Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!

24:33It does that matter. It does. But it's it's a remember like the Marines Army police. Yeah. Army when you're doing the Marines is the middle bit. Right. Okay. Right. Right. So. So it does. But it's not. By the way, and one of again mistakes. And that's part of the reason why there's another chapter in startup use ABC planning. The mistakes is like you have all plan. And then you have plan B is like, no, no, you have a plan. And then you have a lot of micro plan B's right. So you kind of like, well, if that doesn't work, then let's try this. If that doesn't work, then let's try this. You know, and you're iterating through them.

25:09And when you know to do a major pivot. Because by the way, many successful businesses also do major pivots paypal started as encryption on cell phones. Right. That's that's where it started. Right. So you do major pivots. It's when you go, oh, my current plan, which I've iterated from my first plan is worse than my first plan. Like the market circumstances. It's chance of succeeding. Those are now worse. That's when you think about, okay, let's do a major pivot. So with your analogy of evading the beach, how do you know what beach to invade? Like, how do you know if you've got a good idea and how do you know what a good idea is?

25:53Because most people, as I said, listen to this, they've got a business idea. Yeah. And how do they know if it's good? And part of the issue they often have is they've heard anecdotally, or they've seen someone else is already doing it. So they go, oh gosh, it's already been done. Yeah. There's call it two kinds of ideas. And frankly, by the way, you think, you know, there's over eight billion people in the world. The fact that you think you're the one person who's thought of this idea, you may not be doing math well. Right. So thinking you're the one person who's thought of the idea, that's mistake.

26:31Right. The question is, are you the person who can pull it together into a momentum and pull it together? And it's still, by the way, that may be, well, okay, that gets down to 100 people. Okay. Well, am I the one who's in motion right now? Am I the most person who's willing to take the risk? Quit my job and do it. And you never really get down to one. Right. So startups are risky businesses, like one of the things that's get back to your entrepreneurs, like, I think the greatest chance. And even when I was starting LinkedIn, after having started social and after having, you know, co founded PayPal as a board member.

27:08Even when I was starting LinkedIn, what I would tell the people is like, look, we have about a maximum of 20, 25 % chance of being successful. Right. Just to be clear. Right. We're going to try to grow that to 100%. Right. But, but we're a couple people in a garage right now. Right. Like, there's all kinds of things that can go wrong. Anyone who's telling you what's 100 % now, they're lying to themselves or they're lying to you. And, and, you know, like, I'm very realist and ambitious in my strategy. And so, so you, you should never think you're starting something 100%. Now, within the ideas, you go, there's roughly speaking two kinds of ideas.

27:51One kind of idea is, well, people generally think that's a good idea. They think it's a good idea because you go to customers and customers say, yeah, I'd like that. Right. They go, they go, oh, well, hey, AI is going to create a whole bunch of new staffs businesses. Right. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. New technology strats, transformation, I don't know what you say. Or people in e -commerce, they're going to want to buy this kind of stuff. Okay. You know, it makes sense. So there's a stack of things where they're pretty measurable as ideas. Like you can measure them with customers. You can, you can, you can do feedback and polling and other kinds of things.

28:24Now, the good news, there's good news bad news on this category. The good news is you can de -risk is there a market for your idea mostly, not, not entirely, but mostly. The bad news is so can a lot of other people. Yeah. Right. And so in this category, there are always times to be competition and your competitive strategy, generally speaking needs to be why against like you, in this category, you should be expecting competition. Why am I going to win out sufficiently against this competition in a global arena? I have invested in those businesses, gray lock, invest in a bunch of those businesses.

29:02Could we do a, we're, you know, one of the best VCs at enterprise and the planet, blah, blah, blah. Then the other kind of, I think, which is the one I tend to start and the one I tend to most invest in is people think that you're, that you're crazy when you're starting your business. And by the way, that can be a, by the way, and frequently you are. But, but people think you're crazy, which means most people think you're crazy, which means your competitive field is a lot less. Right. So, for example, I'll give LinkedIn as an example and I'll give Airbnb as an example. So LinkedIn, I go and I say, hey, individuals will join this network and bring in their, and establish a public identity and profile and bring in their network and, and use that even as the vast majority of the billion people registered for LinkedIn are, you know, basically work companies.

29:59Right. They're not starting company like it's a great platform for entrepreneurs entrepreneurs get it right away. But like, I'm like, well, I'm working in a company is I'm going to seem disloyal to my company if I establish a profile here. You know, because back back when we started it, like no one's going to use that right. Well, because like they're worried about, well, their company fire them or not give them a bonus or something else because they have a LinkedIn profile because they're saying they're disoiled. So it looks like they're shopping because I mean, yes, for most people that use LinkedIn now, you don't see it as I'm looking for another role.

30:29Exactly. But back then people 2003, literally everyone said to me, this won't work because your individual focused. You need to be selling products to companies. Right. Right. And so I was like, no, no, I think I'm right about the way the world can and should be. Right. And, and so I'm going to take that risk. And that's the contrarian risk. I'm going to take that risk and I'm going to, I'm going to play it forward. And if I'm right, I will create something that will transform the industry that will be amazing for individuals, amazing for companies, etc. And we can go with obviously whatever length you want to go through the link to journey we can do now Airbnb is an as an investor example.

31:15So Airbnb was my first investment at Greylock. And so, and I was at Greylock because David Z, who was my partner, who was the Greylock partner, who was my most valuable board member at LinkedIn, convinced me that I should do venture at Greylock. And I'm very close to David. And so I bring in Airbnb as an investment and David looks across the table from me and says, look, every VC has to have a deal they're going to fail on Airbnb can be yours. Yes, because Airbnb at the time had so little volume in its transactions that the founders could have called everyone who used Airbnb that week if what they did is dedicated making phone calls like, you know, five minutes of phone call, you know, through through the week.

31:58That was how small it was. And David's argument at the Greylock roundtable was, look, this is very strange staying in other people's houses. You know, like the danger of something going wrong. Cities going to hate it hotel lobbies are going to try to outlaw it within cities, you know, that it like this is just going to be a train wreck all over the place. And I was like, no, but I want to take the back and it's great. Like we hired you as a partner. We think you're smart. Go ahead. Right. Now the David's credit six months later, the transaction volume in Airbnb is like this classic hockey stick.

32:38It was years of very small and then it grew to being very big. So that hockey stick hadn't started yet. And David came to me and said, okay, because, because like they always be learning is also useful and venture capital. He said, okay, you were totally right about Airbnb. And I was I was totally wrong. What did you see that I didn't see? Like, how did you know when I was sitting there blowing smoke at you saying, this is going to be a total failure. You said, no, I want to do this. And I said, well, you were right about all of the risks about that could happen with Airbnb. You were absolutely right.

33:14Any of those things could have made the business worth zero. But this is the reason as investors we do a portfolio because yes, Airbnb could be zero. But if it worked, it was going to be huge. Right. It was going to transform an industry. This is the kind of investment I like doing as an entrepreneur or as an investor. And I said, look, we had a plan for each of those risks. We had a plan A, we had plans B, we're going to try to navigate. It isn't that we could guarantee the risk. But the fact that everyone else saw those risks met that we had years of no competition that we could establish the network.

33:49We could establish the marketplace. And then once we're there, we are the marketplace for how that works. And that's the kind of investment I like doing. That's the same thing with LinkedIn as I as I founded it. Same thing with, you know, kind of with Airbnb as an investment. And so that category investment, you cannot validate with the customers. I was going to say, so if everybody thinks it's a good idea, it's probably no big idea. Yes, it's much more challenging to be a big idea. Interesting. Really interesting. Because it's funny because when people pitch to you, they say, I've asked everybody and everybody thinks it's great.

34:24Yes. So that's probably an indicator that it's probably not big or that bullshit. Yes. And I'm looking for both in my creation of ideas and in my funding of ideas. And then I think that's what I think it's not a good idea. It's not dumb people who think it's a bad idea. It's smart people who think it's a bad idea. You won't. Small people. Yes. Because then you have something that's contrarian. Because that's what contrarian. Contrarian isn't. I don't understand technology at all. I think it's a terrible idea. So who cares. You want to say anything. It's smart people who think it's a bad idea. Right.

34:58And then you have a theory of the game that's a good one. Not perfect. Very risk can be very risky about why they're wrong. So I'll give you the LinkedIn example. Literally, John Lilly, partner of mine at Grail, I recruited him in a grey loc later. He was the CEO of Mozilla that was on the board of Super smart guy friend of mine. And sat down with him about LinkedIn. Because this is how I go when I'm starting a company, I go to all my smartest friends and I go, here's what I'm doing. What's wrong with it. I don't want to have a conversation. I'm like, Oh, it's great. Useless doesn't help me. Right.

35:32What's wrong with it? Why will this go? Why will this fail? And so I said, I was John. We had breakfast at a breakfast place in Silicon Valley. I said, I don't know. And he said, Okay, you know, I'll come your friend. You know, it's never going to work. Right. And I said, Okay, well, why do you think it's never going to work? It's like, Well, you'll never grow the network. Like the first person who comes in, no one else in the network. How valuable for me. Why should I invite someone in until you have like, you know, I don't know, 500 ,000 people, a million people. There's no value in the network.

36:01So there's zero value. So it's never going to grow. You're never going to get anywhere. Right. And it was a very smart, prispication sought that was probably the key thing for starting LinkedIn was, how do you get to millions of people in the network? Because that's the only place where the value proposition kicks in. Right. I knew that if you had a thousand people come in 900 of those people would be exactly like John to go, I don't see anyone else here in this network, etc. But I knew that some of them somewhere between 10 and 100 of them would go, Oh, I see what this could be. And I kind of want to play with it.

36:37So, you know, I'll invite Stephen. I'll invite, you know, I'll invite some people in. And then as it very slowly starts going, then all of a sudden there's enough people in. It's interesting. It's curious. And you could grow to being valuable. So I knew that that by persistence through those initial exploratory people, people who are curious, people want experiment with people who got the vision of it, etc. But all of that I could grow to your initial critical mass. And then it would kick in the model of LinkedIn. Obviously, I know LinkedIn more today than I did back then in what 90, so 2000, 2003, 2003, and then really got three thousand.

37:20And then was it a social network as it is now where there's a newsfeed and people talking to each other. Or was it more of a public CV was a public CV with a search capability and ability to make it with people. So, it's interesting. So the network effects were slightly less important than the model is today because a lot of people today using it, not to search for a job or a professional, but to talk about themselves or to share their life, etc. And we knew that we would get to growing network effects like, for example, again, part of the, you know, Marines Army, please is your network effects may very much evolve.

38:00You may start with no network effects. That's fine. But you have a plan. Yes. Yeah. So am I right in thinking because around then there was social networks emerging that were very focused on people, conversating with each other, whereas LinkedIn, by design, it didn't really, really matter if anybody was chatting to you about what they for dinner that day. So a new network could penetrate the market that was less dependent on the like social networking component. Because if I go on there and make a profile and put my CV up, it doesn't really matter if I don't come back for four days. Yes, exactly.

38:35Because I can get an email. That will bring me back in saying, oh, there's a job here. But once my profile's up and ready, I'm now giving value to the rest of the network just by being there. Yes. And that that's a virtue not a bug because it was part of how we solve the critical mass problem. Yeah, I could never understand how LinkedIn did that. And now it makes sense to me. Yes. Because I always think, it's building a social network is just asking for like hell in your life. Yeah. Well, I'm kind of a specialist. Yeah. Right. You know, for one of the first investors in Facebook, one of the first investors in Friendster.

39:07Oh, we're I didn't realize you were investing Friendster as well. Yes. You were part of what they call the PayPal mafia. I know you use the different term network. It's it's less. It has less pizzazz. But we weren't really a criminal group. But Matthew's call is yes. Yes. People people love the term mafia. And through that time you worked with the likes of Elon, you knew Peter Thiel from your days at university. I mean, everybody asked this question about PayPal. And why it was so successful. But also why so many of the alumni of PayPal went on to become multi billionaires. I think seven people that were part of that sort of part of that sort of early PayPal fanning team went on to create Tesla, YouTube, Reddit, SpaceX, LinkedIn.

39:53Was it talent density? Was it was that what made the PayPal Matthew? Well, it certainly was a component. And so it's it's it's it's a couple of things. So one. That high density talent of folks who are willing to take intensive risks want to do contrarian things believe in what they're contrarian thing is against common sense wisdom. That's one part. Another part is when PayPal and public. It was one of it was a it was a technology winter was one of two technology companies that went public that year. Right. So all of a sudden and then got bought by eBay. So all of a sudden you had this talent group of people that had a bunch of money on their pockets and the network within and that believed in the consumer internet.

40:45So the network of Silicon Valley at that point had thought the consumer and it was played. They were going into clean tech and to enterprise. So if you asked if you try to ping a venture capitalist, but I have a new consumer and idea that wouldn't even take a meeting with you. They would take a meeting of what's clean tech and a big meeting if it was enterprise software. Right. Now, then you get all the PayPal people coming out going, hey, I can fund my own initial idea. I've got this great idea YouTube. Right. And then and I can fund it and I can get it going and then and this is part of the web to own movement is that I coined the term internet to and then Tim O 'Reilly made the much better term web to.

41:29Right. And so the these folks going, no, no, the consumer internet is like that was just the first wave on the beach. The tsunami is still coming. Right. And so we were all out investing and we were talking to each other because frankly, we're like, well, these these VCs don't get it. Like this is coming. And then, of course, you started seeing, you know, YouTube and you started seeing LinkedIn and you started seeing and it was like, OK. Like we will like these are important things that we're going to invest in and that that's that's part of the reason why the that's the because by the way, remember, you know, a bag competition.

