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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."

-Reid Hoffman

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There Are Two Reasons

Reid Hoffman

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

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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.

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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.

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Investing In The Future

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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.

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

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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.

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

Social Business

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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.

Democracy Is Always Frustrating.

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

Innovation Comes From Long-term Thinking And Iterative Execution.

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.

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.

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."

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.

You Gotta Be Both Flexible And Persistent.

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Entrepreneurial

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."

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

Second Amendment

Entrepreneurship Is A Life Idea, Not A Strictly Business One; A Global Idea, Not A Strictly American One.

Entrepreneurship

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Good Ideas Need Good Strategy To Realize Their Potential.

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

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

Society Flourishes When People Think Entrepreneurally.

It's Better To Be The Best Connected Than The Most Connected.

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.

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?

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 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."

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.

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

Young Entrepreneurs

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

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.

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?"

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

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.

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 Reality Is: A Founder Is Someone Who Deals With A Ton Of Different Headaches And No One Is Universally Super Powered.

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