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Because In Our Boom Times, Everything Is Growing, Usually, You Know, The Kind Of Things That Come To Mind Are Wild, Wild, West, Or Land Grabs, You Know, These Sorts Of Things, In Order To Make Something, You Know, Kind Of To Grow Into The Future And To Get All The Growth That You Need To Have. So You Tend To Hire A Lot Because You're Running Fast To The Future.

-Reid Hoffman

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Because In Our Boom

Reid Hoffman

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Because In Our Boom Times, Everything Is Growing, Usually, You Know, The Kind Of Things That Come To Mind Are Wild, Wild, West, Or Land Grabs, You Know, These Sorts Of Things, In Order To Make Something, You Know, Kind Of To Grow Into The Future And To Get All The Growth That You Need To Have. So You Tend To Hire A Lot Because You're Running Fast To The Future.

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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.

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Democracy Is Always Frustrating.

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.

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Everyone, You Know, During Crises Times, Is Much More Focused On, Okay, How Do We Get The Boat Completely Seaworthy, Sailing Along Well, And Everything Going Well? And So As Long As You're Communicating How The General Strategy Of The Company And How The Work They Can Do To Add To That And To Make That More Successful And The Thing That They Can Contribute To That, That Is Generally Very Motivating For Employees In Crisis Times.

All Humans Are Entrepreneurs Not Because They Should Start Companies But Because The Will To Create Is Encoded In Human Dna.

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Good Ideas Need Good Strategy To Realize Their Potential.

The Future Is Sooner And Stranger Than You Think.

You Jump Off A Cliff And You Assemble An Airplane On The Way Down.

Great Opportunities Almost Never Fit Your Schedule.

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.

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.

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.

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.

World-changing Startups Need To Be Premised On Accurate Contrarian Theories.

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.

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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.

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Because In Our Boom Times, Everything Is Growing, Usually, You Know, The Kind Of Things That Come To Mind Are Wild, Wild, West, Or Land Grabs, You Know, These Sorts Of Things, In Order To Make Something, You Know, Kind Of To Grow Into The Future And To Get All The Growth That You Need To Have. So You Tend To Hire A Lot Because You're Running Fast To The Future.

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The Metaphor That I Frequently Use For Entrepreneurship Is Jumping Off A Cliff And Assembling An Airplane Plane On The Way Down.

It Is Impossible To Dissociate An Individual From The Environment Of Which He Is A Part. No Story Of Achievement Should Ever Be Removed From Its Broader Social Context.

People Generally Worry About Social Networking More Than They Need To. In Kind Of Consumer Internet Investing And On Social And Professional Networks, I Kind Of Look At Time Spending And Time Efficiency. You Know, Time Saving Sites. So On Time Spending Sites, Things Where You Play Lots Of Games Or That Sort Of Thing, You Might Worry About A Productivity Loss If People Are Spending A Lot Of Time Doing That. So If There's A Lot Of Kind Of Addictive Gaming Going On During Work Hours, That Won't Be As Helpful To You.

I Actually Think Every Individual Is Now An Entrepreneur, Whether They Recognize It Or Not.

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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.

Companies Hire A Lot During Boom Times Because They're Trying To Adequately Accelerate Into The Future.

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People Who Take Risk Intelligently Can Usually Actually Make A Lot More Progress Than People Who Don't.

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.

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?

[hillary Clinton] Is Part Of The Establishment, And That's Good For Foreign Policy And For Understanding The Ongoing Health Care System.

You Remake Yourself As You Grow And As The World Changes. Your Identity Doesn’t Get Found. It Emerges.

One Of The Phrases I Frequently Look For Is Infinite Learning Curve.because Each Entrepreneurial Pattern Is To Some Degree Unique And New.

Donald Trump Has Shown That He Will Essentially Attack Individuals, Make Second Amendment Jokes.

Second Amendment

Having A Great Idea For A Product Is Important, But Having A Great Idea For Product Distribution Is Even More Important.

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.

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.

What Is An Entrepreneur? Someone Who Jumps Off A Cliff And Builds A Plane On The Way Down.

People Are Legitimately Worried About Donald Trump, Almost Like A Schoolyard Bully, If I Step Up, Am I Going To Be Targeted, Too?

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.

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.

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.

One Of The Ways They Run Forward Is By Viewing The Thing They’re Doing As Something That’s Going To Be The Whole World.

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.

So Usually You Have To Have Product Distribution As More Fundamental Than What The Actual Product Is.

When You Turn A Company Profitable You've Gone From A Company Whose Days Are Numbered To A Company Whose Days Can Be Infinite.

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.

Social Networks Do Best When They Tap Into One Of The Seven Deadly Sins. Facebook Is Ego. Zynga Is Sloth. Linkedin Is Greed.

There's An Ability To Learn & Adapt, An Ability To Constantly Have A Vision That's Driving You, But To Be Taking Input From All Sources.

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?

What Great Founders Do Is Seek The Networks That Will Be Essential To Their Task... Usually It's Best To Have Two Or Three People On A Team Rather Than A Solo Founder.

Silicon Valley Is A Mindset, Not A Location.

You Have To Be Constantly Reinventing Yourself And Investing In The Future.

Reinventing Yourself

Investing In The Future

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.

Pay Attention To Your Culture And Your Hires From The Very Beginning.

Before Dreaming About The Future Or Marking Plans, You Need To Articulate What You Already Have Going For You - As Entrepreneurs Do.

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.

I Am Most Heartened When I'm Talking To A Team When They're Reasoning To Each Other.

If You Are Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You've Launched Too Late.

Young Entrepreneurs

The Underpinnings Of The Alliance: The Company Helps The Employee Transform His Career; The Employee Helps The Company Transform.

We Believe That When The Right Talent Meets The Right Opportunity In A Company With The Right Philosophy, Amazing Transformation Can Happen.

Every Individual Is Essentially Now A Small Business And Entrepreneur.

By 2030 Over 2 Billion Jobs Will Disappear.

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.

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.

Democracy Tends To Be A Collaborative Process, A Committee, A Consensus.

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.

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."

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?

Help The People In Your Network. And Let Them Help You.

Social Business

Ironically, In A Changing World, Playing It Safe Is One Of The Riskiest Things You Can Do.

Playing It Safe

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.

There Are Opportunities That You Get During Crises Times. Crises Times Are A Great Time To Start A Business.

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