Career Reid Hoffman

1 career

1.1 years
1.2 paypal
1.3 linkedin
1.4 investing

career
early years

while in college, according hoffman, formed conviction wanted try influence state of world on large scale. saw academia opportunity make impact , later realized entrepreneurial career provide him larger platform. when graduated stanford plan become professor , public intellectual. not quoting kant. s holding lens society , asking we? , should be, individuals , society? realised academics write books 50 or 60 people read , wanted more impact.

with in mind, hoffman pursued career in business , entrepreneurship. joined apple computer in 1994, worked on eworld, attempt @ creating social network. eworld acquired aol in 1996. later worked @ fujitsu before co-founding first company – socialnet.com in 1997. focused “on online dating , matching people similar interests, golfers looking partners in neighborhood.” peter thiel has said socialnet.com “literally idea before time. social network 7 or 8 years before became trend.”

paypal

while @ socialnet, hoffman member of board of directors during founding of paypal, electronic money transmission service. in january 2000, left socialnet , joined paypal full-time company s coo. allen blue, whom hoffman hired @ paypal, said “paypal had scratch , claw every advantage had, , reid became expert @ competing in extremely competitive environment. hoffman responsible external relationships paypal, including payments infrastructure (visa, mastercard, ach, wellsfargo), business development (ebay, intuit, , others), government (regulatory, judicial), , legal. peter thiel, hoffman s boss @ paypal, has said hoffman “was firefighter-in-chief @ paypal. though diminishes role because there many, many fires.” @ time of paypal s acquisition ebay $1.5b in 2002, executive vice president of paypal.

linkedin

hoffman speaks @ event.

hoffman co-founded linkedin in december 2002 2 former colleagues socialnet (including allen blue), former college classmate , former colleague time @ fujitsu. launched on may 5, 2003, 1 of first business-oriented online social networks. peter thiel , keith rabois, colleagues of hoffman s @ paypal, invested in linkedin. november 2014, linkedin had on 332 million members in more 200 countries , territories. site allows registered users create professional profiles , connect each other. users can invite (whether site user or not) become connection. according forbes, “linkedin is, far , away, advantageous social networking tool available job seekers , business professionals today.

hoffman linkedin s founding ceo first 4 years before becoming chairman , president, products in february 2007. became executive chairman in june 2009. ipo of linkedin on may 19, 2011, hoffman owns stake worth estimated $2.34 billion, not including potential benefits greylock partners, named partner in 2009. hoffman believes many people still not know how use service , linkedin s job them out. in interview, hoffman said “you have think proactively how use tool enables ability move in ways weren’t able move before, , of people not @ that”.

microsoft proposed acquire linkedin on june 13, 2016 $26.2 billion in cash. hoffman became board member of microsoft on march 14, 2017.

investing

after paypal sale ebay, hoffman became 1 of silicon valley s prolific , successful angel investors. according venture capitalist david sze, hoffman arguably successful angel investor in past decade. dave goldberg, former ceo of surveymonkey, said hoffman “is person want talk when starting company.” in 2010 hoffman joined greylock partners , runs $20 million discovery fund. areas of focus @ greylock include consumer , services, enterprise software, consumer internet, enterprise 2.0, mobile, social gaming, online marketplaces, payments, , social networks.

according david kirkpatrick s book facebook effect, hoffman arranged first meeting between mark zuckerberg , peter thiel, led thiel s initial $500,000 angel investment in facebook. hoffman invested alongside thiel in facebook s first financing round.

hoffman’s current investments include airbnb, 1 kings lane, swipely, viki, coupons.com, edmodo, wrapp, trialpay, xapo, change.org, gixo, blockstream, convoy, segovia, crowdpac , talko. past investments include 3dsolve, flickr, digg, shopkick, sixapart, wikia, permuto, thesixtyone, tagged, ironport, ping.fm, nanosolar, care.com, knewton, kongregate, last.fm, technetto, vendio , viglink. served on zynga’s board of directors march 2008 june 2014, , on shopkick s board of directors foundation in july 2009 until acquisition sk telecom in october 2014.