42:10Right. As one of the reasons why not just talent, not just capital, but also competitive steering as part of the reason why the PayPal network or PayPal mafia had such a massive suite of success. You know, I often hazard a guess at what the like the fundamental game of business is for a startup founder. And I've hazarded a guess before that it's recruiting the best group of people you possibly can binding them with a culture that gets the best out of them and setting them a vision that's worthwhile. But from reading your work, there's a couple of things just from hearing you today. Sales is so like, whatever your good or market is and it can be sales, it'd be enterprise, etc.

42:49But like, for example, in in social networks, it's usually a viral. Well, you know, a viral marketing or viral growth plan. So when I say sales, I actually mean like selling to employees. Yes, yeah. And like you must you said like partners investors. Yes. Because you have to come come on board my vision. Yeah. Invest in my vision. Because by the way, a partner when you're a startup is also investing in your vision. Yeah. An employee is investing in your vision. Yeah. Right. How do you be good at that? There's a limited set of skills that you can actually teach entrepreneurs versus the entrepreneurs just learning by doing.

43:25One of them is pitching. Right. One of them is understanding the, how do I communicate my vision in a way that other people can go, that's really exciting. I want to join your vision with you. And if I was young entrepreneur telling you, right, I want to be better at pitching my vision. So I can get well class people to join me. Well, class investors partners. Is there any advice you could give me on things I shouldn't shouldn't do? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And by the way, there's we could spend the entire podcast only doing this. I mean, there's there's a very deep well. But there's some simple tips.

43:59So what is the mistake and lesson that most people learn is to try to do reality store shows like no, no, no, no, silicon chips to make ice cream shakes. It's the thing. No one's thought of it. It's really big. Right. And people like, okay, what you're convincing me is you're crazy. Right. Like you're literally like, please leave now. Right. So you have to realize that all pitches are dialogues. Right. And you want to be listening to smart people and you like generally speaking, everyone you want to be recruiting. You want to be recruiting smart people. You want the absolute best talent working with you.

44:37You want the absolute best talent working in your company. You want the absolute best. So you want people who are who are thoughtful and asking good questions. Like, for example, I pitch insanely aspirational businesses. But I don't pitch them saying, Oh, LinkedIn is guaranteed to succeed. There's no universe in which LinkedIn won't be the transformer of professional work and careers. What I do is say, it can get here. Like we have a real chance at this. Now we have to navigate these risks. But if we navigate these risks, we're going to be here. Right. And then people say, Ah, you're credible.

45:15You have a huge vision. You're compelling. I think you can do this. Right. And then they come on board with you. So one of it is to pitch the huge vision, but show that you're aware of the difficulties of getting there. Right. Now you don't have to go through all of them. You just have to go through enough of them or a big enough one. The person goes, OK, great. I get it. You're seeing it. Right. Another part of it is to say this is part of reason why competition is important is like, I understand what game I'm playing. Right. Here is my theory. This is what competition plays in. This is why I think the market will favor me.

45:52This is why I think technology, trends will favor me. This is why I think I have a very unique edge. And you know, in but scaling, which I think is another book on your thing. Most consumer internet plays are what we call Glen Gary Glen Ross markets, which is first prize the Cadillac, second prize of steak knives and third prize is your fired. So you have to be pitching why you're possibly first. Yeah. Right. Because you're going to be a couple of winners. Yes. And so like this is why we can win. Right. And so now there's also mechanics in pitching, which is, you know, how do you tell a story of it.

46:29Part of the thing I tell entrepreneurs is to even if the person doesn't ask you the risk, tell them what the risk are and how you're navigating them. Because it'll establish trust. Right. So like, for example, in an in pitching investment. Now this I didn't know until I started learning it in terms of a mechanic pitching is. And entrepreneurs tend to go, oh, when I need money is when I, you know, right, my PowerPoint and I hit, you know, knock on the door is like, hey, give me some money. That's a foolish time to start the conversation much better to start the conversation when you're not saying, give me money.

47:02So if you like as much as you can in all these things, start the conversation well before you're getting to a potential contract of any sort of partnership or investment or even an employment contract like, for example, always be recruiting doesn't mean, oh, I want to hire you right now. It's like, okay, fine great talent. This is one of the things I learned from socialite and brought into PayPal or fine great talent and start talking to them. Right. Even if today you don't have the right position of hire them. Right. Now, obviously, there's a whole bunch of great talent. You could waste a whole bunch of time.

47:38You want to be talking to people that, you know, you either really would love them to join at some point, not too distant future. Sure, or they know other people who would be like that because, by the way, part of when you, when you meet great talent, you realize how to like because you're always, you're always adding new great talent. You're like, oh my God, we need people like this. How do we bring them in. So, for example, one of the things I learned that was, you know, from social that that I brought to PayPal. Was it social that I was trying to hire people who had 10 plus years experience doing the thing that we were hiring them to do before because the classic kind of wisdom that you get from business schools is make sure they have experience on their CV.

48:22Look, they have to be able to do the job. Right. No question. But if you said two years of experience and an insane learning curve. That's much better. An insane learning curve by that you mean someone that's rapidly learning self teaching. Yes. Okay. And learning on the job and going and figuring it out. And so what I went to PayPal and like was that I went when the company was founded, I was on the board of directors. I was like, this is what you're looking for. Not this. Right. And so back to your like PayPal mafia question, that's because we hired those kind of people. Right. Interesting. There was a very limited set of people in the company who had had more than a couple years experience working within payments.

49:06Within banking within, you know, because it was the learning curve. When you look at your portfolio of investments and the entrepreneurs you meet, do you think young entrepreneurs realize how significant hiring is to their eventual outcome because they tend to focus on like how good the product is or sometimes capital. But I just looking at my own portfolio. I often find myself like feeling like an old man because I'm telling them that I like spend more time hiring. Yes. Just hiring your friends because they're willing to come work here. A proxy for a founder if you're not spending a third of your time hiring.

49:40You're very much underdelivering. This is the thing is like look, life is a team sport. Companies are team sports. Right. If you could just do it yourself, you wouldn't hire anybody. You know, you're hiring people. So like you say, well, I've got a really good let's, you know, you use a European football analogy. I've got a really good striker. Great. Well, we don't need to worry about the halfbacks or the fence over, you know, goalkeeper. No, no, you have to hire all things and you go, well, I'm a really good hat back. That's great. You need the others too. I think when I was young, I was 18, 19 years old.

50:14I, somewhere in my brain thought my outcomes were going to be determined by how hard I worked and how good my ideas were. And it wasn't until I accidentally hired someone fantastic that I realized. Yes. The absolute tremendous impact that an A player can have on everything. Yes. And that's was just such a mental shift for me. Yeah. Literally, I think Zuckerberg puts us in a very good way. He wants to hire people he would work for. Hmm. And why? Why is that? Because that's a demonstration of high talent. Okay. Yeah. When you were a young foundier, someone insecure though, you think, Oh God, why would that person want to come back here?

50:50Or I can't afford them or you want to hire the best people you can. And by the way, if you can hire people better than you, oh my God, it makes you much more likely to be successful. Yeah. Yeah. It's my experience that a young founders don't really think about that. Because they're also insecure. So they think I can't manage that person. Well, but your theory of management is, look, if you're, if you can hire someone where you only management technique needs to be less. And then you can't get that the loose. That's the best. Like, just go. Right. And is there any practice anything practical about hiring?

51:24You know, people say like highest low fire fast or other sort of like cliche advice around hiring that matters. Like how important is it that they're culturally aligned or. So culture can matter. I would say look in terms of, and I hopefully it's not a cliche, but hopefully a heuristic principle. References are more important than interviews. Right. We get a lot of repetitive experience and being compelling in an interview. And if you can't, and by the way, some great people aren't compelling in interviews. Right. They're, they're, they're not really great at telling themselves, but oh my God, are they amazing in the field?

52:03They're made like an engineer, like an engineer might be like you're. And you're like, okay, but oh my God, can they do great things? In which case, like, like do whatever you can hire that person. So if you, if you ask me, you can only have references or only interview 10 out of 10 times. I'll take the, I'll hire the person on the references. You surely are talking about the types of references where they give you the reference. No, no, no, no, no, this is one of the features in LinkedIn. Like me, you want to find references that will give you a good perspective. Now, even if you can't go find someone that you know or you have a tie to or as well, what you refer to frequently as an off balance reference sheet, and she's not the one that give you to be a reference.

52:48So even if they say, oh, here's, you know, I'm reading, here's my reference, you know, Bob or Susan. You call Bob or Susan and you say, this is a standard question I will use all the time, but especially if I'm calling someone who's a given reference. Hey, look, I believe every person is a combination of strengths and weaknesses. And if you don't give me a weakness, I will believe that it's so bad that I should not hire this person. Right. So if you say there's no weakness, I'll just go, okay, I understand I should hire this person. Thank you very much. Right. In that, they will always, almost always give you something.

53:31Right. And you can make it because we are all combinations of strengths and weaknesses. Like I'm one of the best people to have on your side for creative strategic problem solving. Like one of my employees, once told me is like, I would never hire you to run a McDonald's. And like, I wouldn't hire me to run a McDonald's either. I'd be terrible at it. Right. So that's combinations of strengths and weaknesses. Right. And so everyone has them. There is no one who is all strengths. I mean, people tell themselves that that's self delusion. Right. And so, so you have that conversation with a reference and the reference will tell you something because they're not used to saying it.

54:08So they might say, oh, you know, Susan or Bob, they're a perfectionist. You said, oh, so they get their work done slowly because they're like, you know, like, you push them because they're trying to get the one that's actually like more to all the they spend too much time working. You're like, oh, that means they're unintelligent about how they do the work. Yeah. Right. So you can push them into where they're like, yeah, they can get a little disorganized when they're stressed. Okay. Great. Right. And then you can get you, but I mean, because when you get that from reference one. Then when you're calling reference to you say, oh, I heard that the person is disorganized.

54:47Like, can you tell me a little bit about that? Right. Yeah. Some ammo and they can't then say, oh, no, I've never seen that. They'll probably give you a little bit more context. Yes. On all these great people you've worked with specifically, you know, during that PayPal period of your life. One of the things I was reflecting on is they're all independently successful people, but they're all very different people. And that in and of itself is evidence that there's not one version of success. There's many different types of success. Presumably, there's many different types of entrepreneur leader.

55:19Yes. Give me a flavor of the different types of entrepreneurs you've worked with. And what, you know, because I set with Walter Isaacson. And he talked to me about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, as such, and it was like, Steve's really great hiring people. Elon's not as good as at the people team building part, but he's better at this part. Yes. So no entrepreneur wins at every game. Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try the went to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on. Same thing is true. So some people, for example, like take a neobusry at work day, right. He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional.

56:05So it's a HR product for work. His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and the people are going to do cloud software. For the first, I think it was 500 people that work day hired. He would always do a cultural interview at the end. To make sure that the first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things. So once you get through all the competence and all the rest of the stuff, he would make sure that was a fit. And that's part of how you get cultural coherence. That's like one example. Right. Another example, Elon is the like I have a big idea and I convinced myself 100 % that it's absolutely going to the case like I am going to settle Mars.

56:48We're going to tear four Mars and our lifetime, which is no, it's impossible. No, no human being on the planet, including Elon is going to do that within Elon's lifetime. Right. But I'm going to go all in. I'm going to work really hard and maybe technologically sophisticated. I'm going to work against the odds. Right. In order to make that work. That's a, you know, a Neil very professional understands the workplace mark. Elon, like I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to and and his pitch, though, to my defense was I'm going to send a turtle to Mars. And like that's not a business.

57:32And you're competing with national governments and like Russian subsidized rocket programs and so forth. This is not a good. I was wrong. He was right. But it's not good equity, you know, kind of play. He pitched it as an investor. Yes. Yeah. At what point was SpaceX at when he pitched it? That was before he started. So it was an idea. And I'm going to send a turtle to Mars and then it became I want to send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it. Because they'll grow up in the first person or send life to Mars. And you're like, okay. Right. What did you think genuinely when he said that to you?

58:07I thought he'd gone off his rocker. Really? Well, yeah. Of course you would. Yeah. I like someone's friend. My friend said that to me. I think I'd make a couple of calls just to check in. Because Elon doing okay. He's just told me about this turtle. Yes. Like that's not a business. Has your opinion of him changed over time in terms of his potential and ability as a entrepreneur? No, I've always thought of him as one of the world great entrepreneurs. Always. Yeah. Well, all the way back to PayPal days. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, he has done repetitively amazing things. Now he pitches everything with the same level of certainty.

58:47Right. Like, you know, I have this idea for online banking. I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities. I have this idea for creating a pneumatic tube for hyperloop tube. All of them. He has the same level of. I am 1000 % right that this is like guaranteed to be part of the future. Right. And I, you know, and I may be the unique person to make it happen. Right. So you have to have some discernment. But he's his, you know, on base batting. That's pretty good. Yeah. For such major ideas. But it's not it's not 100%. Yeah. People kind of excuse that though. Of course. If you get. If you get one that's big.

59:26Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the hiring side. Is he been, is he up there with the best or is he not a direct hire of people like Steve Jobs was. He hired as well. Man of fact, you can't be a great entrepreneur. I'm not ultimately hire well. I think some people are better hires. Some people also have. Like are the kind of people that people would work for forever. Elon. Tens to burn people out a lot like there's lots of bird out people in his wake. And when you go and talk to those people. Yeah. What you hear is some people say that was the best work experience ever. And I never want to work from again.

1:00:16Another piece I was a worst work work experience ever and I never want to work from again. So they're all. I never want to work from again. So, you know, as kind of a dynamic because he basically looks for them as disposable parts and, you know, go as hard as you can. Right. And then afterwards you're out. Don't care. because he goes so hard. Yeah, he goes hard, but he also thinks you're only relevance to me as your relevance. You're only relevance to me as can you help me with my mission? And after you're done, after you can no longer help me with my mission, you're not relevant to me anymore.

