Reid hoffman quotes

When you turn a company profitable you've gone from a company whose days are numbered to a company whose days can be infinite.

A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.

If I ever hear a founder talk about oh this is how I have a balanced life so on and so forth - they're not committed to winning.

Part of the reason we like democracy is it's the portfolio of decades, which is to say you don't also get the disastrous dictator who completely destroys a society, engages you in wars and so forth.

One of the things is when you think, "Wait, I'm fearful of retaliation, I'm fearful of oppression because of someone who is going into a public office, who might be vengeful for their own personal reasons, that's actually not a reason to hide - that's a reason to step up, right?"This is part of what we learned from the 1920s.

Great opportunities almost never fit your schedule.

The key thing is to invest in the future and what that means is when you're deploying technology or you're a technology business, is to make sure that you're keeping on the innovation cycle, where you're both creating and adopting the new business practices, and the new techniques in order to drive your business the right way.

Having a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.

Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that's really powerful.

We have made a huge amount of progress over the last 50 years by enabling trade, by enabling kind of collaboration and learning. And actually, in fact, when you look at your average 30-year-old today, they're much better off than a 30-year-old 20 years ago, 30 years ago, because of progress in technology and health care and all the rest of this.

Managing risk is a key variable, frankly, all aspects of life, business is just one of them, and one of the things that most people do in terms of managing risk, that's actually bad thinking, is they think they can manage risk to zero. Everything has some risk to it. You know, you drive your car down the street, a drunk driver may hit you. So what you're doing is you're actually trying to get to an acceptable level of risk.

Democracy is always frustrating.

Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.

A little-known company with a realistic framework that appeals to entrepreneurial employees is going to be more attractive than a famous company that treats its people like disposable assets.

I think I knew how frightened people were [when Donald Trump was elected], and I think I knew that people were worried about their future. I don't think I realized that they would be willing to risk kind of a 1920s Germany in order to blow it all up, not realizing that we've accomplished a lot as Americans, and we want to keep the good things and revolutionize the new things.

There are opportunities that you get during crises times. Crises times are a great time to start a business.

Help the people in your network. And let them help you.

This is classic when you begin thinking about what is a great founder is, you navigate what is apparent paradoxes.

Entrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.

Every individual is essentially now a small business and entrepreneur.

Boom and bust cycles are very difficult for businesses because you're hiring a bunch because you're planning for the future. And if the future is going to be very big, you need to hire people, or suddenly you go to boom to bust, then all of a sudden, you're kind of battening down the hatches and trying to sail, you know, through the storm, it's a different thing. So part of it is making good decisions about, well, how long is a boom cycle going to be, you know, don't plan on it going forever.

Make sure a certain percentage of the people that you're hiring are generalists so that you can be, kind of reconfigured in the workforce pretty easily.

You should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.

People will be discovering that the Internet helps their career. One of my theses is that every individual is now a small business; how you manage your own personal career is the exact way you manage a small business. Your brand matters. That is how LinkedIn operates.

All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.

Most of the ethical dilemmas that I have faced have all been in the category of, you know, I know something and what's my obligation to disclose it. So, for example, you see people make a mistake in the contract that you're making between the businesses and do you disclose it or do you reveal it? And generally speaking, the way that I solve these is I kind of go through a list of, you know, what's the most, what are the obligations and constituencies and in what order?

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team.

One of the tests that I frequently use in an interaction is I push on the idea and what I'm looking for is both flexibility & persistence.

First mover Advantage doesn't go to the company that starts up, it goes to the company that scales up

One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it's making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it's the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know you're dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you.

Trust and mutual value creation helps both employer and employee compete in the marketplace.

I think most of [people] are not very well educated themselves to understand the Winston Churchill line - democracy is the worst of all governments until you consider all the other ones.

I was never given this advice, people aren't given this advice, focus on growing and maintaining relationships for your network, and that's key. And most of the advice tends to be, you know, discover your strengths, build up your resume, get a title, all of that stuff pales in comparison.

One of the great strengths of American culture is this empowerment of individual, is the individual being able to be entrepreneurial, create new things. But you create a whole group of people to make great companies. It's employees and investors and customers and partners. The fabric of society, of a network of relations, is key to being successful.

