Reid Hoffman is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network that allows professionals to connect with each other. He is also a venture capitalist and the author of two New York Times bestsellers. Today, he is very famous as a successful businessman and an innovative entrepreneur, although just a few years ago he was struggling with his first startup, a company called SocialNet that users could use to connect with friends.
Although Reid Hoffman had to abandon the project in a few years, he learned a lot about the dynamics of business management from his first failures to become one of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs in the United States. He was an innovative thinker and a fast learner from an early age. He attended Putney School where he also drove oxen and cultivated maple syrup while studying.
A brilliant student, he won a Marshall Scholarship while studying at Stanford University, which allowed him to attend the University of Oxford for his graduate studies. Although he first wanted to become a professor and public intellectual, he eventually changed his mind and decided to become an entrepreneur instead. After gaining some work experience at Apple Computers and PayPal, and experiencing a start-up failure, he was a great success by co-founding LinkedIn in December 2002 with some of his friends.
Children and early childhood
Reid Garrett Reid Hoffman was born on August 5, 1967 in Palo Alto, California, United States, to Deanna Ruth and William Parker Hoffman, Jr. as their only child. His parents were lawyers.
Reid Hoffman went to Putney School where he engaged in various other activities such as the cultivation of maple syrup and the conduct of oxen in parallel with his studies.
After graduating from high school, he went to Stanford University, from where he graduated in 1990 with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and Cognitive Sciences. He proved to be a highly competent academic student and successfully won a Marshall Scholarship, one of the most prestigious scholarships awarded in the United States.
As a Marshall Fellow, he earned a master's degree in philosophy from Wolfson College, University of Oxford in 1993. During his studies, Reid was interested in pursuing an academic career as a professor and a public intellectual. However, he later realized that his real interest was becoming an entrepreneur.
Career
Shortly after graduating from Oxford, Reid Hoffman joined Apple Computers in 1994. One of the first projects he worked on was eWorld, a first attempt to create a social network that was acquired by AOL in 1996. He also worked on Classifieds, Global Access Assistant and other strategic projects.
Reid Hoffman left Apple and worked at Fujitsu for a while. At that time, he was seriously considering opening his own business. In 1997, he co-founded his first company, SocialNet.com. It focused on “online dating and bringing together people with similar interests”. However, he had no experience in business management and was forced to abandon the project in 1999.
While managing SocialNet, Hoffman became a member of the board of directors who founded the electronic money transfer service, PayPal. He joined PayPal as the company's full-time COO in 2000.
Reid Hoffman responsibilities at PayPal included payment infrastructure management (VISA, MasterCard, ACH, WellsFargo), business development (eBay, Intuit, others), government (regulatory, judicial) and legal issues. In addition, it has sometimes assumed responsibility for public relations, strategy, payment innovations and customer service. Thanks to his hard work tirelessly, he quickly rose through the ranks and became executive vice president of the company in 2002.
Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002 with some of his former colleagues and friends. It was launched as one of the first commercial online social networks. The site, which allows registered users to create business profiles and connect to each other, became popular shortly after its launch.
Reid Hoffman was the founding CEO of LinkedIn for the first four years before becoming President and Chairman, Produced in February 2007. In 2009, he became Executive Chairman.
After becoming a successful entrepreneur and accumulating a large fortune, Reid Hoffman became one of the most prolific and prosperous angelical investors in Silicon Valley. He joined Greylock Partners in 2010 and manages his Discovery fund of 20 million dollars. At Greylock, its areas of interest are consumers and services, business software, consumer Internet, online markets, payments and social networks.
Reid Hoffman is also a prolific writer and has published various articles as a "LinkedIn Influencer" on LinkedIn. He also wrote several editorials in the Washington Post.
In 2012, he published the career book "The Start-up of You: Adapting to the Future, Investing in You and Transforming Your Career" with co-author Ben Casnocha. He received positive reviews from critics and became both a bestseller from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
He wrote another book, "The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Network Era" with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, published in 2014. In the book, the authors discuss how the company and employees can work together to achieve common goals, even when some of their interests differ and establish long-term relationships in today's volatile economy. This, too, has become a bestseller.
Major work
Reid Hoffman is best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, which was one of the first commercial social networking services at the time of its launch. The site has become extremely popular and is now available in 24 languages, including Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. It has more than 364 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.
Philanthropic work
He served on the advisory board of the Center for Citizen Media in 2006-07. The Centre is a non-profit initiative jointly affiliated with the University of California, the Graduate School of Journalism in Berkeley and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society of Harvard University Law School.
Reid Hoffman sits on the board of directors of Kiva.org, a pioneer in peer-to-peer microcredit that allows people to lend money via the Internet to low-income/unserved entrepreneurs and students. He lent Kiva 1 million dollars in 2012.
Awards and achievements
In 2012, Reid Hoffman received TechAmerica's David Packard Medal of Achievement Award for contributions and advances in the high-tech industry, its community and humanity.
In April 2014, Hoffman received the Commonwealth Club's Distinguished Citizen Award. The Academy of Achievement awarded Hoffman the annual Gold Plate Award, which honors accomplished people "for important achievements in their field" later that year.
Personal life and inheritance
He married Michelle Yee in 2004.
Net value
As of October 2015, Reid Hoffman had a net worth of 4.6 billion dollars.
Quick facts
Anniversary 5 August 1967
Nationality of the United States
Famous: quotes from philanthropists by Reid Hoffman
Sign of the Sun: Leo
Also known as: Reid Garrett Hoffman
Born in: Stanford
Famous as co-founder of LinkedIn
Family: Spouse/Ex-: Michelle Yee père: William Parker Hoffman mother: Deanna Ruth Rutter United States: California City: Palo Alto, California Founder/Counder: Skype Technologies, LinkedIn Corporation More information on the facts: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, Oxford University
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