1:00:50What do you think of that approach? Not a not my approach. Link, Link didn't. Here's my approach. I like literally I am referenceable by every entrepreneur that I've ever worked with. Right. As a board member and as an investor, right, who, you know, even ones that I've like fired a CEO and so forth. Those people will say he was really good to work with on these things. They may also have some critical things. There's no problem with that. Right. But like, like literally like when I'm pitching an entrepreneur, I just like call anyone that I've worked with. Right. Because you I try to work with people in a way that even when we're at a, at a, at a difficult moment, because I disagree with them intensely about how well they're doing or what they're doing or something else.

1:01:36That I'm doing it in a collaborative, constructive way. And so my goal is to work with people like anyone I want to work with. Brian Chesky. You know, Mark Pinkis, etc. I want to be able to work with them for, you know, the rest of our lives. What's interesting is I think these strategies fundamentally come down to what you think matters in life. Yeah. Because you could optimize, even you could optimize more for building more companies or something at the expense or something else. And it's a trade off of something else. Like you could go harder. Yes. But there's a trade off happening here. And we often, because Elon's done these crazy things like the cars and the near links and this tunnels and now the AI and the X and the spaceships and stuff.

1:02:26We go, oh my God, that's so amazing. And I do that as well as one person I can have one person can do that much. But we almost never talk about the trade off. Yes. You're 100 % right. And it's so, this goes back to the point about self awareness. It's like, yeah, it's so tempting for the like the brain to go, oh my God, I want that. That's what I want. Yeah. Because you're not seeing the trade off. Yes. You're not seeing the darkness. That is 100 % correct. And look, I respect it. I understand the burn people out like treat them as disposable assets that when they burn out, you just jettison them.

1:02:58And you can be very, Elon's not the only entrepreneur who is very successful doing that. Right. But for example, on the other side, like if you go to Mark Zuckerberg and you talk to the people who work for him, they're like, that was great. That was the best working experience. Of course, I wrote for them again. Interesting. Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming rising through the ranks at the moment that have kind of been raised on the Elon philosophy of do shit tons of things, do them intently, do them with less of a regard for the, I guess, the human consequence. Do them with less of a regard for work life balance.

1:03:38Well, you have to have. The nature of this thing because it's, it's, you know, you're by nature dead as a startup. Work life balance is not the startup game. Right. So like, like what, when like when we started LinkedIn, we started with people who had families. So we said, sure, go home, have dinner with your family. Then after you're dinner with your family, open up your laptop and get back into the shared work experience and keep working. If you say that today, though, you're toxic. The people who think it talks it don't understand the top the startup game. And they're just wrong. Right. That the game is intense.

1:04:16And by the way, if you don't do that, then eventually you're out of a job. I mean, the people that say it's toxic often, those that have never had to do it. Yes. And look, that's fine. It's not that everyone has to work at startups, working at startups, the voluntary choice. Right. But that's the game for a startup. And so that's how we try to balance when the early days of LinkedIn, we try to balance how to be human. Because we like a third of the company had kids. Right. And so you're like, OK, like we all have to work this way. So we can't say, oh, you third, you sure you guys can go home and you're out of the office.

1:04:51And then, and then, then call in or whatever. Well, I'll go for dinner. And then we'll all plan on getting back to work after dinner. So you get time with your family. You get to have dinner with your kids. It's the right human thing. Right. But we're working hard. And Saturday morning, we're working. Is there a way to build a startup in your opinion? Where you have work life balance. And I define work life balance maybe as being able to see your friends often spend time with your family often. Only in two circumstances. One, it's a small startup. It's both, it's both an absence of competition.

1:05:32That's the general one is it's so small. No one's really competing with you. That's fine. OK. Right. Right. My screenvine. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Right. On number two, you have some such intense competitive mode that people can't compete with you. Like, say, for example, you have some. Like the only thing that matters in this business has contracts with these three companies. And you have those three contracts. OK. Fine. But absent that, that's reason because the startups that you're, if you're in a valuable space, the startups that you're competing with. Right. Like we had to make the deliberate decision that starts we're competing with aren't going home for dinner.

1:06:13Right. They're serving dinner at the office. That's what we did paypal. We served dinner at the office of PayPal. Right. Right. And that was that deliberate thing. We were one of the first companies that started not only serving lunch, but serving dinner. Right. And then other because this is the learning network you get with some other companies are looking at. Oh, yeah, we're going to serve dinner too. Some people don't go in. Yeah. The lulbs keep working. Right. To some people this does, it sounds somewhat toxic, right? It sounds like, I don't know, but that's not what life's about. This is like capitalism.

1:06:42This is people just wanting to make loads of money. Well, choose what your life's about. That's fine. There's nothing that says you have to do that. And what gives you the right to tell other people that they can't do that. I mean, like what are you patronizing? Like people choose their own lives. Right. So, and, and people can choose that. Now, you have to understand the game. It's like, well, I'd like to be a world class Olympic athlete, but I really only want to swim two hours a day. Well, that's nice. Right. That's going to happen. Right. You have to understand the game you're playing. If you're playing an Olympics game, like someone who's trying to compete in the Olympics and swimming, they're swimming seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

1:07:25Right. So that, that, that, choose the game. And you said, well, it's toxic. Fine. Not for you. I think the important thing, which I see some companies doing well, is just to be honest about that when you're importing people. And they're shy away from the fact that. Well, that's like an early days of LinkedIn. When we were talking to people, we'd say, by the way, this is how we work. Right. We work six and a half days a week. Right. We do get people home for dinner. But everyone, including Reed, is expected. You know, you know, you know, online working after dinner. And you pay people more for the, the average rate.

1:08:06So they get paid an equity. And this is one of the things again. Is, you know, the, the first. I don't know. Some hundreds of people at LinkedIn. All don't need to work anymore. Because their equity is enough that if they choose not to work anymore, that's totally fine. Which is a trade off that was clearly worth making. You stepped back as CEO after four years when you were at LinkedIn, right? Yes. Why did you do that? So. Um, I had had. Awareness to strengthen weaknesses. Like, I know how to do the CEO job. Right. Right. Um, and I think it kind of. 150 people are less. I'm as good as anyone else.

1:08:55Right. Like that, that, that scale of CEO job. Is a scale that I, that operates within my strengths and weaknesses. When you start getting to call it 500 people, a thousand people. Part of the CEO job ends up becoming like, how do you govern the community of the company? Now, it's not the only thing. But like, okay, like, you know, what the kinds of things that Jeff Weiner that I learned from him on. Was, all right, well, you start thinking of recruiting not as you going out and individual recruiting people are helping your hiring manager recruiting people. But you think about recruiting is a general strategy for the company.

1:09:34And how does that general strategy work? And how do you have like, for example, you get to this point in these scale companies where. You start having onboarding days. So, like, for example, new employees start at one of the onboarding days. And they start as a group together. Right. So it's kind of like, okay, we're going through kind of how works. And we're integrating people into the different group. They like, you know, the salespeople and engineers are starting. And they're going into the group. So we're like, we're approaching it as, as the engine of the company. And the things that I, your only world class, but things you're passionate about.

1:10:04The things I'm passionate about is like the technology strategy, the product strategy. The, the kind of the big idea for what you're doing there. And I love working with super high powered talent. And one of the things that I had kind of learned is, well, I, reason I like working with founders. That's the reason I like working with CEOs. Because to some degree, it's like, okay, you're the talent I'm working with on this company. Right. In order to do that. And so I was like, yeah, I like doing more of being a board member. Working with CEOs more than I like being the CEO once you get past, you know, 150 people.

1:10:44So that's what I should be doing. And what I need to do is I need to get linked into a point where it's already, you know, it's, it's already kind of hit breakout velocity. Right. And so you can recruit now a world class CEO that you can work with. Right. And that's what that's what I should do. And, you know, I like, for example, the entire time that Jeff winner was the CEO of LinkedIn, my primary office was immediately next door to his. Interesting. So you stay close, but you, yeah, again, this is another point of self awareness, which a lot of founders don't have, but the great founders that I've met and interviewed, whether it's, I don't know, Brian Chesky or whether it was some founders from the UK, like Bennett Jim Shark and Julian from Pure.

1:11:31One of the things that really defined them was they did a low ego move to move out of that CEO role, which is typically associated with like the glitz and the glam. Yes. Because they knew that their skill set was in branding or marketing or something else, or just vision for the future of the company. A lot of CEOs don't do that because the CEO title comes with a certain, yeah, I just, a steam. And yes, everybody, myself included, does have a big ego. But my ego is, you have to attach the right way. My ego is attached to LinkedIn succeeding. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big difference. Yes. LinkedIn went public in 2011 with a 4 .3 billion valuation.

1:12:13And then Microsoft later paid 26 billion to buy LinkedIn. At the time, it was reported you owned about 11 % of the company, which made you a multi billionaire. How does life change when one becomes a multi billionaire? Yeah. So it's funny. I tried to never, like, like one of the funny things I never repost things that called me billionaires over it because I try to not have that identity. I am aware that it's an accurate descriptor. Yeah. But it's not like the way I think of myself. I don't think of myself as read Hoffman billionaire. I think of myself as read Hoffman technologist, read Hoffman, publicly intellectual, read Hoffman, creative, you know, strategist, read Hoffman, et cetera.

1:12:55So I try to change my life as in those directions, not in the the wealth direction. Now, of course, you know, I travel around in a private plane, you know, I own houses and several different areas of the world. You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. But I try to live a life within those, you know, high wealth things as much of a as an upper middle class person as I can. So for example, before I came here to do the interview, I got here a little early, so I went to the nearby Starbucks, had a cup of coffee, pull up my laptop, was working on it. Interesting. You know, because that's the way that I want to live.

1:13:38Right. And I want human relationships that are like that. I think human relationships are really important. I feel lucky to have relationships with some people who are these really, really amazing people. But by the way, there's amazing people who are like world celebrities and there's amazing people who the world doesn't know about. I just like, I just like going through life with amazing people. And that's part of what I mean by that. You've always been associated with the left side of politics. Your parents were very left leaning to say the least. I heard that you got pepper sprayed when you were a kid because because I was, I was a kid on my father's shoulder at a demonstration.

1:14:18Against, against the, against the Vietnam War. Okay. So that's, let me see your DNA. The thing about being on the left is it's typically the left that have a opinion of billionaires that are evil. Yes, I'm aware of that. But not just billionaires. I've been called evil by another people on the left. Really? Yes, of course. Look, they are wrong that that is a necessary correlation. Right. But I, you look, I tried to understand people. I understand their perspective. I disagree with it, but I understand. I mean, you're, you're one of the few people that's still a billionaire on the left. It seems.

1:14:55No, actually, in the valley, especially in a selection cycle. Well, it's the public facing people that we see on the podcast and stuff. And look, so part of the reason why I think less people were public about it. This cycle was because, you know, President Trump was threatening, you know, personal and political retaliation. And so you had to have a certain degree of courage to stand up. Right. And so encourage in the public area, not just encourage and taking risks, but in the public arena for doing that. And so I literally had conversations with billionaires who were like, oh, look, I really applaud what you're doing.

1:15:38And I think what you're doing is that kind of thing. And that's for you, not for me. Right. I mean, trying to get people into it. And so, so I was aware and the cause they kind of did the simple many Macs. And they said, well, if, if Harris is elected, I won't get penalized for not having supported. And if Trump is elected, I will get penalized. So I'm just going to stand out of it. And so you think you'll be penalized. I think that, I think that there is a greater than 50 % chance that there will be. Reprecussions from a misdirection and corruption of the institutions of state. To respond to my having tried to help Harris get elected.

1:16:23You must spend time at night thinking about what that might be. Because if I would. Yeah. Well, look, it's a range. And look, I hope that it's only in the soft range, like IRS audits or phone calls, like, you know, Trump made saying, you know, deny Bayzo's that, that, DOD contract because, you know, he owns the Washington Post and I don't like him, you know, that kind of stuff. I hope it's a natirina. Right. Could get much worse. But I don't really want to speculate on it because I don't want to give anybody any ideas. Right. But like, I think it's like, I think I would safely win a bet that there will be political repercussions that are, that are essentially undemocratic on American.

1:17:10And direct on you and direct to me. Yes. I think I'd safely win that bet. I'm hoping it's in the what I'm trimming the softer, you know, you're not planning on leaving the US. No, no. Well, my residence outside of Seattle and, you know, we have a constitution. You know, because Mark Cuban was the same right. Mark Cuban was very public and vocal. He's a billionaire. He was very pro, Kamala Harris, very anti -promp through the cycle. He took a lot of flak as well. Yes. I mean, I follow everybody on Twitter. So I watched it play out. And it was kind of like he was stood in no man's land just taking shots from everywhere.

1:17:42Yes. And you were kind of in the same category. Yes. Exactly. Would have been much easier for you to just. Shut the fuck up or fall in line or something. Well, but that's the problem. You can't allow that form of neo -fascism. Right. It's precisely when you feel fear. I have huge respect for Mark Cuban. When you feel fear, stand up. Because that fear that you're feeling, that's your feeling as a powerful wealthy person. Right. And if you're not going to stand up, who is? Right. Can you see any redeeming qualities in Trump? I know you'll pro Kamala Harris. Oh, yeah. Well, I think. He's going to bring a wrecking ball.

1:18:19And some of the places a wrecking ball are useful. Like so, for example, if you say, hey, on regulation, you want a new regulation, replace two. That kind of refactoring is a good thing. Hey, we're going to need a bunch of energy in the future. And we're going to need good, clean energy. I understand everyone doesn't like nuclear. I don't care. We're going to do nuclear. Like, I can see a number of things that could come out that'd be very positive. And I want those things to happen. And matter of fact, you know, part of being an American, you know, I'm going to try to make the next four years as great for America as I can.