Probably the biggest mistake that I made personally is I knew early on that I wanted to go into start-ups and creating kind of software that could help change the lives of millions of people. And basically what I did is I kind of went, okay, well, I need a set of titles and I need a checklist of skills, and I ran through all that, and that wasn't a useless thing, but what I didn't realize, and, you know, and no one gave me the right advice for doing this, is that actually your network, in essentially, is your career.

One thing I learned in '97, when I thought the right time to found a company was during a swing-up, is that it's much better to start during an economic downturn. Partnerships are easier; hiring is easier; and the competition starts later.

...Silicon Valley's success comes from the way its companies build alliances with their employees.

We believe that when the right talent meets the right opportunity in a company with the right philosophy, amazing transformation can happen.

When you’re doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.

Donald Trump has shown that he will essentially attack individuals, make Second Amendment jokes.

My greatest influences are actually probably a set of different teachers. And these teachers, most prominently at my high school, but also a few others, helped kind of instill in me, thinking thoughts about how life is meaningful in terms of how we all kind of live in a network of people and how you interact with those people is part of what makes life essentially meaningful and then kind of concepts to think about, how do you add value to other people's lives? How do they add value to yours? And how do you kind of form a community together in the network?

By 2030 over 2 billion jobs will disappear.

One of the phrases I frequently look for is infinite learning curve.Because each entrepreneurial pattern is to some degree unique and new.

You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.

I think the randomness by Donald Trump's governing, by tweeting, sloganeering, attacking, will create great chaos in the entire market. I think people will have difficulties in predicting the future. I think capital will recede.

I think Hillary [Clinton] hears the anger in a broad swath of the American people, and she says, "OK, how do I help create a future that's good for you?"

I think the right way to do this is just to step up and do it, so I actually think we'll see more of that over the next coming weeks, because I think they'll say, "We'd like to be good for business and quiet on politics, but this is too urgent, it is too much of a key crisis in who we are going to become as Americans. We can risk too much, and so we have to step forward." And I think you will see more and more people stepping forward, like Howard Schultz, Steve Case and other folks, in order to try to make a difference in this [Donald Trump] election.

Silicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big.

There are two reasons [ business people are not publicly anti-Donald Trump ], one is well-intentioned, which is the classic kind of American notion. We want to be inclusive, we want to have our shareholders, our employees, our customers, whether they are Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian, to feel comfortable with how we're doing business. And so that tends to be apolitical. People say, "No, no, I just simply shouldn't get involved in politics."

You gotta be both flexible and persistent.

We understand that most of the middle class doesn't know what to do, doesn't feel like they have economic progress, and [Hillary Clinton] goes, "OK, I realize that's my top agenda item. That's the thing I need to do."

The key thing in any kind of guiding of the business is how do you create a strong organization that is kind of accelerating into the future. And when you're in trouble, the question is, what are the techniques that you can, you know, trim, refinance, sell, et cetera, in order to get this business back to that characteristic.

When you have an idea, a classic entrepreneurial impulse is to hold the idea close to you and not tell people and that's almost always a mistake.

It’s actually pretty easy to be contrarian. It’s hard to be contrarian and right.

Economic tough times are great times to be investing in the future.

People are legitimately worried about Donald Trump, almost like a schoolyard bully, if I step up, am I going to be targeted, too?

During normal times or boom times, there are some parts of the business that are going to so well, that that can cover for weakness and other parts of the business. What happens during recessions, is you have less windfalls just helping you cover mistakes. You have to be more careful about not making mistakes.

The underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform.

I am most heartened when I'm talking to a team when they're reasoning to each other.

The entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.

Part of what being a great founder is, is being both able to hold the belief, to think about where it is you want to be doing and want to be going, but also be smart enough that you are essentially listening to criticism, negative feedback, competitive entries.

The key thing for all businesses, and especially of course technology businesses or businesses that employ technology as a key kind of strategic advantage, is you always have to be investing in the future.

I think Hillary [Clinton] has [woken up to the plight of the middle class] and is working toward it in a democratic process.

