Rapid Response: Reid Hoffman on the business impacts of Trump vs. Harris

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1:32Many of them are traditionally deeply Republican. They say, great, we're glad that you're out there because you can speak this truth about American business, which, you know, we, by our positions, must be unfortunately silent on.

1:51That's Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and a host of Masters of Scale, the sister podcast to Rapid Response. Reid has become a prominent voice in this year's presidential race as a bridge between business and politics. He's been a supporter of Biden and now Harris, in sharp contrast to folks like Elon Musk. I wanted to talk with Reid about the divide in Silicon Valley at this moment of tumult, and he was refreshingly candid. He acknowledges what makes Trump compelling to some and why he disagrees, and he outlines the opportunities ahead for Harris. He even offers lessons about blitzscaling that he hopes the Harris campaign and not the Trump campaign will latch onto.

2:40It's a rich, thought-provoking, insightful conversation as dialogue with Reid usually is. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

2:56Reid, great to be with you. Thanks for doing this today. Bob, always a pleasure. We have seen an extraordinary series of events this week. You were among the voices publicly supportive of Joe Biden after the debate, and then you came out quite quickly in support of Kamala Harris. I personally was looking forward to a more open process, however messy that might be, that it might add energy to the campaign. You didn't feel that way. Well, actually, I would have been, and I am open to an open process in various ways. But part of the – there were two or three things going on. One is that I think Kamala is an excellent candidate in an additive way to which Biden was a good candidate.

3:49I'll go back to that in a moment. And a lot of the folks that people were hoping for as candidates all decided themselves that supporting Kamala was the right thing. So you see a bunch of people like Gretchen Wittner, Josh Shapiro, a bunch of great Democratic governors all endorsing Kamala. Kamala is one of the ones who's gone through national vetting. And so part of what happens when you go into the presidential race, there's a lot of intense examination, and Kamala's done that. And so I think that's kind of the process reason. Now, the structural reason is part of the reason I was supportive of Biden is because, you know, part of what Biden set off against Trump was a combination of decency and unity, more bipartisan legislation than any president in decades, you know, kind of working to bring us together.

4:44Now, in addition to that, what Harris brings to the table is you have in this kind of entertaining American reality television show that is our presidential election, you have a prosecutor against a felon. And the importance thing about the rule of law is actually, in fact, one of the things I think that the central election is about. It's about saying actually, in fact, trying to overturn an election with an insurrection on January 6th is bad. Actually following the laws of the nation is actually key. And I think that's one of the things that Kamala brings to the picture. There's been a lot of back and forth about how different parts of Silicon Valley align with the presidential candidates.

5:35You know, Elon Musk has been vocal in support of Donald Trump, and Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz also rallied to Trump. There are others like you who are vocal in support of the Democratic Party. How divisive have things become in Silicon Valley? I mean, it is a small place that the impact of it is big, but it's not a big place. Well, I mean, Silicon Valley has rarely been unified to one candidate, in part because relatively few candidates are as strongly technology building the future. And so generally speaking, there is always actually some debate within. Now, this debate, I think, is a little strange because if you consider Trump, one, You know, classically, Republicans are the party of business.

6:24And so they argue it's business. Well, here's a business person who's arguing tariffs and, you know, and other kinds of things which are like, you know, anti-business. So it's kind of strange. You know, Donald Trump himself is perhaps one of the very few human beings on the planet who can lose money running a casino. So, you know, it's kind of like also bad on business credentials. And you go, well, maybe J.D. Vance. Well, but when J.D. Vance says, hey, of all the people that Biden's appointed, he's like, most of them are bad. But the one who's really good is Lena Kahn. Now, she is the representative of the kind of thing that I would be doing.

6:57So it's a little bit of a strange dialogue. Because the regulatory environment and things like, you know, that's part of what has made some business leaders skeptical about Biden and about the Democrats. People say, well, are you just so resolutely anti-Trump? It's like, well, actually, in fact, I thought one of the things that he did well in his presidency is like, you want a new regulation, remove an old one. It's a generally good kind of refactoring and don't allow cruft. I mean, I think that the regulatory stuff is good. Now, that being said, what I think people don't realize is stability, unity, and rule of law is the most important thing for business.