1:18:47Right. My precise complaint with some of the people I'm in political opposition for is don't ever try to break the country, try to always be building the country. It doesn't matter if the person you agree with is in power or not. Be working towards a good collective future. And so I'll be doing all of that. And I'm hopeful for some of that from this administration. Do you think it's a good time for entrepreneurs to be building companies with Trump coming into power?

1:19:16Funnabelling, I think it's always a good time on journalists to be building companies. So one is like, you have a good idea of the times now, go do it. Yeah. Capital markets harder. Fine. Actually, if you can get capital, you get competitive differentiation. People couldn't. I mean, it's like, so you have to, you always like trying to figure out how to turn the negatives into positives in terms of what you're doing. Now, I think Trump will be broadly very good for entrepreneurship because I think he's going to reduce a lot of regulation. Some of that regulation will have very negative consequences on the society, which, you know, as a society person, I'll be concerned about like climate.

1:19:50Like, you know, you get the new EPA person coming in, environmental protection agency. You ask him what the job is and he says, we need to drill more oil wells. You know, like, that's not the EPA. That might be the commerce secretary, something else, the energy secretary. That's not the EPA. So there will be a reduction of regulation because we do have climate change. We're living in it and it's going to get worse. So those are what he places where there will be real damage from the wrecking ball. But for entrepreneurs building new businesses. Like, for example, I've invested in a number of fusion and fission businesses because nuclear, because that's the clean energy that we're going to need to, you know, just to bring more people, more of the billions of people into the middle class and to try to remove carbon from the environment and so forth.

1:20:38So, and I've known the regulatory stuff is ferociously bad for that. Well, actually, in fact, I have hope that they're going to re -set that thing. And so all of a sudden, that entrepreneurship turns out to be in retrospect wise. But I think they're going to reduce regulation across the board for all entrepreneurs. Right. So I think on like, that's helpful on entrepreneurship. Now, they're going to be probably much more close at the border and immigration is an important part of entrepreneurship. You want to, you want to be able to get the best talent from anywhere in the world. It's one of the advantages that's helped build the US.

1:21:13That I think is going to be more uneven. Anyway, so it's like good, good and bad. One of the things that is very different, I think, in this administration with the people he's appointed is there seems to be quite a few entrepreneurs being appointed fairly important high roles. Well, by entrepreneurs, you mean zero experience ever doing the thing they were doing before. Potentially. I was referring particularly to Elon Musk, David Sacks doing, I think he's doing AI technology. I think there's another guy who looks like he's built a business before. So David Elon obviously super smart, very accomplished.

1:21:48You went with both the PayPal, right? And now David knows crypto very well. So he's the AI and crypto ZAR and the PCAS person. He has crypto very well. He hasn't yet done anything in AI. Like he hasn't been mentioned as an investor or a like when I talked to all the a entrepreneurs. You know, as a desired person for them to work with and so forth. So he's very smart. So I presume he knows something, but you know, AI, I think yet TBD, what he knows and what he tweets about is anti woke AI is the most important thing. You're like, that is not that he's not even even on the top 100 of the issues around how to promote and build and navigate AI.

1:22:26But he's very good at crypto. He's done a bunch of good stuff there. So that'll be an Elon obviously understands AI quite well. On this point of speech as well. Obviously there's quite a big shift in speech that's happening the last, I'd say two years. And there's really look from Elon buying Twitter as well. I saw a drastic shift in globally. Yes. And what we think is okay, not okay. What's your thoughts on the changing speech speech. Good bad positive negative. So I, you know, gave a couple days ago here in London, the Suri's Averyland speech and one of the lines that I used in the speech was.

1:23:01There's competing freedoms. You could say, there's the freedom of speech to say whatever I want to say. And then there's a freedom to try to offer something in civil discourse where I'm not going to get harassed by a whole bunch of antagonists.

1:23:18And obviously they're both good virtues. And what you want is the right blend. I think that a lot of folks like, for example, what's happening on, you know, Twitter and X. Right. And the thing is, right. Is just virulent. Right. It's just toxic. It's terrible. Like, when I tweet anything, including, hey, you know. I think the following thing is great entrepreneurship. I get a, Oh, you evil liberal. You know, I hope you, you know, kind of fail terribly and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. I was tweeting about this great entrepreneurship thing. And that's the kind of theme in TwitterX .com.

1:24:04I prefer what you see on LinkedIn. It's like, look, you can say critical things, but you try to say critical things within the theme of, oh, well, that entrepreneurial thing, I actually don't think it's gonna be as good as you think, and this is why. What's the difference in the design of the platform that results in two different types of behavior, though? Well, Twitter is anonymous. It allows a lot of bots. It encourages, like it says, freedom of speech. Like if you're tweeting a rape threat, that's fine. It's freedom of speech. You're allowed to do whatever you want, right? LinkedIn is your tied to a named profile that's tied to your identity if you reported for saying something that's frankly uncivil, doesn't even have to be as bad as a rape threat, right?

1:24:51It just uncivil, like you're cautioned, right? It's moved and saying, hey, by the way, that's not for the platform. And if you keep doing that, we'll remove your ability to post. Right. So on the Twitter example, what Elon said is that if it's legal, then it's fine. But is there an upside to having an environment where people can anonymously say what they want within the constraint of the law? Look, I think there are. It's important to allow, one of the things I think that online platforms give us the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. Like I think it's okay for people to say such thing as vaccines or evil plots to put chips in people and they give us autism.

1:25:37It's 100 % wrong, right? And every credible medical authority goes vaccines are good. And so you go, okay, a thousand people get vaccinated. They'll call it, you know, a hundred thousand people get vaccinated. And 50 of them have adverse conditions to the vaccine, right? That happens. That's a hundred thousand, right? But a thousand people or 10 ,000 people might have died otherwise, right? That your lottery for everyone being vaccinated is a very good lottery. Everyone should do it, right? Because by the way, you were more likely to have died in the lottery than have an adverse condition. That doesn't mean there aren't people who have adverse conditions.

1:26:24So all quality medical professionals, medical researchers agree. I am allowed legally on X .com to say vaccines are evil plots, right? To control the American people, to sell drugs and make drug companies profitable and blah blah blah. And I can say all that and you see all that rampant on Twitter, rampant, you know, in talk radio and, you know, and all the other things. You can say that, that's a problem, right? I'm okay with people saying it. What I'm not okay with is promoting it and having it have broad reach. So on this point of the vaccine, so just to clarify my position, I think vaccines are a wonderful invention that have saved a lot of people's lives.

1:27:07So that's my position, but I want to, I want to interrogate a little bit. With the vaccine rollout in particular, there's a lot of things that we didn't know at the time, right? So the lab leap thing, I had Boris Johnson sat here and he said, oh yeah, we think it's a lab leap. If I had said that on this podcast a couple of years ago, I would have been kicked off YouTube. Uh -huh, yes. And so having a forum where you can even entertain ideas that are contrarian, I also think is important. And I exist in the sort of dichotomy of like speech is important, but at the same time, you know, you know, look, I am, I was on the support people being able to say lab leap category.

1:27:52Cause by the way, I do think freedom speech is a good thing. And part of reason I have free speech is sometimes you have a contrarian idea that should have freedom of reach. Yeah. But there should be, and look, how do we make decisions as a society of what expertise, like what truth is as we convene groups of experts? Like in a science, we have a group of scientists review a paper before it's published. We have scientists able to reproduce things. In a jury, we have 12 people who listen to the case and make a decision. So we use groups of people as experts and different kinds of expertise for different kinds of things to make a judgment.

1:28:29And we should also bring in expertise, right? Now that doesn't mean that even all the experts say that's completely wrong. You should say you can't post it. Like I loved what Twitter did pre -ealon, which is they said, hey, you composed vaccines or this evil plot by the government to control you. But we're going to put a little box around it that says, oh, and by the way, experts this degree, here's where you can go get the facts. So you can say it, right? But we'll also put in in selective cases expert opinion. And I think that's like, for example, a balance of how to do freedom of speech and freedom of reach.

1:29:05Because I do think, look, I should be able to say the world is flat. I should be able to go on and say, the world is flat. And by the way, LinkedIn wouldn't take that post off because it's like, well, civil, I'm just saying the world's flat. I'm out of my mind, right? But I'm being civil. So the LinkedIn principles are not, you must say something that's scientific, true. It's you must say something that's civil. I also think people shouldn't be de -platformed or canceled because of their speech. Even if you disagree with it, providing it to the constraints of the law. I sat with a... Oh, by the way, I generally think...

1:29:41A green on the constraints of the law, but I also agree on, I also think, importantly, civilly. And civilly means... Well, like no threat of violence. Okay, yeah, I agree with that. You shouldn't be threatening anybody with violence. Yes. I sat with a, I'm going to say a astrologist, but I don't even know if that's the right word. It's not a astrology, was it? Who's brought... Cosmologist. And he told me the story of Galileo. Discovering that the world was round and Galileo basically being threatened by everybody because it threatened the... I think the Catholic institution at the time. Or because the preaching of the church was as was that?

1:30:16Yeah. And so that's a cautionary tale, although it's a long time ago, in there are always going to be strong forces that are heavily incentivized around some kind of ideology. Yes. And that means that does happen today. Yes, 100%. And these forces are powerful forces. So allowing dissent, even if it's coming from someone who is not credible. Yes, 100%. But I understand. Strongly indefensive that. Yeah. Right. I just think that... And like so, you know, I don't mind people criticizing me. I don't mind them criticizing my arguments. I don't mind them criticizing my choices of who I'm going to support politically.

1:30:56Even right. What I'm going to do philanthropically, I strongly prefer that those criticisms be backed with some knowledge and intelligence and some good argument point of view. And I really want it to be a civil discourse. It's interesting because the human brain when we think about it from an evolutionary standpoint wasn't designed to deal with a thousand people tweeting at you that you're an asshole. And as a podcast, as someone who's in the public eye yourself, who is a podcast, but also a famous entrepreneur, you have to deal with that. Like you do, you have to deal with that. In a way that's just, we weren't designed to.

1:31:35And I struggle with it. I struggle with when I first came into the public spot, like when I started doing drag and stand, there's sharp tank in the US, opening my phone and being exposed to just a brush of noise on the brain. Now, whose responsibility is that? Is it my responsibility to delete the app or is it the platform's responsibility to moderate people expressing their innate human joy list, whatever it is? So the classic thing that humans make and reasoning is they go A or B. Right. And you answer is both. Right. So there's responsibility on both sides. Like it's like, oh no, it's the responsibility of the individuals.

1:32:16Like, well, like are you kind of saying, I have zero responsibility. There's zero I can do to be positive and contributory here. Of course you can. Right. So for example, like it's totally possible to say, I have a freedom of speech network. And if you are engaging in threats, like for example, your Trump and your tweeting that Mark Millie should be executed when he is the joint chief of staff's general, that's a threat of violence that should be removed. Right. You know, so it's totally doable to say, violence has no place on this platform. Or threats of violence. Now, violence is illegal. Threats of violence is not.

1:33:02Right. One of the theories I had many years ago, and I don't actually think this theory was based on anything other than I read it and it sounded good. So I used to say it was that over the next 10 years, and I used to say this about six, seven years ago on stage, social network working would become more and more siloed into these smaller interest -based networks. And I was thinking the other day in the text, I was like, oh my god, that's actually happening now. You're having like blue sky and threads, and you've got your Instagrams and your rumbles, and we've got more and more social networks that are more like centered around different pockets of people.

1:33:34What is your theory of social networking over the next decade, two decades? I'm always open as an investor to interesting ideas. Yeah. Right. Here we are in a business podcast, so I'm always looking at stuff. Look, I think they will grow to be an increasingly just as they've grown massively in last 20 years. They will continue to grow to be an important part of life. I think there will be different social networks that fit different parts of our lives. That's part of the reason, like, for example, like back when I started LinkedIn, it was also thought to be, oh no, no, no, no one's ever going to do a business network.

1:34:07It's only going to be social networks, right? It was only going to be at the time it was like, a friendster, then it was my space, then it was Facebook. It was like, look, it was only going to be that. There's never going to be those. And then people say, well, there's only going to ever be one social network. And you're like, well, actually, in fact, we do have like Twitter and we do have SNAP and we do have, right? There is multiple ones. And I think there will be more. So I think they're going to have more social networks. And they're going to fit in a different people's lives. They're going to have different community cultures for them.

1:34:38And so, and I think not only will they get multimodal, but they'll use AI in different ways and so on. And part of that invention, like one of the things I tend to think, people say, well, what ideas are you looking at as an investor? And I'm like, look, I'm looking for that great idea that I haven't thought of that someone out there amongst the millions of entrepreneurs has got that great thing and can possibly make it work. That's what I'm looking for. So when I look to future social networks now, to give a little bit more of a specific answer, like, I tend to think social networks need to both have individuals as customers and societies as customers.

1:35:13So you need to think about that balance of you need to think about both in how you're designing them. And that doesn't mean no freedom of speech and autocratic. Because I think more or less, she should allow people to post whatever they want as long as it's civil. And if you want to choose to have an anonymous social network, that's fine. Like there's the definite rule for especially when you get to places where the government is oppressive, you know, go to an Iran or a Russia or something else. It's like, well, anonymity is important for saving your life. Right. But on the other hand, you should also be thinking about like, okay, what does this means as a society?

1:35:50And part of what we want in media networks is we want to be collectively learning. So if I'm posting that, you know, vaccines or an evil plot for corporations to try to kill our children, you're like, well, you're trying to persuade people to do something that's bad for them and bad for society. So we should respond in some way. We may still allow you to post, but we may put a little box around and say, you know, here's what experts, you know, here's what all of the doctors at all the elite hospitals, you know, surveys says 99 .99, 99 % of them, you know, there's only one out of all the doctors at the elite hospitals who don't think like these vaccines are a good idea.

1:36:28Mm -hmm. And do you think social networks have been a net positive for society? I think broadly, look, it doesn't mean that they're, that they don't have some challenges. Like people criticize Facebook, for example. But actually, in fact, a billion people get on every day. They share their experiences, pictures, lives with loved ones, friends, etc. All of that's very, very positive. I think Twitter, unfortunately, has taken a turn for the worst. I think if you go, you know, where is the largest site, which has the most untrubes on it? I think it's Twitter, right? But, you know, that doesn't mean it can't also be improved and fixed over time.

1:37:07Whenever I speak to entrepreneurs like today's guest, Reid Hoffman at the co -founder of LinkedIn, there's one problem that always comes up. But today's sponsor, LinkedIn, has a solution that I think you'll want to hear. Connecting your business with the right people can be tough. You can spend a lot of time in money trying to get it right, and still, nonetheless, for sure. Especially when it comes to be to be marketing, or you're not doing business with one person, you're dealing with teams making decisions together. Through LinkedIn ads, you can get access to the right audience, so you can build relationships with their 1 billion members, 130 million decision makers, and 10 million C -suite executives.

1:37:43You can also target specifically by job industry company and more. It's no surprise that LinkedIn is the highest returning paid social platform. To help you get started, LinkedIn is offering a $100 credit to launch your first campaign. Just go to LinkedIn .com slash D -O -A -C 24 to claim your credit now. That's LinkedIn .com slash D -O -A -C 24, terms and conditions apply. There's so many different takes that I've heard on AI. I've spoken to Mustafa Solomon. I've spoken to lots of different, you know, Mustafa, because you invested in his company. Yeah, we co -founded Infliction. Ah, I see. You co -founded Infliction, then sold to Microsoft.

1:38:17Well, it did a commercial deal with him. It's still going as a company. Oh, okay. Right, because Mustafa moved over. Yeah, he moved over because he wanted to do consumer agent, and Infliction is doing B2B software sales now. What is your take on AI? And how should we be thinking about it? How should Dave and Jenny, the average person with, you know, working in a company or building a small startup, think about AI? So I think AI is in it. Look, so I last shared a published book called Impromptu, which is the first book on AI co -written with AI, right? Ah, yeah. To show as well as tell that AI is not just artificial intelligence.

1:38:53It's amplification intelligence. It gives us superpowers. Right, as part of that, I'm publishing a book in January called Super Agency, which is our human agency, even with this agentech technology, can and will be magnified. We will get these superpowers. And super agency is the time where, when a lot of people get access to a new general purpose technology, the transformation of society that comes, and it's like printing press or electricity or cars or mobile phones. It's this amazing transformation of all of our lives, because not only do I get the superpower by having AI, the fact that you have a superpower, the AI also increase my agency.

1:39:41So for example, you're a doctor who now has access to AI, your ability to help tend to lots of people's health now just get amplified. And it's the same thing like when a car was created, a doctor could now do, have a broader range of places they could visit to go help. That part of his car has had that super agency. It's not just I can drive places. Now because the doctor can drive places, that also increases her, his agency, and also my agency through super agency. And that books coming out in January. There's a lot of gloom around AI as well. As feared all the time with new technologies. Is any of that gloom warranted?

1:40:20Yes, but with an asterisk, which is every time a new general purpose technology comes out, the discourse, when the printing press came out, the discourse was very similar to the current discourse on AI. It's going to destroy society. It's going to destroy human learning and knowledge. It's going to disable the current people who are the custodians of knowledge, which mostly priests in society, from being able to control the flow of information. We're going to have all this misinformation, etc. Now, by the way, you don't have a scientific revolution without the printing press.

1:40:58There's always this fear. And you say it was a fear completely unwarranted? Well, look, human society is a bad at new general purpose technologies. With the printing press, we had nearly a century of religious war because of it. So the transitions are very difficult because we as human beings are difficult at new general purpose technologies. And so the transition, like the transition is going to have pain. There's going to be challenges and reordering and so forth disruption because of it. No question. What I'm hoping, and part of the reason I write these books is say, look, let's manage this transition better than we've managed the previous transitions.

1:41:35Right? Let's, I have 100 % confidence that the other side, this will be enormously amazing super agency. What I wanted to do is manage the transition as best we can. Now people say, well, shouldn't you manage the transition by being really slow and being really regulated? Well, the challenge is that these new technologies are developed competitively across the entire globe, different countries, different industries, different companies, etc. We don't set the clock. There's no one group that sets the clock. And if you don't go with it, take the industrial revolution, which also had a bunch of things, why did Europe basically set the drum beat for the globe for centuries?

1:42:23The answer is Europe embraced the industrial revolution robustly and early. Right? The, you know, it's part of what made the British Empire. So that clock is set by different human beings all running at it. And by the way, they have different theories of the good. They have different theories of how technology should be in society. They have different theories of what, the risks are technologies. When these people published this pause letter, that was like, that's a mistake. Like other people aren't going to put it. It's a simple thing you look at. The people who care about humanity, if they all pause and the people don't care about humanity, don't pause, your letter, if you achieve your success, will cause a bad impact on humanity.

1:43:11So you have to be developing it. You have to be going with the clock that's set by the world. Right? When I think about AI in its simple terms, the way that I've been thinking about it, and this is not a perfect analogy or whatever, but it's just a simple way to think about it, is if there was one Stephen Barley here that has an IQ of 100, and there was another one sat next to me that had the IQ of 1000, what would this Steve do and what would that Steve do? That's a good question. Is that an app analogy? Is that somewhat well and interesting? This is part of the thing is, we human beings are very bad at imagining future technology.

1:43:45So I can tell you stories about where we have created AI's with IQ of 1000. I can tell you stories where we've created AI's with IQ's of 200, of 150. And I can also tell you stories of AI's where we've created that are kind of equivalent, because today we have this as a forms like idiot sub -ots. Like today's AI's are super intelligent. I'll give you an example. So if I go to a human being, I try to look at a human being and say, explain to me the mixture of experts, creation of AI with an AI. It's a technique by which modern AI's are created that have different kind of expertise roles in the common, the chat GBT is created this way, that create their output.

1:44:35It's a particular technical definition for the way of creating a world class AI model. Then I say, okay, compare a mixture of experts, so use only thousands of people who understand how to do that. And I say, okay, compare that to modern economic game theory. Well, there's probably some humans that can do that too. We're probably now down to like 50 to 100. Then I say, okay, compare those two to modern oceanography. Okay, now we're at zero human beings. There's no human beings in a dos, but I can go to GBT 4 and I can run this. GBT 4, because it's ingested a trillion words of knowledge, can write the comparisons between these three things.

1:45:24Because it knows all three. Because it knows all three. That's a superpower that no human being has. We have AI superpower today. But of course, no one's alarmed about that. Because I'm like, oh, that's a great amplification of elegance. That really helps me. I think there's a very good chance that what happens is is that what we're creating with all of every current AI technique that's under development is these amazing sub -ants that are these great copilets. And that's what we're creating. Not terminator robots, not superintelligences. There's a possibility of that. And I can address the existential risk questions around the possibility of that.

1:46:04Because people think about that poorly. But I think the likelihood is that we're going to be having these kind of copilets that give us these informational GPSs, these cognitive superpowers that make us as human beings a lot better. Bad actors are going to... Yes, that too. Yes. That's the bigger worry. So you say, one worry is transition. And another worry is, whenever you're creating this new technology, you want to say, I want to empower all these people who are building better lives from themselves in society. And I'd want to not empower criminals, terrorists, rogue states. And also you think I also need weapons that are sufficiently advanced at attacking my enemies.

1:46:51And everybody globally is thinking that. Yes. And the China might be thinking about the West and the West are thinking about China, Russia are thinking about this person, this person. The Middle East are probably thinking about a couple of people. So with all developing weapons or defense systems, they're going to probably make those robots you talked about, the Terminator robot that can go to the battlefield. Yes. And that's super smart. They're going to probably make some cyber weapons as well. So those things end up existing and then they're in the wrong hands, the mistake happens. So you want to build them in the right hands first.

1:47:20That's all. I mean, look, there will be cost to it. There's never. Electricity. Essential for human society. It does electrocute people. Right. It does do things in the wrong hands too. Is this technology different though? Because it's been comparisons to the printing press electricity. But is this not a different new? But by the way, each technology, the printing press was different when it was created. Electricity was different when it was created. Cars were different when they were created. Is this the most profound? Well, it's certain impact. It's sure it might be. Right. That's that's that's positive.

1:48:00I think there is, I always think in probability distributions. I think there's a good probability of it. But to some degree, like it doesn't matter if it is or isn't the most, it is a profound new technology. It's as important at least as these other ones. That's the only thing that matters. Whether it definitely is or not doesn't really matter. And look, what is different? It's the fact that it's a genetic technology. Which means it's creating agents that can operate on their own. Right. We already have that, by the way. Like the agent, you can be running an agent with a connection to the internet on your computer and it can go by stuff for you.

1:48:42You can do that today. It's doable. You have agent, it's just a question of what the shape is. Right. So it's agent, it's cognitive. Like, it's very strange that we have a technology now that we can talk to in various ways. And so you have people mistaken going, oh, it must be conscious because they asked if it was conscious and it said it was conscious. And I was like, no. But by the way, before this technology existed, that was a good test. By the way, there are conscious things that can't, there's, there's mute people. And the fact that they can't tell you they're conscious. So conscious, not perfectly, they tell you they're conscious, but you tell me you're conscious.

1:49:18That was a pretty good test before. Now it's a little bit more complicated because I don't think any of the current AI's are conscious. And we know, no, depth of reason of neuroscience and other kinds of things, but why that is. It's not a, just a human species, peroculist view. And figuring out, under what circumstance it would be conscious is a very interesting question that we need to, we need to figure out because it won't be that it has gray matter. It'll be something else. Or maybe even we'll figure this out. So that's new. The cognitive superpowers are new. The fact that the speed of the planet is going to be unusual.

1:49:55Because now we have the mobile phone internet. So I create a new agent and tomorrow, a billion people can use it. Right. That's new. Right. So, so all of these things are new. And by the way, new is anxiety producing. And new is difficult to navigate. And new can make transitions very difficult. Right. But by the way, the fact that we're facing a new challenge is not itself a new challenge. Right. For the average person out there, that's, I don't know, they might be working in a hospital or might be a lawyer or a doctor, whatever, just someone with a job that's heard this time AI and they're saying chat GPT.

1:50:37Is there anything that they should be doing on an individual level to make sure that they can capitalize on the opportunity that AI presents? The basic answer is absolutely yes. And it's part of the reason why like, I do my podcast, possible. I do super agency. I do impromptu because the strong advice that you've ever run. And literally, I was sitting with a governor as the Bank of England yesterday. And my advice to them among other things was personally go use AI. Right. Don't just use it to make a sonnet for your kids birthday. That's great. Don't just use it for a recipe for what happens to being your refrigerator.

1:51:14That's great. For something that matters to you, that part of your expertise. And so start using it. And by the way, you'll find that some of the things is still not useful for it all. Like when I sat down to ask GPT -4, how would Reed Hoffman make money investing in AI? It gave me an answer that was the smart business school professor's answer who didn't understand venture capital. It was like, well, study what areas have the largest total addressable market, then look at what the possibilities for competitive disruption are, then market research test that and it's like, it's not the way, like go find a great entrepreneur with a great idea.

1:51:54Right. And it's best when the idea is something you haven't thought of and few other people have thought of too. Right. It's the way I do it. So it got it completely wrong from how Reed Hoffman, how I invest in AI and what I do very closely. Now, he said, well, then it's useless for a venture capital. He's like, no, no, because I kept experimenting with it. And I said, okay, I fit in an entrepreneur's plan. And I said, how would I do due diligence on this plan? And it came back with a pretty good list. It was like, yeah, one, that was I was absolutely planning on doing that. Two, I was absolutely, three, yeah, I could see why you think that's doing it.

1:52:29That's not important. Oh, four, I would have gotten to it, but it would have gotten to it like four days down the road of doing the work. And now I know it now. So it's useful there. So it is today useful to everybody. You can use it for things that you care about today. So it's go start playing with it. And I love Ethan Mollock's line, which is the worst AI you're ever going to use in your life is the AI you're using today. So one of the reasons to start using it is to start getting familiar with it because like it is a stunning tool. And I'll give one, since you're talking about everyday people, I'll give one kind of tip that I give everybody at the beginning.

1:53:09It's part of the reason I wrote in Prom2, etc. Which is, what is AI? AI is great at adopting a role that you tell it to adopt. So here's a very simple one. You have an argument for something. You can paste it into an AI and you can say, counter this argument. Take the role of critic. Are you against me? And you can see it will immediately give you a capable argument against your position. That is very helpful. It's helpful for cognitive development. It's helpful for learning. It's helpful for our understanding, you know, one of the strengths and weaknesses. But by the way, you can also say, take my side.

1:53:49Give me another argument for the thing I'm arguing for. Like make that argument. But that's just the beginning. You can also say, like for example, if I go, okay, I'm making this argument for how general -purpose technologies always have initial strong fear by people and how they're described as the end of society, the end of humanity, etc. It's happened a number of different times. How would a historian of technology analyze my argument? How would they criticize my argument? And then you get it. So you can get to, like it's literally it's only your own creativity and your own inspiration of who, what role should I be talking to?

1:54:34And once you start realizing that, you can start using AI very powerfully for whatever you're trying to do. Should entrepreneurs be thinking about building companies in the field of AI at the moment? You know, as an entrepreneur who's like roughly 30 years old, I look back and go, gosh, I wish I was of entrepreneurial age when the dot -com boom came around because everyone became billionaires. And is this that moment in time? Yes. So the short answer is yes. So I'm an entrepreneur. I'm 30 -odd years old. I've got disposable income. I'm financially free. I'd love to take part in the next revolution.

1:55:12Should I be flying out to San Francisco and building an AI, joining an AI start about that? Yes. Why? So one of the things is Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has built itself up of multiple. The reason it's called Silicon Valley is because Australia was Silicon. It's now software Valley. Silicon Valley almost never invest in Silicon anymore. Silicon being the chips. Yes, being the chips. So now it's much more software Valley. It's like we invest billions and billions of dollars every year into new software companies. So we went from Silicon through networking equipment like Cisco, through just stacks of different things getting to where we are now.

1:56:00AI is the new one. By the way, we did the thing with internet, we did it with mobile phones, we did it with Web2, now it's AI. And so the principle thing is when you get this new general purpose technology, it opens up massive amounts of entrepreneurial space because one is all the new things that can be built that were never possible before. Airbnb couldn't be done before the internet. There's just no way. So it opens up these things that weren't possible before. And so the internet is a good proxy to the way we have now with AI. Then it also, by the way, makes a massive transformative force on all existing businesses.

1:56:47So you say, well, I had a business of selling kind of e -commerce and doing mail order catalogs. Well, now there's e -commerce. So it transforms all of these businesses. And so, by the way, for example, the internet is part of what makes the cloud revolution. So now it's like, well, actually, in fact, it's not software on your desktop, it's not software on your phone, it's in the cloud. And of course, it bounces back and forth a little bit. Then you have, well, no, actually, in fact, you've got this really great app on your phone. And so forth. But these kinds of things, AI is the next one that affects all of them.

1:57:28So you have Greenfield, you have potentially revolutionized any particular place where there's a product of service, especially that intelligence could be added to it. There's a possibility of a great startup idea there. So yes, now, should you go try to build your own frontier model, which is a $10 billion computer? It's a hard thing. That's a hard amount of capital for startup. No, no, try to figure out, like, the greed you use frontier models from open AI or Microsoft or Google or others as ways of doing this. But you still may build your own model, right? That lots of, lots of startup companies are building their own models.

1:58:08I invested in this customer service company called Sierra that Pretellers doing, and their thing is we're not building our own models. We're just deploying other models. So we have best of read for what models are available to us. You could do that as an AI startup. There's a whole range. And part of what I love about entrepreneurship and invention is, like, I have a whole set of theories about what kinds of things will be really big. And some of my theories will be right. And I have also discovered some other people who have amazing theories. And that's one of the things I really, I and we agree like love to invest in.

1:58:41Interesting. Oh, I want the best way for someone to go and learn about AI right now. Because like going to university feels like it would start using it. Start building it. If you want to, if you can, if you're technical, download, an open source model, Lama, Mistral, other, start playing with it. What if you're not technical? Well, then, well, generally speaking, like, you can't do a technology. It's very hard to do a technology startup without a technology co -founder. So then go find a technology co -founder. So for someone like me who's built my, my career in building teams, marketing, social media content, media, those kinds of things, who is really interested in AI, should I go and do you think I should go learn AI now and start trying to be a technical person?

1:59:26Or if you're slow. Okay, yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, speed matters. Speed matters and start. But by the way, like, because we tend to so much lionize what is usually the man versus the person, there's much of these people are men, the individual start -up succeed because they're a initial team. That's part of the hiring point we were talking about earlier. And so generally speaking, if you ask me, what I rather invest in an individual, founder or two to three co -founders, I'd rather invest in two to three co -founders. Right? So going and finding a co -founder is a great thing. Because by the way, your throw weight, your capability weight, is so much better when you do that.

2:00:09And so, you know, Mark Zuckerberg had Dustin Muskevitz, Adam DiAngelo. Right. Chris Hughes, that's a really important part of how things get created. You invested in OpenAI almost a decade ago before everybody was talking about it. What did you see in that company? So Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Suskeffer, amazing. And they had a focused bold vision, which is, yes, Google has invented the baseline of the attention -based transformer. But they don't realize that it's just scale, like apply scale to this. We are going to bet the entire company everything we're doing on scale on it, and we're going to be very focused on doing it.

2:01:03That's great. People have said the way they are for a long time, and it never manifested in it. And I passed on a lot of AI investments. But the thing that people need to understand about AI is it's a transformation to scale computing learning systems. So, suppose that we program it, like we program the AI, we program a scale computing learning system. So it learns. And that only becomes available once you have scale compute. So you need the internet, you need the cloud, you need massive data centers, and you need access to massive amounts of data, which you get from the internet and other things.

2:01:43And then you need a scale team to build it. And on that point of people, how important, if you're trying to be successful as a young entrepreneur, is net working? Almost always critical, because you need that initial team. Now, you don't need networking of, I should spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, going to every party that I can possibly go of, and shaking people's hand and giving them my business card. That's not particularly useful. What you need to be is, just like you have a strategy for your business, you need to have a strategy for how you're building your network around your business, and your network around you.

2:02:20Like who are the people that I should be talking to, who are the people that I should be learning from, who are the people that I should be trying to bring in to my network, that I have the project that I'm creating, and how do I meet those people? There's so many obvious things that people talk about when they describe being what makes lunch, a bunch of panelists successful, they say hard work, they say have a big vision. But is there anything that's really underappreciated? Like when I say this, I'm talking about being a nice person, or being etiquette, or politeness, or manners. Are there anything like that that you think make a big difference, but people don't appreciate?

2:02:55Well, I don't think politeness and etiquette are really particularly good competitive advantages. I'm not saying that one should be rude, but like an emphasis, like if an entrepreneur is like, I'm reading my etiquette manual, and saying, well, that's what your time, like sure, being nice, I think building a network, like entrepreneurship is a team sport. It is not an individual sport. It's a team sport, so you need to be building your team. You've seen an entrepreneur's be successful, but what bad is that, right? Not ultimately at scale. Oh, interesting. Because it is a team sport. Like, it requires high talent people around you doing it.

2:03:35Now, for example, you can get enough initial success going in capital that even though you're bad with your team, people will come on board because they'll go, oh, I believe this is going to go somewhere, and I can make a bunch of money doing it. I'll come do it. And so you, like, for example, a classic trope within Silicon Valley, which is broadly correct, and that's part of the reason you have the trope, is I want missionary not mercenary cultures. Because the missionaries, I believe we're going to change the world we're going to do it this way. And by the way, mostly of the big successful companies, most of them are missionary cultures.

2:04:08They say, oh, they're all missionary cultures. No, no, there's mercenary cultures that I've gotten big too. I'm not how you define mercenary in this question. All I care about is making money. Like all it, like, the only thing that matters is, I'm selling something, I'm going to make money. That's all that matters. Do you sometimes think the mission's bullshit, though? Just like bullshit to get people to feel something? There are bullshit missions that are like the, I'm just telling the story. I don't really care. Right. I'm telling a story that's incorrect. Right. There are like, like, like the Silicon Valley TV show on HBO kind of, you know, you know, satire this in a particular way.

2:04:48I am creating a, we're first double encryption system to change the world. Right. You know, that kind of, and yeah, there is BS there. Just like any other large -scale human activity, there's a lot of BS in different places. Do you need the BS in that context? Do you need to end it with I'm going to change the world? Well, it's helpful. The reason why people use the BS is because that's what people want to do. People want to be in things to change in the world. So you have to say, like, I'm LinkedIn. This is how I'm going to change the world. I'm open AI. This is how I'm going to change the world.

2:05:22I'm Arabian B. This is how I'm going to change the world. Because humans are emotional and story animals. Exactly. So yes, you need it. But of course, it's much better if it happens to be that you actually are trying to do that. You are actually, in fact, you'd have a good plan for how you might succeed in doing that. Because you know, a fizzy drink company, conglomerate, even they try and they're like value proposition with we're going to change the world. Yes, exactly. And you know it's bullshit. It's a public company that got shelders who want to return. Yes. But even they, I guess, have to do.

2:06:00On the mindset front, what is the mindset, the factors of a great entrepreneur's mindset? What are the key things that you look for when you're investing in one? Insanely great ambition. I'm shooting for the moon. And you know, sometimes literally. Most often, like, if I'm successful, I will transform the industry. I hear. An awareness of like a good plan for how you might do that. Right? An awareness that the entrepreneurship is a team sport, not an individual sport. And I have a plan for how I'm bringing in like all of different elements, capital, talent, etc. Like, for example, one of the ways that I interview executives is I say, who are the three to five?

2:06:51They five, I love it. But minimum three world class people have worked for you before. And I'm going to call them and ask them what it's like working for you. And by the way, if it really matters, I will then reference check those three people on how they actually world class. Right? Because only higher people who are going to hire world class people who play it now. Similarly, like, who are the world class people who think your world class is an entrepreneur? And like, this is one of the things that actually entrepreneur first, that we actually, in fact, learned was it isn't necessarily who everybody thinks it's who some world class people think that this person world class because they're edgy.

2:07:34So you look for that. It isn't that you look for people that everybody loves them. Everybody says, oh, I'd love to have a drink with that person. None of our like having someone and say, oh, that person's hard driving and they're difficult. That could be a very strong positive. I've invested a number of entrepreneurs that way. What about resilience? Well, resilience also very important. Almost every startup goes through when I call a valley of the shadow moment, which is like, why did we think this was a good idea? Oh my God, we're like, when I started social, one of my connections of Apple dropped me, who had started doing startups two years before, dropped me a one line email that said, welcome to where 15 minutes is the difference between exaltation and terror.

2:08:20I'm going to change the world. Oh, shit, I'm going to die. Right. So resilience is super important because it is a dog fight. And multiple times PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, oh, God, we're going to die. This is going to be worth zero. Can you spot resilience in someone? You can have a high probability guess based on, well, it's kind of like, so you push them on things and see what they've done. Have they tank and risk? How do they respond to risk? Are they trying to persuade themselves that the thing that they're doing is zero risk? No, no, I'm guaranteed to succeed. No one is. Does it help if they've been through some difficult things in their life?

2:09:06Oh, yeah, because then if they've gone through the difficult things and they've been resilient in there, that's likely, not 100 % that gives a good probability that we're resilient. I can traumatize people. Well, it depends on how they respond to the trauma. Right. What did you learn from it? Like, how did you respond to it? Like, because generally speaking, you need to be able to convert negatives into positives. Right. On the entrepreneurial journey. So it's like, look, that was, that was really bad. And I learned from it. If you were advising a young person on how to build wealth in 2025. And when I say young, I mean, 18 years old.

2:09:41What would you, and you'd have to plan out the roadmap of their life? Can you walk me through how you'd be thinking about those seasons of life, like 18 to 30, 30 onwards, etc? So part of the reason I wrote Startup of You was that the advice that universities frequently give is, you know, follow your passion. First, do the things that you're passionate about. Oh, you want to go volunteer in Bhutan. Do it now. It's the end of the, and it's terrible advice, right? That that actually is the wrong end for the advice. The right thing, and it doesn't mean don't follow your passion, but the right thing is to start with, how do I get to a place where I have established myself and have like the ability to, like, economically, the platform and maneuver.

2:10:27It could be enough wealth to be, you know, to no longer need a salary. That was my own personal goal. But it also could be the, I'm well known, have a network of contacts of people who would want to hire me and so forth. And now I'm going to go spend a year volunteering in Bhutan because I really want to do that. So the answer is go be vigorous about the thing that matters for your entire life early and take the big risks. Yeah. Take the big risk early. All right. Now you might say, I want to be a doctor. It's not particular risk. It's fine. But then go to medical school, establish yourself as a medical professional.

2:11:03And so before you do that, so whatever thing that is the thing that you think gives you the platform for resilience in your later life, go establish that now. And by the way, that's part of the thing of like wealthy. But wealthy, by the way, could be measured in, I have a bank balance, right, or on stark equity portfolio. But wealthy can also be the, I have a great network of people who want to work with me, who want to hire me, who value my talents. Right. So this whole range for things, but go establish that first. And that can be take big risk. By the way, some people say, I want to take as few big risk as possible in my whole life, because that's who I am.

2:11:44Fine. But go establish yourself first. Now if you're going to be on entrepreneur, you want to be an entrepreneur, then like for example, okay, maybe you shouldn't start a business at 18, but maybe you should go join a startup. Right. Start learning it, start building the network. And it's roughly build the network is the broad thing. And by the way, build the skills and, you know, yet, like frequently doing a startup is very difficult economically. Usually you start with no salary, etc. Like having some reserves is a good thing to have. I read a book and in the first chapter, I was trying to figure out what this platform is for young people.

2:12:22And the way that I kind of described it is these five buckets. The first one being knowledge. And then when knowledge is applied, it becomes a skill. And the good thing about these first two buckets is, they're the only two that no one can have a really empty. Yes. What you put in there. The next one I posited was me trying to remember my book was your, I'm going to say network, then your resources, then your reputation. Now anyone can take these last three. Like life can happen. You can get fired. You can lose your friends, whatever. The network is hard to lose if you really authentically built it.

2:12:57Right. It can be lost though. It can be, but it's very hard. It's kind of like a nuclear bomb kind of thing. I mean, it's like, look, you may, like one particular person on you may have a real difference of opinion. You know, you may move and then a lot get fired and a lot of your network is that, but by the way, even if you've gotten fired, if you've got a couple of people at that company that you had good relationship with, they may still be part of your network. So I'm right in thinking that the knowledge and skills part is really the critical thing to prioritize when you're, we'll saw this is part of what we didn't start of you.