Well, well-run companies always have a focus on growth and the two lines, which includes profit. The key thing during, I think, tough times, is to make sure that you've covered the basis for when something, you know, essentially things taking longer, bad luck, adversity, other kinds of circumstances may occur. Make sure that you can monitor to win, it's potentially, you know, something is going to go wrong, monitor early enough, and then take appropriate action to essentially counteract that or shift your strategy or plan, even if in fact something is not working out as well as it is.

What I think Peter Thiel imagines is that Donald Trump has a policy, that Trump has an idea of what to do. haven't heard any of those ideas. All I hear is sloganeering, vitriol, personal attacks.

We've been working for years on how we can use technology to help people make their own jobs, become entrepreneurs, create their own small businesses. Those are the kinds of things that I and a bunch of other people at LinkedIn actually work on.

Giving birth to something that could possibly change the lives of millions of people for possibly decades, hundreds of years, whatever the length of time the run is, is a great feeling.

It's better to be the best connected than the most connected.

Success...is no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.

What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.

Democracy tends to be a collaborative process, a committee, a consensus.

Companies hire a lot during boom times because they're trying to adequately accelerate into the future.

The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.

What is an entrepreneur? Someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.

The reality is: a founder is someone who deals with a ton of different headaches and no one is universally super powered.

[Hillary Clinton] is part of the establishment, and that's good for foreign policy and for understanding the ongoing health care system.

The future is sooner and stranger than you think.

Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They're attached to people. If you're looking for an opportunity, you're really looking for a person.

Times of economic crises can change what the competitive landscape looks like, because when, for example, you have boom times, capital is easy to come by, growth is easy, sometimes what you focus on is, you know, how to accelerate in the boom. During economic crises, the question is, the companies that come out of, you know, that are sailing through that with the best liquidity, both assets on the balance sheet, making money, ability to grow their businesses, get a disproportionate competitive advantage.

[Hillary Clinton] is also smart, she talks to people, she hears, and she says, "OK, I need to update, we need some much bigger changes."

I wish to be focused on kind of the business stuff I'm doing, how do I contribute to our economic progress, how do I help create a future for American industry, American middle class, these kind of things. Those things actually really matter to me.

Ironically, in a changing world, playing it safe is one of the riskiest things you can do.

When thinking about how to deploy kind of professional and social networking into your business, it's really not a question of if, it's a question of when. And the reason is, just think about the fact that those businesses that adopt new technologies to operate efficiently and use them to get a competitive edge are the businesses that in fact, you know, it becomes one more competitive advantage. Whether it's a fax machine or a mobile phone or a new way of doing financing or any of these things, you know, these are key things to do.

You remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesn’t get found. It emerges.

Now, in economic crises times, the kind of things you're looking at is it's generally harder to get capital, revenue growth may be more, revenue lines may be unstable or growth may be less easy to predict that you're going to get to. And so what you do is you take a certain conservative approach of when, as all entrepreneurs should do, you plan for both good luck and bad luck, you put extra time on, "Okay, if I have bad luck, what do I do about that?"

In crisis times, it's actually not more difficult to motivate your staff, because everyone gets much more focused on how they control their own economic destiny. So, what you do is you have clear communication, which is always a good leadership technique, and you talk about how you can build something good and strong in the future, and how you can work together in order to do that.

In software speed to market, speed to learning is really key. In hardware if you screw it up you are dead. So accuracy really matters.

The key thing for a CEO to keep their head in the game is recognize that there's turbulent times, plan for, you know, bad luck as well as good luck, keep people focused on what the key, you know, business wins are, and you know, provide the energy that people always need in order to, you know, to go into battle because, you know, work is hard and go into work and do that well. And provide a good leadership beacon for that. In other words, it's the same thing that makes good leadership in any other time.

The metaphor that I frequently use for entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane plane on the way down.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.

The real secret of Silicon Valley is that it's really all about the people

The key thing that I find that when you're kind of in boom times and you're hiring bunches, if you can hire, you know, always maintain very high standards and even if you, you know, can't find enough of, you know, what is typically called A players, then don't hire the people. All right? So, you know, use that as a way of standards.

World-changing startups need to be premised on accurate contrarian theories.

Innovation comes from long-term thinking and iterative execution.