7:41You know, it isn't a question of like corporate taxes going up or down by a percentage or an additional regulation or two. Those are important things for business. But the thing that's actually, in fact, most important is a notion of do you want a stable society? It's what you can invest in. It's what you can hire people in. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, I think Joe Biden has been a great president. And I think Kamala Harris can be a great president for business as well as general because of that specific attribute. We can go into details and say, well, but they're going to add these three regulations.

8:15And you say, well, those regulations would be probably less good for business. Sometimes, by the way, good, thoughtful business people realize that some regulation is very good. It creates a stable environment. It creates a good transactional thing. It's like, for example, having regulation about food and drug. You may disagree with the intensity of it in some ways. And you may want to say, we want to have drugs approved more quickly, both of which I think are very good points and important. But you might say, look, the baseline is good for the overall transactional velocity and stability of society.

8:52So much of America has become calcified, that you're either red or you're blue, and there's not a lot of movement back and forth. Does it feel that way in Silicon Valley too? Like when, when you talk with your colleagues and the community there, is it sort of like two different camps or, or is there dialogue? I would say that there are fragments of dialogue. I would say that the people who are more uncertain of the key issues are talking to the folks who, you know, represent the kind of the camp that I'm in, which is, I believe, you know, stability, unity, rule of law. And then there's people who think that the, you know, the wrecking ball that is Donald Trump is the right environment for disruptive and, you know, kind of technology.

9:50And there's people who talk to both of those. I'd say across it, not as much because I had a Twitter exchange with David Sachs, I made an offer to go on the All In podcast to talk about it, which even though they accused me of being timid on Twitter, they haven't taken me up on that offer. It's like, what is it? Your beliefs are where your mouth is or your boldness is or something. But anyway, we do have, obviously in this time around, we have a much more set of vigorous voices for Trump than we've had in the previous elections. I think some of it's crypto. You know, I think that the Biden administration has actually mishandled their thinking of crypto in various ways.

10:36And so I think there's a bunch of crypto people who are a single issue. I think there's others that, you know, kind of have some belief that his wrecking ball is a better strategy. But I think they're mostly under misapprehensions and big kind of information bubbles. So I think that's part of the dialogue you have. Now, you note that most of the public voices for Trump have actually, in fact, migrated away from Silicon Valley. I guess the last thing I would say is, you know, a number of those voices who've been public about Trump were also public about Trump lost their support because of January 6th, you know, kind of violence and insurrection and then are not addressing that.

11:24in their regain of support. And I would think that would be one of several different points of integrity to say, if you have integrity and you're supporting Trump in this election, you should address that. When you think about your own role in politics personally, I'm not sure we've had a period before where the endorsement of a business leader would get quite as much attention as your statements have sometimes gotten. Is that strange for you? Oh, it's very strange.

12:22But when it gets down to kind of rule of law, you know, kind of the baseline of the system, then I kind of feel like I have to put a lot more energy than I put in previously. And, you know, could have to riff on a Vinod Kosovo line. I think there's Democrats, Republicans, and felons. Here's a business way of putting it. Trump would be disallowed from running any public company with his record, right? Like, the rules wouldn't allow him to run a public company. And many of these business people who support him wouldn't do business with him. He's like, OK, this is the person that you're supporting as the so-called business candidate for president, right?

13:04It's kind of surprising. As an investor, you're not personally leading a big group of people. When you talk to CEOs in your portfolio companies and otherwise, what do you talk about is the appropriate role for an organizational leader? I mean, some portion of every employee base probably supports each candidate. So can you express how you feel as a CEO? Should you? Well, I think the thing that I've talked to a number of CEOs, and this all the way started back to Jeff Wiener at LinkedIn, you know, when Trump was first elected, is to say, I don't think that it makes sense to kind of articulate, call it, you know, Team X or Team Y because of not just employees, but customers, investors, et cetera.

13:56Like if you just kind of say, hey, I'm oppositional to your team, picking, you know, Yankees versus Red Sox or, you know, kind of equivalent is kind of alienating in a way that business is supposed to be unifying. That's a good thing to kind of sidestep. You know, you may personally attend a fundraiser, vote, et cetera, but as a leader of the organization to use the platform is different. Now, that being said, I do think that there's ways to articulate, kind of call it support for America, that if are treated as partisan, then the people who are treating it as partisan, there's something wrong with them.

14:34For example, the 2020 election being a kind of a fair and balanced election. If someone takes exception of that as partisan, you can say, well, that's actually, that's like saying it's partisan to be pro-business or anti-business or something. And it's like, no, no, no, this is just the kind of the fundamental operating system of our country and belief in the U.S. Constitution is not partisan. As an investor and a board member, say, at Microsoft, you have more freedom than Satya Nadella does to engage in discussions about candidates? Yes, for sure. I don't mean to pick on Satya. No, no. Well, Satya, one of the great CEOs of our modern times.

15:19When you're on a board, you don't speak for the company. You never speak for the company. I don't speak for the company on anything. I don't speak for the company on product releases. I don't speak for the company on, you know, I mean, part of the, for example, Microsoft governance from the very first day that I joined is like all board members, you know, you're not supposed to speak for the company ever. But by doing that, that means you just only speak for yourself. Right. I have literally never once said anything more precise about Microsoft other than, well, I think they're very smart about what they're doing with AI.

15:52Right. You know, something along those lines. And I think that's right. And that gives me and all board members and, you know, that's true of other public companies and other private companies and other venture firms. And I think it's an ability to to speak publicly. Are there CEOs who talk to you and encourage you to be vocal about the political situation because they can't be? Very much. I'd say that the majority of CEOs I talk to are deeply concerned with the chaos and division and anti-stability and anti -rule of law that Trump and his supporters represent for the country. right many of them are traditionally deeply republican they're the business of a business of america is business the you know government should get out of the way of businesses creating jobs and industry and they are still kind of deeply concerned about the way that trump and his folks run their elections they run their support of things like charlottesville other kinds of things and they go no this is not what we should be doing what we should be doing is actually, in fact, you know, not trying to make a division and hatred reality television show, which makes good ratings, but we should be making a good environment for business.

17:22They say, great, we're glad that you're, you know, that you're out there because you can speak this truth about American business, which, you know, we by our positions must be unfortunately silent on. It's interesting how Reed describes himself as a reluctant political actor. At various times in our lives, we embrace tasks or have them thrust upon us in ways we may not have preferred, but that doesn't diminish our responsibility in those moments or our need for action. After the break, Reid and I talk about why he thinks blitzscaling provides a good model for presidential campaigning and more.

18:02We'll be right back.

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19:42So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash MOS and get up to three months free. Before the break, Reid Hoffman shared why he's become so active in politics and what divides business and tech leaders in the presidential race. Now we talk about how a Harris administration might approach AI, the model that blitzscaling offers for political campaigns and the risks that he hopes Harris takes. As for Reid's preferences for Harris's VP candidate, well, you'll have to listen in. Let's get back to it.

20:25We talked earlier this year for the podcast about a meeting you had with Joe Biden about AI and tech development. And you said you were pretty reassured that, you know, despite his age, Biden had a framework for thinking about AI that was forward-looking and people-focused. Have you had any discussions about AI with Kamala Harris? Do you know what her philosophy on tech is? I haven't had it in depth. Vice President Harris showed up at the UK AI safety meeting last November. So she's active and thinking about it. And so her contributions in the meeting were, hey, there can be all these great things that are created by AI, medical assistants, tutors, et cetera.

21:12That's really good. And we just need to make sure that we're bringing all of society along and doing the right kind of guardrails to make sure that the bad potential things, whether it's, you know, kind of racial bias or enshrining the power of the already powerful, are carefully navigated. But, you know, I think that she's intellectually interested in, you know, to some degree, since this election has now become a young versus old election, she brings the young, curious vigor into the picture. You never had any encounters with her when she was in California earlier about technology necessarily?

21:49No, and that was in part because my general interaction in politics has been, and I would love it to return to, kind of like, hey, I'm building really important things for people through business and through technology. and I just support, you know, various kind of great leaders, whether they're political leaders or entertainment leaders or other things as I find them, you know, kind of as a side thing to the job I'm doing. And so that was what I was doing before. And so I hadn't, you know, Vice President Harris and I haven't really talked about that in any depth. We're about 100 days from Election Day.

22:27CEOs know that their first 100 days are often incredibly important. In some ways, you know, Harris is now sort of starting her job in the campaign. Are there are there models of refounding that the Harris campaign can borrow from? Are there startup principles or blitzscaling principles that that could be applied to this campaign in this at this moment? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's used the fact that you only have 100 days as a feature, not a bug. It's kind of a classic entrepreneurship thing, which is like, say, well, you don't have the structural advantages that an existing business with all of its customers and capital and everything else has.

23:13You have to use your advantages in the field. And I think that That means that, among other things, Kamala Harris can now kind of articulate which things she would bring as new things, as different things. Even while being proud of lowest crime rate in 50 years, lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, and other kinds of things, she can say, and this now is the new things that we are building towards. And so I think she can use all of that. So where do we go from here? I mean, just a few days in from some intense tumult, things suddenly seem like settled in some ways for the Democrats. Are there other like plans B that are still bubbling?

23:59I know you talk about not just a plan B, but plans B. Are there things still bubbling or is the is the VP pick the the only thing that's left? I think there's a lot of stuff that's still game on. I think we're going to have a very interesting 100 days. Obviously, the vice president pick is a very important one. You know, it's top of a lot of people's minds, mine too. But also, like Kamala Harris has this ability to articulate now where she will be new, What she will be bringing to the kind of the renovation and the rebuilding of D.C. that a lot of American people want to see. And what kinds of things can she do?

24:47So there's a ton of stuff that plays out there. And, you know, kind of classic startup land. She's going to have to do this in a quick and good versus long, deliberative and perfect. And the blitzscaling idea that it's better to have something imperfect and out there, you know, be embarrassed by your first product, does that apply in politics? Well, I think it applies now and probably applies in politics generally, but it definitely applies now. Do you have a VP pick that you're excited about? Are there candidates that you, you know, possibilities that you feel like, oh, these are the folks that I think would be good for this?

25:28I have a number, not a huge number, but a number that I think would be great. But I think that one of the things that people like part of what makes me a good board member is that I don't, you know, I understand how to play support to the primary, in this case, the CEO, or in this case, the presidential candidate. And so I don't, I don't, I play help, not, not second guesser, They're not public, you know, like I don't go out and say, well, I think my CEO should hire a new person for their CFO, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, those are all background conversations versus foreground ones.

26:10So you may share those ideas with Harris or the Harris campaign, but you're not going to share them with us today. Yes, you drew the straight line between the dots. um well reed i i uh i know you're you're crazy these days so thanks for uh thanks for taking the time to to chat with us i really appreciate it always a pleasure to talk with you bob and uh you know look forward to uh many more conversations

26:42talking about politics in a business podcast is tricky territory as reed emphasizes most businesses have employees, customers, and investors on both sides of the aisle. And I'm sure that goes for this show's listeners, too. I hope that wherever you sit, you heard some nuggets here that help put both the tactics and the stakes of this year's election into clear focus as a voter and as a business person. What I most take away from Reid is that small, single-issue topics shouldn't dictate our political positions, that there are bigger principles at play. What can be challenging is agreeing on what the bigger topics and bigger principles are in a country as diverse as America.

27:29As is often the case, the terrific breadth and variation that make America such a dynamic society also bring limitations and disadvantages. What compels me, which leader and which party is best positioned to help us manage our limitations and disadvantages and propel us toward a future where our dynamism can be responsibly unleashed. Reid's made his judgment. In 100 or so days, we'll find out how the rest of the country feels. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

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