2:13:33Soft assets are very important. People under -prioritize them. They tend to say, oh, I should take the job that offers me a 5 % higher salary. And the answer is almost always, that's not the criteria that you should be looking at. Even 30 % higher -size salary is not the criteria you should be looking at. You should be looking at where are my soft assets? Where's my knowledge? Where's my skills? Where's my network? Interesting. Because the soft assets are what compound generally to the much larger. Like the fact that you took a job with a 30 % higher salary is not necessarily the predictor that you're going to get the job with a 300 % higher salary.

2:14:09It's the soft assets that are likely to get to the 300 % economic outcome. So it short term versus long term? So soft assets are longevity. Yes. And the hard assets, I guess are short terms. Yes. I mean, you did. Is there a different game you play when you hit your 30s, do you think? Well, you have to evolve it. So for example, you can, when you're in your 20s, you can say, well, I'm going to take more risk, like I said, and I always take the jobs that have zero salary or lower salary, because I'm going to live in the house with five of my friends. We're going to have beans and toast for dinner, as well as doing it, because I can take those risks now.

2:14:47And then when you're 30, it's like, well, maybe I'm planning on having a life partner and being in an apartment or a house with them. So it changes as you go through. And then you have kids. Yes. Did you have kids? No. Because I'm in that region now where I'm thinking about having kids, and I'm just I'm wondering how disruptive it's going to be. It's another startup. Like it's fine. You can do startups and have it, but it's a complete startup. Which do you think lowers your chance of being successful at a startup? Because doing two startups is more difficult than one. Probably a little. Yeah, but maybe worth it.

2:15:23On balance, okay. What is happiness to you? Because you've got the money, you've got the success, you've got the reputation, you've got the the CV. What is... Happiness for me is going through life with people I love and building great things. But like, by the way, if I failed at everything I built and I was still going through life with people I loved, great. Why is that so important? Because I think part of the meaning of life is how you contribute to the to the people around you. It's like again, I'm sorry, I keep referring to the start of a view, but it was my first book as advice to young people.

2:16:00Right. It's the eye and the we. Like, like do things for yourself. Do things for the for me. Do things for we. Right. And I learn from people. I get delight from people. I feel meaningful as I contribute to people's lives. And obviously there's people immediately around me. There's people in the whole world. I mean, like LinkedIn, billion people have signed up for it. Like there is there is there is. That's part of what I think is essential in the in the meaning of life. And for me, especially. How did you have happiness wrong when you were younger? If you... Oh. In any way.

2:16:45I probably thought like it was important to be top of your class. Not that it was important to just do well, but it was important to be top. Right. And what I've come to realize is, you know, there's 8 billion people. Right. Nobody is the best at everything. Right. Some people delude themselves that they are. But nobody is. You could be the best at something. And by the way, being the best at something, that's a good thing. But by the way, to really be obsessive about the being the absolute best at that thing. Oh, maybe you're actually being you're less investing in other things. It's a little bit like your earlier question about managing.

2:17:30You say you'll be. I'm an oracle and I'll tell you, we four times is economically successful. If you're a shit to the people you work with. Yeah. No. Not okay for me. And love. How does love come into this? You're you're in you have a long -term life partner. Yes. Yeah. In Seattle. What role has that played in in your happiness and your professional success? For me, all the people around me are people I learn from. And that includes Michelle. Like I learn all kinds of things from Michelle. Michelle, I actually both in some ways, very similar people. Deep belief in ethics, deep belief in the importance of being a good person.

2:18:13And in some ways, very different. She like, like I'm Mr. scale, she's anti -scale. Right. She she she thinks she's fine with my doing the scale things. But like she wants to go connect with local people in the community. Right. She's like, look, I'm volunteering at the senior center. Will you come volunteer with me? No, no, no, no, no, I don't do that. I'm happy to get money to the senior center. But that's not what I do. But that that's that's her life. And I learn from that because by the way, life is both. Life is both here and here. So it's it's one of the balanced and people. She she is intensely going and she's taking this kind of.

2:18:48Call it quaker Buddhist approach to creating art. Right. And and that's just amazing. Like I love being on that journey with her. Right. And that's her journey. Right. But I learn from it. And those are the kinds of things that are that are. You know, part of what I think the meaning of life is is how we learn from each other. One of them if two entrepreneurs come to you and they put to the exact same thing, but one of them is in a long term marriage. What is the difference between those two entrepreneurs in terms of how they'll sharpen business in your view? Interesting. Have I ever been asked that question?

2:19:25Depends. I do think like one of the things that I treat as a very relevant fact is how someone treats the people around them. Okay. So it's somewhat evidence that that. Yes. So like if a person is good to the people around them, then that's a person I am more likely to much more much much more likely to want to go through. Because like a startup is like 10 years. Like I have passed on investments that I've literally referred to and I won't name them because it's uncivil. But I've literally passed on investments that I thought this is going to make a ton of money. And I've told my partners a gray lock.

2:20:05Hey, look, this entrepreneur and this business, this is going to make a lot of money. If any of you want to do it, great. And I will support you. But I don't want to index. I don't want to spend the 10 years of this entrepreneur. Right. Because it's just, you know, life's too short. Right. And I was right. Those businesses made a ton of money. Right. But it was, yeah, no, no, thanks. Not worth that. I think. Yes. When I was reading Blitzcaling and I was watching the videos that you did, you've done several talks on it. I've seen pretty much all of them over the years. One of the questions I had as an investor myself is my early stage companies that aren't in consumer internet space.

2:20:43They're selling, I don't know, they might be selling a drink in a supermarket or something. Should they all be pursuing this idea of Blitzcaling where you go lightning fast to building a massively valuable company? Not necessarily. Okay. Blitzcaling is a strategic response to global competition. Right. And so now there are certain industries where global competition is the norm, not the exception. You're building an internet property. Right. Right. Or mostly like much software, not all software, but most like many software companies. In which case, and by the way, if you can get away with not Blitzcaling, it's much better because Blitzcaling is spending resources inefficiently to get to market size ahead of your competition.

2:21:32So like a classic example is like, you know, Uber would interview somebody, offer them a job and then say, who are the three best people at your company that you worked with and send job offers to those three people without even interviewing them? Right. Because that's Blitzcaling. That's I'm going super, super fast. And that that was a Blitzcaling technique I learned from Uber was like, oh, yep, put that one in the tool chest for when you need to do that. Right. Because outpacing the competition when you're in Glen Gary, Glen Ross markets, which is first prize Cadillac, second prize steak knives, third prize, you're fired.

2:22:18It's the game. Right. And it's one of the things like when you know, you and I were chatting a little bit before we started the podcast, like one of the places that things that places like, you know, London and the UK and Europe need to learn is when the competition's global, it's not the people down the street. It's the fiercest competitors around the world. And Silicon Valley has fierce competitors. China has fierce competitors. You have to have a theory of how you're playing that game against those the fiercest competitors in the world. And so Blitzcaling is in part like this is stuff I've learned from Silicon Valley and from the stuff I've done in China to say, like when you're in a global competitive business and you're trying to establish it and you have competitors who are doing this, this is some of the techniques that you need to do.

2:23:05If AI is going to be so transformative, when you think about a country like the UK, where, you know, we don't have the Blitzcaling advantages as entrepreneurs and founders that you guys have in Silicon Valley, if you were the prime minister of the UK, what would you do to give us a shot at getting some of the value that's going to occur because of this hour of opportunity? So I think there's two things. One is you need to enable some of your companies' ability to Blitzcaling as much as you can. Okay. So because if the company, if company one is not Blitzcaling and is competing against company two that is Blitzcaling, company one's going to lose.

2:23:47I don't think we've got any AI companies that are Blitzcaling earlier. Company one is going to lose. Right? Company two might lose too. Right. But company one is guaranteed to lose and company two is not guaranteed to lose. Right? So if you're competing against companies that are Blitzcaling, you must also be Blitzcaling. It's part of the reason I wrote the book. It's part of the reason I give talks. It's part of the reason I help Sherry Kutu stand up the scaling institute here in London, you know, etc. etc. Now, say, we can't. We're not going to be able to. Well, then choose areas where the competitors and Blitzcaling.

2:24:26I've got an example. I want to give you. I invest in a matcha company. They make matcha like the green tea. And they've grown very, very quickly. They're called Perfected hashtag ad. I'm an investor, etc. Nearly investor in a company. And I was wondering they've grown so quickly. So they've gone from, I don't know, zero. So they'll probably do maybe 30 million pounds next year. And I've done it in a cup, you could be measured in months, really. And I wondered, I was like, matches this trend that's coming into sure. Everyone's drinking match and our every coffee shop you go to has matcha. Should they be Blitzcaling to capture the opportunity globally?

2:25:04So it depends on two things. One, most centrally, competition. Do they need to be outpacing their competition? Could argue yes. Yeah. But if yes, then especially if their competitors are Blitzcaling, then absolutely yes. If the committers are not Blitzcaling, it's all Blitzcaling, and they will us that will pace them. Because by the way, it does involve moving so fast, you're taking risks and hiring and capital raise and expenditures. You're doing marketing that you would, like, you're Uber. You're launching in 20 cities at the same time. It's a whoa, you know, etc. Because that does add risks.

2:25:43Right. But you're saying those risks that it adds are less of a risk than not Blitzcaling. That's kind of the tradeoff. So competition is a central reason for doing it. And by the way, most of the company, most of the times where you can raise capital Blitzcaling is because if it's a Glen Gary Glen Ross market where first prizes, Cadillac, second prize stake knives, well then generally speaking investors are willing to invest at premium prices, give a lot of capital, etc. Because they'll go, we agree that you're going to get a great market position if you Blitzcaling. And by the way, part of the problem is investors are not always right, but if some investors are willing to do it, then another going to do it in your competitors, then you absolutely have to do it if your competitor is going to do it.

2:26:33So competition is the first thing. The second thing is do you need to get to critical mass scale? So like your payments industry. And this is one of the things I learned to paypal, which is basically payments businesses are dead unless they have at least a billion dollars of transactional volume through them per year. And that was back in 2002 when I was looking. I'm sure it's higher now. Right, maybe it's 10 billion, whatever. But it's like if you don't get to that scale, you're dead. You're irrelevant. So getting that scale and getting through the highly unprofitable, getting the scale as fast as possible really matters.

2:27:08And so that's one of the places where you say, well, we're none of our competitors are doing it, but we should still do it because getting that critical mass and scale really matters. And so that's another time. And so that would be, I don't think that's probably the matcha company. That's probably, like doesn't even so. But those are the lessons you look at. But it's not blitz scaling for its own sake. That's one of the mistakes that people make when they go blitz scaling. Oh, we're doing it to blitz scales. And then you blitz scale as a set of strategic techniques in response to a market and response to competition.

2:27:41In the case of matcha, there is a role of brand being the moat to live there. And so that may be irrelevant. That may be the relevant thing of why it's a glinger in the kit. I have a look at the market at all, but a glinger in the Ross market of first prize, Cadillac, second prize, steak knives. Maybe that's because of brand establishment, which case you have to be number one. And on that point that I asked earlier about, fuel the Prime Minister of the UK, you'd start enabling some of our companies in the UK to like have more capital, like you give them access to capital. Do you think one of my fears is that AI is such a big opportunity.

2:28:15It's going to revolutionize everything. And it's basically going to be owned by America and China. Some of my fears are like, fears are someone that lives in the UK that we're going to, your economy is going to in the US is going to have such a huge upswing in productivity. So good news for you is I happen to know that 10 downing street is paying attention to this issue, because I had meetings with them this week on that. There's things that they will be announcing, which I can't pre -announce. OK. Right. But they know this is important, and they're working on it. OK. And they're consulting, you know, people.

2:28:48Good. Yeah. Yeah, that's what gives me hope. Yes. OK. What's the most important thing we haven't talked about, French Paners that we should have talked about? I'll give two.

2:29:00The first is, and they're related. The first is, look, just because you don't have 100 % chance of succeeding, doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Right. So like, when I said earlier when we were talking about it, like, look, when I started LinkedIn, I thought we had a most 20, 25 % chance of being successful. That's fine. Right. So in a matter of fact, what you should be doing is aligning the fact that there is risks in what you're doing with the reason why you'll have less competition, while you have a higher runway before the competition intensifies. Because part of it is, if you have a theory, like we talked about this in LinkedIn, about why other people see that there is, like, they think there's a zero percent chance you succeed.

2:29:49And you think there's a 20, 25 % chance you succeed. That's precisely that risk window is your opportunity. Mm -hmm. Right. So think of risk not as terrifying. Think of risk as potential opportunity. Right. That's one. And we've talked about threads of it, but thinking of it as opportunity. Right. Because you see something other people don't say, you see the risks, but you have an idea for why that risk is something that you may be able to win on and they won't. Right. So with LinkedIn, that was, hey, I have an idea about how the network will grow, even though it's not valuable until there's a million people in network.

2:30:29Right. That's where that risk becomes an opportunity. Right. So the second one, also around risk is, um, have a plan B, have plans B. Understand that you have an idea in your risk you're playing it. And if it's not working out, how do you pivot? Don't think, oh, the whole thing is going all in. And I'm just going to be roadkill if it doesn't work. No, no, that's the whole point of the reason I have this framework of ABC planning, which is in the start of view, which is, anyway, start view is advice, say, give entrepreneurs shrunk to advice to individuals. Right. Every single chapter applies to entrepreneurs in their companies.

2:31:10Right. And like the ABC planning is, don't just have a plan A where like, oh, but it doesn't work. I'm dead. You're like, well, that's a bad strategy. Like sometimes you'll do it. Sometimes it's the only thing I have. I love this plan A. It's the only thing I have. And the only way to do it is go all in and off. It doesn't work. I'm dead. Okay. That was very scary. Right. When I do entrepreneurship, I have plans B. I have a plan Z. Right. I have thought through not every, because you can't think through everything, but maneuverability and how to measure am I in track or not? Am I increasing my probability of success or not?

