Reid Hoffman: Co-founder of LinkedIn, member of the 'PayPal Mafia', and a Greylock partner who invested early in Airbnb, Facebook and OpenAI. A leading voice on AI and author of books including The Start-Up of You, Blitzscaling and Superagency.
What this episode covers
Reid Hoffman walks Steven Bartlett through the mindset and mechanics of building companies: judging contrarian ideas smart people think are bad, treating entrepreneurship as a team sport, and why hiring should consume a third of a founder's time. He explains his Marines-Army-Police framework for scaling, ABZ planning, blitzscaling as a response to global competition, and his reference-checking technique for hiring. A large section covers AI as 'amplification intelligence' that grants super-agency, the risks of the transition, and concrete advice for ordinary people to start using it. He also speaks candidly about expecting political and personal repercussions from Trump for backing Kamala Harris, his views on free speech versus free reach, work-life balance in startups, and how love, friendship and impact define his sense of a meaningful life.
The guest's own work
The Start-Up of You
Reid Hoffman (and Ben Casnocha)
“I see you have a few of my books there um my very first book the startup review um which um came from the commencement speech I gave at my high school”— Reid Hoffman
Blitzscaling
Reid Hoffman (and Chris Yeh)
“and you know in blit scaling which I think is another book on your thing uh most consumer internet plays are uh what we call Glen Gary Glenn Ross markets”— Steven Bartlett
Impromptu
Reid Hoffman
“I last year I published a book called impromptu which is the first book on AI co-written with AI right”— Reid Hoffman
Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future
Reid Hoffman (and Greg Beato)
“I'm publishing a book in January called super agency which is our human agency even with this agentic technology can and will be magnified”— Reid Hoffman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
“I think I got it by reading science fiction right this kind of like what is the scope of humanity like you know Isaac asimov's foundation”— Reid Hoffman
RuneQuest
Chaosium
“what age were you when you started playing Rune Quest you were very young uh when I started playing Rune Quest probably 10”— Steven Bartlett
Silicon Valley
HBO
“there are like the Silicon Valley TV show uh on HBO kind of you know um uh you know satire”— Reid Hoffman
Perfect Ted
Perfect Ted
“I invest in a matcha company they make matcha like the you know green tea and they've they've grown very very quickly they call perfect T”— Reid Hoffman
Big reveals from this episode
- Says there's a greater-than-50% chance Trump will direct undemocratic repercussions at him personally for helping Harris get elected.
- Recounts that in 2003 'literally everyone' told him LinkedIn wouldn't work because it was individual-focused, not selling to companies.
- Reveals his Greylock partner pitched Airbnb to him as 'a deal you're going to fail on', it became his first and best Greylock investment.
- Says Elon Musk first pitched SpaceX as 'I'm going to send a turtle to Mars' and Hoffman thought he'd 'gone off his rocker.'
- Describes Elon as treating people as 'disposable parts' who burn out, contrasting it with his own approach of being referenceable by every entrepreneur he's worked with.
- Notes Microsoft paid $26 billion for LinkedIn (which IPO'd at $4.3B); his ~11% stake made him a multi-billionaire.
- Announces his January book Superagency and frames AI as 'amplification intelligence' that magnifies human agency.
- Says he had meetings with Downing Street this week on the UK's AI strategy and that announcements are coming he can't pre-reveal.
Worth remembering
- Hoffman edited RuneQuest at age 12 and was paid ~$160, his first paycheck, and his edits are reportedly still in the game.
- PayPal originally started as encryption on cell phones before pivoting to payments.
- When PayPal IPO'd it was one of only two tech companies to go public that year during a 'technology winter.'
- Hoffman argues references are more important than interviews, given a choice he'd hire on references 10 times out of 10.
- His reference trick: tell referees that if they give no weakness, he'll assume the candidate is too flawed to hire, so they always reveal something.
- Early LinkedIn served dinner at the office so employees wouldn't go home, an explicit deliberate anti-work-life-balance choice for startups.
- Argues today's AI is an 'idiot savant' superpower, GPT-4 can compare mixture-of-experts, game theory and oceanography, which no single human can.
- His five-bucket framework for young people's wealth: knowledge, skills, network, resources, reputation, soft assets compound most.
- Has been taking notes for 30 years for an unwritten book on friendship, his still-unchecked life box.
- Delayed his own wedding by a couple of weeks because of an early-stage crisis at LinkedIn.