doesn't need so, but those are the lessons you look at. But it's not blitz scaling for its own sake. That's one of the mistakes that people make when they go blitz scaling. Oh, we're doing it to blitzc scales. No, no, you blitzcale as a set of strategic techniques in response to a market, in response to competition.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So competition is the first thing. 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, you know, dollars of transactional volume through them per year. And that was back in 2002 when I was looking, I'm sure it's higher now, right? Maybe it's 10 billion, whatever. But it's like, if you don't get to that scale, you're dead, you're irrelevant. Getting to that scale and getting through the highly unprofitable, getting the scale as fast as possible really matters. And so that's one of the places where you say, well, we none of our competitors are doing it, but we should still do it because getting that critical mass and scale really matters.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“so competition is a central reason for doing it. And by the way, most of the times where you can raise capital, but scaling is because if it's a Glengarry-Glen Ross market where first prizes Cadillac, second prizes 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 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, then they're going to do it in your competitors, then you absolutely have to do it if your competitor is going to do it”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Argue yes. Yeah, but if yes, then especially if their competitors are blitzcaling, then absolutely yes. If the competitors are not blitzcaling, it's global blitz scaling, 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. Doing marketing that you would like you're Uber, you're launching in 20 cities at the same time. It's like, whoa, you know, etc. Because that does add risks, right? But you're saying those risks that it adds are less. of a risk than not scaling. That's kind of the trade-off.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Companies that are blitzcaling earlier. Company one is going to lose. Company two might lose two, but company one is guaranteed to lose and company two is not guaranteed to lose. So if you're competing against companies that are blitz scaling, you must also be blitz scaling. It's part of the reason I wrote the book. It's part of the reason I give talks. It's part of the reason I help Sherry Kutu stand up the scaling institute here in London, you know, 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 lit scaling.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think there's two things one is you need to enable some of your companies' ability to blitzcale as much as you can. If a company, if company won is not blitzcaling and is competing against company two that is blitzcaling, company one's going to lose.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've done in China to say when you're in a global competitive business and you're trying to establish it and you have competitors who are doing this, this is some of the techniques that you need to do.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was a blitz scaling technique I learned from Uber. I was like, oh, yep, put that one in the tool chest for when you need to do that because outpacing the competition 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. 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's 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 fiercest competitors. You have to have the theory of how you're playing that game against those, the fiercest competitors in the world. And so Blitzcaling is in part like this is stuff I've learned from Silicon Valley and from the stuff.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not necessarily. Blitz scaling is a strategic response to global competition. And so now there are certain industries where global competition is the norm, not the exception. You're building an internet property, right? Or mostly like much software, not all software, but most like many software companies, in which case, and by the way, if you can get away with not blitz scaling, it's much better because Blitz scaling is spending resources inefficiently to get to market size ahead of your competition, right? So like a classic example is like, you know, Uber would Interview somebody, offer them a job, and then say who are the three best people at your company that you worked with and send Java offers to those three people without even interviewing them because that's blitz scaling. That's I'm going super, super fast.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So, like if a person is good to the people around them, then that's a person I'm 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 uncivil, but I've literally passed on investments that I thought this is going to make a ton of money 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. Because it's just, you know, life's too short, right? And I was right Those businesses made a ton of money, right? But it was, yeah, no, no thanks.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've never been asked that question. 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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's one of the balances of different people. She is intensely going in, 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. And that's her journey, right? But I learn from it. And those are the kinds of things that are, you know, part of what I think the meaning of life is how we learn from each other.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, all the people around me are people I learn from, and that includes Michelle. Like I learn all kinds of things from Michelle. Michelle, 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. She's like, I mr. Scale, she's anti-scale. Right? She thinks she's fine with my doing the scale things, but she wants to go connect with local people in the community, right? She's like, look, I'm volunteering at the senior center. Will you come volunteer with me? No, 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. Life is both here and here.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh 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, and by the way, being the best at something, that's a good thing, but by the way, to really be obsessive about the 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. Like, you say you'll be, 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. Eh no not okay for me.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 view, but it was my first book as advice to young people. It's the I and the We Like do things for yourself, do things for me, do things for we learn from people, I get delight from people, 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, like there is, there is part of what I think is essential in the meaning of life and for me especially”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will you have to evolve it so for example you can when you're in your 20s you can say well I'm going to take more risk like say economists take the the jobs that have zero salary lower salary because I'm going to live in the house with five of my friends you know we're gonna have beans and toast for dinner you know as ways of doing it because I can take those risks now 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 house with them and so it changes as you go through.”
2024-12-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT