Author
Reid Hoffman
The co-founder of LinkedIn, who applies the logic of start-ups to the individual career.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Reid Hoffman studied symbolic systems at Stanford and philosophy at Oxford, and at first planned an academic career. He moved into technology instead, founded an early online community called SocialNet, and was an executive at PayPal before co-founding LinkedIn, the professional networking service, in 2002.
He became a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, where he has backed many technology companies. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, and Hoffman later joined Microsoft's board of directors. In 2022 he co-founded the artificial intelligence company Inflection AI.
His books include The Start-up of You (2012) with Ben Casnocha, The Alliance (2014) with Casnocha and Chris Yeh, and Blitzscaling (2018) with Chris Yeh. He also hosts the podcast Masters of Scale, in which founders describe how their companies grew.
The signature
Hoffman looks at a person the way an investor looks at a company: what assets it has, what the market wants, where its network can carry it, and which risks are worth taking. His recurring idea is that careers, like companies, are built through other people, and his advice on relationships is practical rather than sentimental: help first, keep a few close allies and many loose ties, and make every request specific.