A networker likes to meet people. I don't. I like accomplishing things in the world. You meet people when you want to accomplish something.

I'm sympathetic to the people who go, "Whoa, we'd like to have the benevolent, wise dictator. It will all work much more efficiently," but the reason that we remain staunch democrats - with a small d - is it's a decades long, it's a centuries long, it's a country long process for being inclusive.

It's nice to be happy. But the meaning of life is meaning - what's the impact you're having on the world. Suffering to accomplish that is a perfectly fine thing.

I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.

Be persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible.

The actual, the forming of ties with a group of people around you where they help you grow as a professional, solve problems, get opportunities, and you help them, is actually the constitutive base of the foundation of a strong, modern career.

One of the really key things to look at in terms of crafting strategy when you're in an economic crises is how do you maximize essentially your liquidity position? Your ability to both take kind of profits and revenues and business and then convert that into a stronger lead. And so those companies that can do that can actually, you know, get a march on their competitors.

I don't normally think of like most successful moments, because like most entrepreneurs, I tend to think that however how high of a mountain I've climbed, I'm always looking at the next mountain to climb.

Finished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.

Not only CAN anyone be an entrepreneur, but they MUST be.

The thing that changes your professional life, your capabilities, your learning, your understanding, your opportunity flow, your ability to make things happen, is the center relationships you have with powerful and effective people around you in the industry, in the activity that you want to be doing.

The other reason why people don't take a stand, which is very true in this election, is looking at [Donald] Trump and fearing reprisal, fearing reprisal from someone who is seeking the highest, most powerful role in the land, who has had a history of doing everything from attacks, threats and lawsuits and who has a complete kind of vengeful, narcissistic behavior, which makes people legitimately worried, almost like a schoolyard bully, that if I step up, am I going to be targeted, too?

That's part of the reason why we also need to focus on, how do I give to society, how do I participate in society, how do I make society a better place, because, by the way, it's good for me, but it's also good for all of us in the environment in which we live and work.

There's a lot of people in the world that would love to trade places with American citizens, and we are very fortunate to be here.

The CEO's job is always about leadership. It's about leadership in a vision, in terms of where you're going, it's about making sure that you have the right organization and staff, and that you have kind of clearly communicated what some of the plays are and what some of the goals are in terms of the business and how do you organize together in order to make that happen.

Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.

Society flourishes when people think entrepreneurally.

People who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don't.

I find that the interesting challenges, because there's obvious things where, you know, don't be unethical, don't be evil, you know, don't break the law, don't do immoral things, those are all straightforward and don't create ethical dilemmas. The thing that's interesting is when you actually have multiple interests at stake and you have to kind of navigate your way through it.

Pay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.

I actually think we need to put our energies, as entrepreneurs, as technology inventors, as government, to being much more inclusive. I think the key thing is actually working together.

At Silicon Valley, I'm extremely sympathetic to the revolutionary response. I not only agree with it emotionally. I agree with it practically. And the only thing I disagree with is, I don't think Donald Trump is that. Trump is blow it up for no good reason at all. You want to actually do revolution with a target, with an idea, with building a new system.

The key issue when you're looking at cost cutting is to always plan for the future.

Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.

The first set of questions to ask yourself when you're doing cost cutting is relatively straightforward, which is, you know, can you use the necessity of cost cutting as an opportunity to do pruning or trimming for projects that aren't being as successful? But, you know, frequently those are the easy ones. I mean, there's always some kind of social costs internal to the company, but that's the easy way of looking at the future.

If you have to conduct layoffs, which is always a regrettable thing, there's kind of three things that are very important. One is to communicate well with your employees in order to help them understand why it is you're doing, and how. Second is to make sure that the employees who are part of the go forward, understand kind of what happened and are not like the ground doesn't keep moving. It's like, okay, we did that, we're moving forward, here we go. And then for the employees that you unfortunately have to let go, try to provide as much support for them as possible.

Benevolent, enlightened, wise dictators are the most efficient form of government. The problem is what comes afterwards.

I think the boarding schools are like miniature versions of "Lord of the Flies."

Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.

If you can get better at your job, you should be an active member of LinkedIn, because LinkedIn should be connecting you to the information, insights and people to be more effective.