Big Think

Question: How did your childhood shape you?

Reid Hoffman:  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?

Question: What’s the moment you’ve felt most successful?

Reid Hoffman:  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.  But probably the most recent kind of highlight was in April 2006 when LinkedIn turned profitable.  Because when you turn a company profitable you’ve gone from a company whose days are numbered to a company whose days can be infinite.  And 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.

Question: What’s an ethical dilemma you faced?

Reid Hoffman:  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?

So in a BD deal between two companies, where my principal responsibility is to my shareholders and if the other side makes a mistake, you know, that’s their own fault, even if I see it.  But, for example, when you’re like hiring an employee, someone that you’re bringing into your family, as a way of doing stuff, like, for example, there’s a mistake in the offer letter or something else, you actually point it out to change them, because it’s part of a long relationship that you’re maintaining into the future.

I find that the interesting challenges, because there’s obvious things where, you know, don’t be unethical, don’t be evil, you know, don’t break the law, don’t do immoral things, those are all straightforward and don’t create ethical dilemmas.  The thing that’s interesting is when you actually have multiple interests at stake and you have to kind of navigate your way through it.

Question: What’s a mistake you’ve made during your career?

Reid Hoffman:  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.  And 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.  And so as opposed to focusing on titles and kind of a skill list check off, which is still very useful, focus much more on the network.

And so my mistake was, you know, if I had had that realization, I probably would have gone and begged my way into a job at Netscape.  Which was at kind of the beginning of my career, was kind of the central energy locus in the valley and that would’ve been a networking decision to go there as opposed to getting a title at a different company.

Question: What’s the worst career advice you’ve ever been given?

Reid Hoffman:  The worst career advice, and again, I mean, there’s kind of absurdities, right, because there’s a little bit like The Graduate, you know, plastics as career advice.  But the more subtle advice was, you know, a focus on, you know, titles and, you know, kind of prominence in association with brands as opposed to building strong ties with a network of people around you.  Because 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.

And so very rarely, and 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.

Recorded on August 11, 2009