Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman has been called “the most connected man in Silicon Valley,” the “über-investor” who “has had a hand in creating nearly every lucrative social media start-up.” As entrepreneur, executive and investor, he has played an integral part in building LinkedIn, PayPal, Facebook and many others.

A former Marshall Scholar with degrees in symbolic systems from Stanford and philosophy from Oxford, he pioneered the social network concept as a project manager of eWorld at Apple. He founded SocialNet, one of the first online networks. As a founding director, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the online payment processing business PayPal, he was responsible for forging its partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo, and facilitated its $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay.

In 2002, he started LinkedIn in his living room. Following its 2011 IPO, his stake in the company was worth an estimated $2.34 billion. Today, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking service, with more than 300 million members in 200 countries around the world. As an investor, he participated in the first round of financing for Facebook and led Greylock Partners’ investments in Groupon and Airbnb, among others. He has shared his insights on the new world of work in his book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.