Reid Hoffman Quotes

A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.

...Silicon Valley's success comes from the way its companies build alliances with their employees.

We don't celebrate failure in Silicon Valley. We celebrate learning

So usually you have to have product distribution as more fundamental than what the actual product is.

You remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesn’t get found. It emerges.

You gotta be both flexible and persistent.

It’s actually pretty easy to be contrarian. It’s hard to be contrarian and right.

If you don't start out aiming for the big game, you almost never can get there.

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.

What great founders do is seek the networks that will be essential to their task... Usually it's best to have two or three people on a team rather than a solo founder.

Part of the entrepreneurial thing is there are lots of ways to die.

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.

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.

World-changing startups need to be premised on accurate contrarian theories.

The challenge when you think about product distribution is: how are you competing for potential customers or potential members time?

There's an ability to learn & adapt, an ability to constantly have a vision that's driving you, but to be taking input from all sources.

I get energy from one-on-one conversations most often, and I lose energy from group conversations most often.

The question is: how you cross uneven ground, how you assemble networks around you.

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.

When I'm raising money, this fundraising, I'm thinking about the next fundraising. I'm thinking how I'm set up for it.

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.

Be persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible.

When you’re doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.

Economic tough times are great times to be investing in the future.

The key issue when you're looking at cost cutting is to always plan for the future.

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.

Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.

You should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.

Trust and mutual value creation helps both employer and employee compete in the marketplace.

What I think Peter Thiel imagines is that Donald Trump has a policy, that Trump has an idea of what to do. haven't heard any of those ideas. All I hear is sloganeering, vitriol, personal attacks.

Companies hire a lot during boom times because they're trying to adequately accelerate into the future.

Make sure a certain percentage of the people that you're hiring are generalists so that you can be, kind of reconfigured in the workforce pretty easily.

When you turn a company profitable you've gone from a company whose days are numbered to a company whose days can be infinite.

Democracy tends to be a collaborative process, a committee, a consensus.

I am most heartened when I'm talking to a team when they're reasoning to each other.

One of the phrases I frequently look for is infinite learning curve.Because each entrepreneurial pattern is to some degree unique and new.

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.

Pay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.

[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."

Donald Trump has shown that he will essentially attack individuals, make Second Amendment jokes.

Part of the reason we like democracy is it's the portfolio of decades, which is to say you don't also get the disastrous dictator who completely destroys a society, engages you in wars and so forth.

Benevolent, enlightened, wise dictators are the most efficient form of government. The problem is what comes afterwards.

I think the boarding schools are like miniature versions of "Lord of the Flies."

People are legitimately worried about Donald Trump, almost like a schoolyard bully, if I step up, am I going to be targeted, too?

I think Hillary [Clinton] has [woken up to the plight of the middle class] and is working toward it in a democratic process.

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?"

[Hillary Clinton] is part of the establishment, and that's good for foreign policy and for understanding the ongoing health care system.

Silicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big.

Throwing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, you're vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B.

An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.