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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?"

-Reid Hoffman

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Now, In Economic Crises

Reid Hoffman

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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?"

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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

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.

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.

It's Useful To Be Able To Recognize Whether You're On Track Or Not. To Have That Belief, But Also Paranoia About Am I Tracking Against My Investment Thesis.

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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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No Matter How Brilliant Your Mind Or Strategy, If You're Playing A Solo Game, You'll Always Lose Out To A Team.

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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?"

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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?

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

You Gotta Be Both Flexible And Persistent.

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

We Don't Celebrate Failure In Silicon Valley. We Celebrate Learning

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.

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.

Silicon Valley Is A Mindset, Not A Location.

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

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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.

Every Individual Is Essentially Now A Small Business And Entrepreneur.

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

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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?

Silicon Valley Tends To Believe In The Individual Who Creates A Small Group And Does Something Big. Democracy Is Always Frustrating, But It Creates A Society That, For Example, Allows Us To Invest In Each Other's Kids, To Have Public Education, To Have Both A Greater Society And Individual Freedom For Creating Businesses.

You Should Have An Investment Thesis That Essentially Says Why You Think This Is Potentially A Good Idea.

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.

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.

Economic Tough Times Are Great Times To Be Investing In The Future.

The Real Secret Of Silicon Valley Is That It's Really All About The People

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 Think About Being Contrarian, You Have To Think About - how Is It That Smart People Will Disagree With Me, Disagree With Me ...from A Position Of Intelligence, And There Is Something That I Know That They Don't Know, That Will Actually In Fact Play Out To Be True.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Think Hillary [clinton] Has [woken Up To The Plight Of The Middle Class] And Is Working Toward It In A Democratic Process.

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."

By 2030 Over 2 Billion Jobs Will Disappear.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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."

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