What are the 3 things Reid Hoffman – founder of Linkedin – looks for when he invests
LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman took a risk on the networking platform after being told it “would never work.”
He shared some great insights on CNBC
“Starting a company is jumping off a cliff and assembling the airplane on the way down, and what you’re realizing after you’ve jumped off this cliff, after you’ve said, ‘hey, we’re going to go start this new thing,’ is, ‘Oh, I don’t have a lot of the parts. I need new people to help me with this. And I don’t know what order to assemble this plane in.'”
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Hoffman’s why was to “try to help humanity evolve,” and “make a huge difference” which he goes about achieving by facilitating connections.
“(I) think in terms of networks, think in terms of how people are connected, how we find each other, how we navigate life together,”
Hoffman noted that launching a start-up was a huge learning curve. ‘I’ve never learned so much, except for maybe between the ages of two and three,'” he told CNBC. “It’s because at the end of every week, there were things that I wish I knew at the beginning of the week.”
Linkedin went public in 2011, with shares surging on its first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange and was sold to Microsoft for Billions.
His mission to forge connections was also an influencer in Hoffman’s decision to invest in Facebook and AirBnb.
“What was clear was that Facebook had an awesome product market fit,” he said. “When they turned on a college campus, within six weeks 80 percent of the students in the campus were using it more than six times a day.”
He added that he knew “within two minutes of their pitch” that he wanted to invest in AirBnb.
“We’re here in an Airbnb and it’s part of how you hope to see the world transform, which is more local and cultural connections as people travel around the world,” he said.
Hoffman has three key areas that he looks for in a start-up pitch, he revealed.
The 3 things Reid Hoffman looks for before he invests is
- a great scale mission,
- an interesting application of a technology or product or service, and
- a world-class entrepreneur.
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Ivan
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