2:31:47Am I increasing my ability to get to the moon or not? And, and be doing risk management, smart risk, take smart risks. That's the thing. Right. How do you know when to quit? And I'm saying this in a professional context as well as in entrepreneurship context. So when I get around to advising companies I've invested in or friends that now is time to quit or now is time to sell, you try to sell, of course, but sometimes if you can't sell, that means quit. Right. Is your new plans, your new plans A are much worse than your previous plans A? Your new plan A is much better. Because you pivoted. Yeah.

2:32:26Right. And your new plan A is a much worse plan in your plan A. That's when you get to your plans A. Like, plan Z is I quit. Right. Okay. So you've tried something else that's also messed up. Yeah. Like, okay. Yeah. And in a professional context, how do you know to quit when to quit the job? Well, it could be you have much better plan A. Right. Like, like, okay, this plan A, that's okay. And then by the way, this is the part of the difference that I tell people between should I found a company, should I join one? It's like, well, one of the problems you have is a founder, you can't really quit.

2:32:58You're with the business. All right. It's very dishonorable to quit before, you know, the business gets to whatever it's, it's design is now sometimes you're fired. Fine. But you're, you know, as a founder, you're like, people have come and join us because of me being here and doing this. And I'm here until the business gets to a point where it's, it's a massive growing concern. No, once the company's public, you can go do something or once the company's sold, you can go do something or once the company is like profitable and really strong, you can go do something, but you're there until then as a founder, as an employee, you're signing up for what I'm the alliance I call a tour of beauty, which is I am, I've signed up to make a big difference in the company.

2:33:42But I'm not here till the end. And so as your employee, you can go, look, have I delivered against my tour of duty? Great. And at that point, a better opportunity comes along. So, you know, Matt Kohler, who, you know, now lives here in London as a, you know, partner at benchmark, like I recruited him out of McKinsey in the LinkedIn. Three years in, he comes to me and says, Hey, I've been offered this, this opportunity at Facebook. I'm like, look, man, I love working with you. You're a close friend of mine, et cetera, et cetera. You should take that job at Facebook. That is the right next step for you, right?

2:34:16And because we're close and so forth, I think you probably wouldn't have taken the job if I hadn't said, but like LinkedIn resembles my brain. I want people doing their best work, their best opportunities. And Facebook gave them a great opportunity. What's really interesting about the LinkedIn story? I've got the deck in front of me here from August 20, 2004. Yes. That's our graylock series B deck. And what's pretty remarkable? And whether I Matt Kohler helped me create that deck. Oh, did he? Yes. I mean, it's a pretty good deck for a series, series B, especially back then. It's very simple, I'd just say.

2:34:50Simple as good. Very, very simple. Yes. One of the things that really struck out to me is on this page here, which is the sort of opening, I guess, vision mission statement, whatever you want to call it, is it's fine and contact the people you need through the people you already trust. And what's quite remarkable, although this was written 20 years ago, this is still very much what LinkedIn's about. Yes. And usually when I see these decks, they started as I don't know, thought or not. Yes. And now it's like Facebook and Instagram. Yes. Whereas this is still so close to what the vision was. Yeah.

2:35:20What's also my third company, I had social net, I had PayPal, PayPal pivoted a lot. And so I had a good sense of both how to be long term and short term when I started LinkedIn. And what is the key to being long term in this regard? Well, you know, what is the, you're going to transform the industry? Oh, and what do you mean by key? As in like, if you're trying to build a long -term company from the outset, what are you thinking about? Well, you're thinking about like, if I'm successful at landing on the beach, at expanding into the market, how is it that I'm going to be an industry transforming company?

2:35:57Like what's the thing that changes millions of customers' lives, you know, or if it's an enterprise company, you know, whatever, like lots of companies within multiple industries. How am I an essential part of how they change the way they live, they work, they do business? And what do you think of LinkedIn today? Because people use it in such a surprising way. I mean, people are building their personal brands on it. It's like a social network. Yes. I knew that was all going to be from from before this deck. I knew that was possible. I have a probability sort of now. What what thing surprised me?

2:36:32People build dating services on top of it. Really? Yes. Well, I'm going to a relationship so many haven't seen it. But you know, but they look, well, some people want to be dating people who have professional like my dating set is I want people who have good CVs. Okay. I don't want LinkedIn to ever build that business. I'm if you're going to go build that business. No problem. Right. I mean, and like, for example, like one of the like this was, I think, a few months after we raised money from Greylock on the stack, one of the surprising uses is like, I'd never had envisioned this use case still looking for a job.

2:37:12An engineer wanted to move to Denver from Silicon Valley. And so it was like, didn't know what companies look at. So this engineer went to LinkedIn and searched for profiles like his, then looked at what companies those people worked at, then decided which companies to go look for jobs at. It was brilliant. Like, it's a very good way of saying, hey, I'm look, I'm interested in going and working here. What kinds of companies that are interesting employ people like me. Are you still interested in building companies in terms of like being a CEO and founder? Well, so I co -founded inflection. Yeah.

2:37:54So I'm definitely doing the co -founding thing. Right. And, you know, I anticipate that will happen again. But will I be the CEO? It's not impossible. But it's kind of like because I have these amazing people like Mustafa Suleiman, who with a CEO that I can be the co -founder with, that's great.

2:38:19Yeah, I think that's the season of life I'm in. Yeah. I don't want to be a CEO anymore, which is unfortunate because I named podcast I ever CEO when I was one. But I just think there's an element of self awareness, which I think has really, and for me, the older I've got on the more I'm orientating everything towards being happy. And for me, it's hard to be a CEO and it's happy as I, and free as I want to be. So then, then, then you need to build the networking skills by which you're working with other people with the CEOs. That's basically what I do now. So, the companies that I've described, the software business, the media company we have here, there's people that are designed and built and much better CEOs than me.

2:38:56What do you care about legacy? Only because I care about an impact. So I don't, like, I care that I've actually made a big difference to the ongoing story of humanity. But I don't care that, I mean, look, it's nice. I certainly don't mind that people go, oh, we'd often did these amazing things. It feels good. But I care much more about the substance. Like, did I do really good things? That was a very positive name. Now, I'm not indicating I have no ego. You know, the appreciation, having done that, that feels good. But I don't do it for the appreciation. I do it for the thing. So, do you make decisions based on legacy at all?

2:39:41Only by impact.

2:39:46Did you decide not to have children? We did. And it was a joint decision, of course. And I think it was partially that we worked Godparents to a number of children. Actually, there's three kids here in London that were Godparents too. And there's all kinds of delights in being a Godparent, which is, you know, you show up and spend an evening and get to participate in the kids' lives. And then, you know, when it's like, oh, time to change the diaper.

2:40:18Are there any unchecked boxes in your life? I'm sure there are. Any major ones? Yeah. If you'd ask me what book I was going to first write when I was an undergraduate was book on friendship, I still want to write that book. I had been taking notes for 30 years. On friendship. On friendship? Yep. What would that book be about? Friendship. But specifically, what? What? What? What? Everything. Look, there's so few books on friendship. You go into a bookstore and you say, where is your, your section on relationships? And they, every bookstore will go, oh, over here. Right? Relationships are capillary or romantic relationships.

2:41:04They say, okay, where's your section on friendship? No, section on friendship. Do you have a book on friendship? The answer is, maybe we have one. Your assistant, we spoke to your assistant. I had this conversation today and she said that friendship and connection is a major part of your focus at the moment. Yes, always. But it always has been. Now, you're doing intense things with startups. Part of the reason I actually think you should work with friends. You should hire friends. This is kind of a little bit, you know, counter a common wisdom. This is because you want to be spending your time with friends.

2:41:38And that does add difficulties. Right? But you want to spend your time with friends. That's really good. But you still friends with Peter Thiel? Yes. You have a lot of disagreements in terms of politics, but intense disagreements on politics. But you still are able to be friends. Yes. But we also met with, you know, as undergraduates, you know, in a like, I knew he was extremely right. And he knew I was left. You know, I've become much more business oriented than I was as undergraduates. And he's become much more libertarian. But, you know, disagreements is a good thing. It can be a good thing.

2:42:23We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. Oh, and the question that's been left for you is a very interesting one. Okay. What are the two things you want your life partner to know about you that they do not know or do not understand about you yet? That's an interesting thing. It's an interesting, if someone has an answer to that question, it suggests that they're not being a particularly good life partner. I think I have been and will continue to be a good life partner. So I actually don't have an answer to that question.

2:43:01What's your name? Michelle. Yes. Does she misunderstand you in any way?

2:43:09I don't know if it's a misunderstanding because we put a lot of energy into understanding each other. I mean, like, for example, we've seen marriage counselors together and not because we're going, we're like fighting about something. It's because helping, having a third party help you understand the other person well is like actually, in fact, a very good thing. Find someone who's really good and do that. Right. I do that with my partner. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. You should do it. You shouldn't be because we're arguing. It should be because we're putting lots of energy into understanding each other.

2:43:42I still think there's things about my partner that she doesn't understand about me. Look, all misunderstands about me and I misunderstand about her. Of course. And by the way, I can point out things that I have learned about her, like, for example, like the local community is what really matters to her. Right. I didn't really understand that 10 years ago. Now I understand that. Right. I'm sure she has those kind of similar things about me. But like the moment it occurs to me that there's something she doesn't understand about me, it comes up at a dinner, you know, not too many weeks in the future because that's part of how we come to our dinners.

2:44:24Right. Come to our dinners is of one of us is not, you know, I had this thought. We want to have those dinners. Founders, you're investing in that are in a stable, solid relationship before they start the start -up. And then they go on this crazy intense journey. Do you ever give them advice on relationships and how to manage that? Because I have so many founders come to me and they're like, I think she's going to break up with me or he's going to break up with me because I'm just, I'm absent in my head in person. You try to have a really good relationship. You try to be as, like, I think you should in friendship and in relationships.

2:45:03You should try to identify the things in yourself that the other person may find challenging and you should bring them up in advance. Right. That is a very good way to build deep quality friendships and relationships. So, for example, in startups, Michelle knew that about me. So when we had planned our wedding, and then we were doing a small thing with just basically just the piece and so forth. We'd plan our wedding and it was very early days of LinkedIn and I came back home and I said, we really need to lay it. Right. And we delighted a couple of weeks. I was like, we really need to lay it. I'm doing this thing at LinkedIn right now.

2:45:46We're really need to have it. I don't have time for that. And Michelle didn't go, ah, she went, okay, let's make work. Because I'd been clear with her about what the startup journey was like. Right. I had had experience with it before and sometimes it's like, we didn't know it before, but like, look, I'm really committed to this and it's really important to me that I do that. Well, that should be kind of life partner things. Did you let her down a little? I hope not. In terms of making a plan, making a day. Oh, we had multiple plans that got blown up. Right. And what about the dealing with the stress when you come home?

2:46:22Something I've always struggled with is if work is stressful when I come home, I can be absent. And then you have to transition this mode of partner, but my head is still thinking, oh my gosh, play this or whatever. Well, occasionally that's one of the things that Michelle will go like, you know, I think you're not being fully present. Like that's one of the one of the kind of as we're key words between us. I think you're not being fully present. And that's the stop thinking about whatever else you're doing and focus. Okay. And I'm, yes, we've had that conversation more times that I can probably remember in count.

2:46:55And is it easy just to you learn to really? Yes, you learn to because as you as you like you have the okay, what does that mean? Take those other things, push them off the table, focus, or by the way, occasionally go, you're right. I'm really sorry. I'm just so distracted by this right now. Would you mind it? Fuck like I'm fully present tomorrow? Because a lot of founders would gaslight that part of their answer. You don't understand, you don't get it. I'm doing this for you. This is for us. Look, you hate my work. Well, if you're having that conversation, if the person doesn't look, the two people need to believe in each other and what they're doing.

2:47:38If the person doesn't believe in you and what you're doing, right, you have a long -term problem. Yeah. I guess the communication is at the very hard of that, right? Yes. We are all very excited for your next book, which you said is coming out in January. January, yeah. End of January. It's a book called Super Agency. What could possibly go right with our AI future? Co -written with Greg Beta? Biato. Biato. What could possibly go right with our AI future? An optimistic take about AI? Yes. Why should someone in who should read that book? So anyone who believes I do, the only way that you can possibly get to an optimistic future is envisioning what some of the things are and head towards it, that you don't get to an optimistic future by trying to avoid value or by trying to avoid pessimism.

2:48:31Anyone who says, okay, it's important for me to understand that perspective by AI, they should read Super Agency. We have a book blurb from Yvall Harari, which says, this is a brilliant, positive vision of the future. I disagree with some of its main arguments and everyone should read. That's refreshing. Yes. I'll link it below for anyone that wants to pre -order it, but I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your books, which are iconic because they've shaped the thinking of founders across the world. Even if you're not a founder, the startup of you is for everybody, regardless of what you're doing.

2:49:08It helps you navigate both building a business, but also just your career generally. Also, Masters of Scale, which is an iconic podcast that many of us listen to here, where you sit down with some of the greatest founders of all time and understand how they've scaled and built their companies. It's a podcast that I know Jack is a massive fan of, and one of the first podcasts I have ever got listening to as well. I highly recommend that. I also have the book there. I'll link all of this stuff below. Reid, thank you. I'm so pleasure. I look forward to the next one. Thank you so much. It's been such an honor.

2:49:36It's so wonderful speaking to someone that has such diverse contrarian at times, opinions, but is willing to stand by the mirror perspective of whether they are believed or accepted or politically correct with their dominant narrative at the moment. Yeah. And that comes from having such a wealth of experience, but being fundamentally well -intentioned, so thank you Reid for the time. I really appreciate it. It's a lot of time to meet you. Thanks for creating LinkedIn. I think they sponsor this podcast. I didn't even know that. I really do. Thank you so much.

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