Reid Hoffman
Reid Garrett Hoffman (* August 5, 1967 in Stanford, California) is an American entrepreneur and author. Hoffman is known as co-founder of LinkedIn. In Silicon Valley Hoffman is known as a person who has already taken on each chair at the table. He was Junior Product Manager at Apple and Fujitsu, manager of the Internet service provider PayPal, a private investor, institutional investor, founder and CEO of the financed with venture capital company LinkedIn and independent director of both private and public companies.
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Career
Hoffman was born the son of Deanna Ruth Rutter and William Parker Hoffman Jr. and grew up in Berkeley, California, on. Hoffman attended the High School "The Putney School ," where he made maple syrup from our own vineyards, drove oxen and epistemology studied. He graduated in 1990 from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science degree in symbolic systems and cognitive sciences ( where he won both a Marshall Scholarship and the Dinkelspiel Award). In 1993, he then Get the Master of Arts in Philosophy at Oxford University.
In 1994, Hoffman began his career at Apple Computer, where he worked on eWorld, an early attempt to create a social network. eWorld was acquired in 1996 by AOL. He later worked at Fujitsu, before he co-founded in 1997 SocialNet.com, his first own company. This focused on " online dating and the merging of people with similar interests, such as golfers who are looking for a partner in their environment. "
PayPal
While Hoffman worked at SocialNet, he was also a board member of the founding of PayPal, an electronic money transfer services. In January 2000, he left SocialNet and became a full-time chief operating officer of PayPal. Allen Blue, Hoffman had set at PayPal, said: "PayPal had every advantage in the market it had to fight for and Reid was a specialist in being able to assert itself in this extremely competitive environment affected. " He was responsible for all external relations with PayPal, such as the payment infrastructure (VISA, MasterCard, ACH, Wells Fargo ), business expansion ( eBay, Intuit and others), the management as well as legal matters. Peter Thiel, Hoffman's supervisor at PayPal, said: "He was the senior firefighter at PayPal This reduces its position down, however, as it blazed at that time very many fires. . " By the time PayPal was in 2002 taken $ 1.5 billion out of eBay for U.S., he was chief operating officer of PayPal.
Hoffman founded LinkedIn in December 2002 along with two former colleagues of SocialNet (including Allen Blue ). One of these was a former fellow student, the other a colleague from Hoffman times at Fujitsu. On 5 May 2003, it was marketed as one of the first business -oriented social networks on the market. Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, who were both colleagues of Hoffman at PayPal, invested in LinkedIn. In November 2012 LinkedIn had more than 187 million registered users in over 200 countries on the page registered users can manage a list of so-called Connections. These are people to whom the user can have a relationship at different levels. Users can also invite any person (regardless of whether they are already registered with LinkedIn or not) to add it to their connections. According to Forbes, " LinkedIn now by far the most beneficial social network for job seekers and professionals. " Is
Hoffman was a founding during the first four years as Managing Director at LinkedIn, before he eventually became president and CEO in February 2007. In May 2007, LinkedIn finally celebrated its first year of profitability. In June 2009, Hoffman was then executive chairman. Since the IPO of LinkedIn on 19 May 2011 Hoffman owns a share of the estimated U.S. $ 2.34 billion figure does not include any winnings from Greylock Partners, of which he had been promoted to partner in 2009.
Investments
After selling PayPal to eBay Hoffman was one of the most prolific and successful private investors in Silicon Valley. In 2010, Hoffman was a member of the Greylock Partners and manages its U.S. $ 20 million Discovery Fund. His focus at Greylock lie in the areas of consumer and services, enterprise software, Internet services, enterprise 2.0, mobile phones, social gaming, online marketplaces, payment processes and social networks.
The book The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick According to Hoffman arranged the first meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel, the $ 500,000 led to Thiel's initial investment of U.S. in the company. Besides Thiel Hoffman also invested in the first funding round of Facebook.
Zynga
Hoffman personally invested in the first round of financing by Zynga and was a member of the Company Board. Hoffman and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus jointly own the Six Degrees Patent. Zynga is now a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of U.S. $ 2.48 billion (as of August 2012).
Other investments
Public appearances
Hoffman is a regular visitor to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and has participated in the Bilderberg meetings in the years 2011 and 2012.
Hoffman is co-organizer of "The Weekend To Be Named Later", one inspired by Ben Franklin Assembly of ambitious friends who make think about how you can change the world. He was a speaker at the conference of the X Prize Foundation and the TED conference in Long Beach in 2012. Often he gives lectures at Stanford University, Oxford University, Harvard University, MIT Media Lab and other institutions. He was also seen in " The Charlie Rose Show," Fareed Zakaria's "Global Public Square " on CNN and other news programs on TV.
Honorary Appointments
Hoffman is Board Member of " Do Something " and of Kiva.org ( a micro- finance organization ), Mozilla, the Explotarium place ( a museum of science, art and human perception ) and Endeavor Global, an international NPO for development, the entrepreneurs in emerging markets and supports. Hoffman is also a supporter of Quest Bridge.
Writings
- ( with Ben Casnocha ) The Start-Up Strategy: How to make a career modeled after the most successful companies in the world - a best-seller, with over 100,000 copies sold.
Reviews
- Publisher's Weekly: ... the book " contains a lot of valuable guidance that apply to every profession section This book will readers not only help in times of great uncertainties professionally to survive, but at the same time stand out from the crowd and be successful. . "
- The Economist says that " Hoffman and Casnocha make some astute observations with respect to the changes in the working world."
Honors and Awards
- 2012 Hoffman was on the 3rd place on the Forbes Midas List of the top tech investors.
- 2012 Newsweek and The Daily Beast: "Digital Power Index ", a list of the 100 most important people in the digital world that year, on the Hoffman 3rd to the category " Sponsors" was.
- Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn in 2011 the " Earnest and Young U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year Award" shared.
- 17 2010 Place of Fast Company 's "100 Most Creative People in Business ".
- 2012 TechAmerica the " David Packard Medal of Achievement Award "