A philosopher at heart with a foundational belief in networks – Reid is one of Silicon Valley's big thinkers. Best known for co-founding LinkedIn, Reid also had a hand in growing PayPal, Facebook & Airbnb and now focuses on investing in and building AI to benefit humanity.
Seattle, Washington, USA
Despite being synonymous with two tech giants, PayPal and LinkedIn, and being one of Silicon Valley’s best known serial entrepreneurs and investors, Reid Hoffman very nearly didn’t go into business at all. Having earned a B.Sc in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University in 1990, he decided he wanted to become an academic and flew to England to study Philosophy at Oxford’s Wolfson College.
It became apparent within a few months of his course that academia wasn’t for him – it didn’t have enough scale. He would have more impact on the world as a software entrepreneur. The philosopher in him, however, has been the driving force behind his work as a founder, investor, author and teacher – believing in harnessing networks to facilitate career advancement, personal growth and adding value to society as a whole.
Born in Palo Alto, California, Reid was raised in the Bay Area. He joined Apple Computer in 1994 where we worked on an early online service called eWorld. He later worked at Fujitsu where he was the project manager for a virtual world product called WorldsAway. Reid “had a few more years” in him at Fujitsu but left when a founder he knew asked him to join him at a start-up – SocialNet, a dating site. This first foray into entrepreneurship cemented one of the central themes of Reid’s career – social products. With the internet in its infancy, SocialNet didn’t quite take off and was acquired by a company called Spark Networks.
While still at SocialNet, Reid became a member of the board of directors at PayPal – but when he exited SocialNet this role transitioned into Executive Vice President, in which he was responsible for external relationships – a role he did for almost three years before PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5bn in 2002.
It was after the exit from PayPal that Reid started to double down on his interest in social networks. In 2003, he and Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga founder, bought the Six Degrees patent for constructing social networks. Later that year he incorporated a new company, LinkedIn – a social platform to facilitate professional connections, find jobs and share knowledge.
Reid had a vision for a network that could transform people’s economic lives. The company went public in 2011, after gaining more than 100 million users. In 2016, LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion (£18 billion) and Reid joined Microsoft’s board.
Reid became a partner at venture capital firm, Greylock Partners in 2009 where he remains today – having invested in the likes of Airbnb, Aurora, and Coda. In recent years, he has come to focus on AI, something he sees as an intelligence amplifier with the potential to reshape the world for good. In 2022 he co-founded a new AI start-up called Inflection AI with DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and former DeepMind researcher Karen Simonyan. He has also founded Manas AI.
Outside of business building, Reid is the author of several books, including Blitzscaling, The Start-up of You and Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future. He has taught a ""Blitzscaling"" course at Stanford University and has delivered keynote speeches at institutions like the London School of Economics and the University of Bologna, Business School, where he advocates for responsible innovation and the amplification of human potential through technology.
$26B+
Exit value
20+
Board / Advisory Roles
100+
Early stage investments
4
Unicorns invested in
4
Companies Founded
10+
Philanthropic initiatives
5+
Sectors operated in
Born in California
Reid was born on 5 August, 1967 in Palo Alto, California. His parents, Deanna Rutter and William Hoffman Jr., were both liberal lawyers and conversations about ethics and how society should be run were common in his home.
US
Palo Alto is not only where Reid was born, it's where he went to university (Stanford) made his biggest impact professionally, co-founding and investing in numerous companies across Silicon Valley.
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