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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.

-Reid Hoffman

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Well, Well-run Companies Always

Reid Hoffman

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Value Of Being Connected And Transparent Is So High That The Roadbumps Of Privacy Issues Are Much Lower In Actual Experience Than People's Fears.

[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."

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.

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

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

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?"

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

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One Of The Great Strengths Of American Culture Is This Empowerment Of Individual, Is The Individual Being Able To Be Entrepreneurial, Create New Things. But You Create A Whole Group Of People To Make Great Companies. It's Employees And Investors And Customers And Partners. The Fabric Of Society, Of A Network Of Relations, Is Key To Being Successful.

Innovation Comes From Long-term Thinking And Iterative Execution.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Reinventing Yourself

Investing In The Future

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.

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.

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?

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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?

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

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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."

The Key Thing That I Find That When You're Kind Of In Boom Times And You're Hiring Bunches, If You Can Hire, You Know, Always Maintain Very High Standards And Even If You, You Know, Can't Find Enough Of, You Know, What Is Typically Called A Players, Then Don't Hire The People. All Right? So, You Know, Use That As A Way Of Standards.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

You Gotta Be Both Flexible And Persistent.

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

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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.

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

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.

The Thing That Changes Your Professional Life, Your Capabilities, Your Learning, Your Understanding, Your Opportunity Flow, Your Ability To Make Things Happen, Is The Center Relationships You Have With Powerful And Effective People Around You In The Industry, In The Activity That You Want To Be Doing.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Playing It Safe

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

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.

It's Very Conventional To Say That You're A Contrarian These Days.

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.

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

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.

It’s Actually Pretty Easy To Be Contrarian. It’s Hard To Be Contrarian And Right.

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

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.

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

Young Entrepreneurs

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Second Amendment

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Everything In Life Has Some Risk, And What You Have To Actually Learn To Do Is How To Navigate It.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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