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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.

-Reid Hoffman

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If You Have To

Reid Hoffman

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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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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.

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

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.

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Reinventing Yourself

Investing In The Future

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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?"

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.

When You’re Doing Work You Care About, You Are Able To Work Harder And Better.

This Is Classic When You Begin Thinking About What Is A Great Founder Is, You Navigate What Is Apparent Paradoxes.

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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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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.

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?

I Think We Realized The Depth Of Frustration Through The Current Political Process. So We Said, "ok, We Know There's A Serious Problem Here, We Know We Need To Work On It," And Now It's "oh, We Need To Work On It A Lot Faster."

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.

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

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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.

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?"

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

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.

The Question Is: How You Cross Uneven Ground, How You Assemble Networks Around You.

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

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

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If You Don't Start Out Aiming For The Big Game, You Almost Never Can Get There.

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Be Persistent, And Hang On To Your Vision. And At The Same Time, Be Flexible.

Democracy Is Always Frustrating.

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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Part Of The Entrepreneurial Thing Is There Are Lots Of Ways To Die.

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The Challenge When You Think About Product Distribution Is: How Are You Competing For Potential Customers Or Potential Members Time?

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.

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

Your Network Is The People Who Want To Help You, And You Want To Help Them, And That's Really Powerful.

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.

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.

I Get Energy From One-on-one Conversations Most Often, And I Lose Energy From Group Conversations Most Often.

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.

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

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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.

...silicon Valley's Success Comes From The Way Its Companies Build Alliances With Their Employees.

Society Flourishes When People Think Entrepreneurally.

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.

First Mover Advantage Doesn't Go To The Company That Starts Up, It Goes To The Company That Scales Up

Benevolent, Enlightened, Wise Dictators Are The Most Efficient Form Of Government. The Problem Is What Comes Afterwards.

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.

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.

Data Only Exists Within The Framework Of A Vision You're Building To, A Hypothesis Of Where You're Moving To.

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

Social Business

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

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.

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.

When I'm Raising Money, This Fundraising, I'm Thinking About The Next Fundraising. I'm Thinking How I'm Set Up For It.

Good Ideas Need Good Strategy To Realize Their Potential.

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.

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.

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

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

I Think The Boarding Schools Are Like Miniature Versions Of "lord Of The Flies."

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.

The Entrepreneurial Journey Starts With Jumping Off A Cliff And Assembling An Airplane On The Way Down.

Silicon Valley Tends To Believe In The Individual Who Creates A Small Group And Does Something Big.

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.

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.

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.

The Key Issue When You're Looking At Cost Cutting Is To Always Plan For The Future.

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.

Trust And Mutual Value Creation Helps Both Employer And Employee Compete In The Marketplace.

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.

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