Quotes by Reid Hoffman - Page 5

At Silicon Valley, I'm extremely sympathetic to the revolutionary response. I not only agree with it emotionally. I agree with it practically. And the only thing I disagree with is, I don't think Donald Trump is that. Trump is blow it up for no good reason at all. You want to actually do revolution with a target, with an idea, with building a new system.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Blow
Revolution
Thinking
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Because in our boom times, everything is growing, usually, you know, the kind of things that come to mind are Wild, Wild, West, or land grabs, you know, these sorts of things, in order to make something, you know, kind of to grow into the future and to get all the growth that you need to have. So you tend to hire a lot because you're running fast to the future.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Running
Land
Order
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The CEO's job is always about leadership. It's about leadership in a vision, in terms of where you're going, it's about making sure that you have the right organization and staff, and that you have kind of clearly communicated what some of the plays are and what some of the goals are in terms of the business and how do you organize together in order to make that happen.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Jobs
Order
Play
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One of the really key things to look at in terms of crafting strategy when you're in an economic crises is how do you maximize essentially your liquidity position? Your ability to both take kind of profits and revenues and business and then convert that into a stronger lead. And so those companies that can do that can actually, you know, get a march on their competitors.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Keys
Looks
Stronger
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I think I knew how frightened people were [when Donald Trump was elected], and I think I knew that people were worried about their future. I don't think I realized that they would be willing to risk kind of a 1920s Germany in order to blow it all up, not realizing that we've accomplished a lot as Americans, and we want to keep the good things and revolutionize the new things.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Blow
Order
Thinking
Copy Quote
I find that the interesting challenges, because there's obvious things where, you know, don't be unethical, don't be evil, you know, don't break the law, don't do immoral things, those are all straightforward and don't create ethical dilemmas. The thing that's interesting is when you actually have multiple interests at stake and you have to kind of navigate your way through it.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Evil
Law
Obvious Things
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In crisis times, it's actually not more difficult to motivate your staff, because everyone gets much more focused on how they control their own economic destiny. So, what you do is you have clear communication, which is always a good leadership technique, and you talk about how you can build something good and strong in the future, and how you can work together in order to do that.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Communication
Destiny
Strong
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Managing risk is a key variable, frankly, all aspects of life, business is just one of them, and one of the things that most people do in terms of managing risk, that's actually bad thinking, is they think they can manage risk to zero. Everything has some risk to it. You know, you drive your car down the street, a drunk driver may hit you. So what you're doing is you're actually trying to get to an acceptable level of risk.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Zero
Keys
People
Thinking
Copy Quote
The first set of questions to ask yourself when you're doing cost cutting is relatively straightforward, which is, you know, can you use the necessity of cost cutting as an opportunity to do pruning or trimming for projects that aren't being as successful? But, you know, frequently those are the easy ones. I mean, there's always some kind of social costs internal to the company, but that's the easy way of looking at the future.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Cutting
Mean
Successful
Copy Quote
Everyone, you know, during crises times, is much more focused on, okay, how do we get the boat completely seaworthy, sailing along well, and everything going well? And so as long as you're communicating how the general strategy of the company and how the work they can do to add to that and to make that more successful and the thing that they can contribute to that, that is generally very motivating for employees in crisis times.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Long
Sailing
Successful
Copy Quote
Now, in economic crises times, the kind of things you're looking at is it's generally harder to get capital, revenue growth may be more, revenue lines may be unstable or growth may be less easy to predict that you're going to get to. And so what you do is you take a certain conservative approach of when, as all entrepreneurs should do, you plan for both good luck and bad luck, you put extra time on, "Okay, if I have bad luck, what do I do about that?"
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
Extra Time
Good Luck
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There are two reasons [ business people are not publicly anti-Donald Trump ], one is well-intentioned, which is the classic kind of American notion. We want to be inclusive, we want to have our shareholders, our employees, our customers, whether they are Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian, to feel comfortable with how we're doing business. And so that tends to be apolitical. People say, "No, no, I just simply shouldn't get involved in politics."
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Green
People
Two
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Most of the ethical dilemmas that I have faced have all been in the category of, you know, I know something and what's my obligation to disclose it. So, for example, you see people make a mistake in the contract that you're making between the businesses and do you disclose it or do you reveal it? And generally speaking, the way that I solve these is I kind of go through a list of, you know, what's the most, what are the obligations and constituencies and in what order?
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Mistake
Order
People
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The other reason why people don't take a stand, which is very true in this election, is looking at [Donald] Trump and fearing reprisal, fearing reprisal from someone who is seeking the highest, most powerful role in the land, who has had a history of doing everything from attacks, threats and lawsuits and who has a complete kind of vengeful, narcissistic behavior, which makes people legitimately worried, almost like a schoolyard bully, that if I step up, am I going to be targeted, too?
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Land
People
Powerful
Copy Quote
Boom and bust cycles are very difficult for businesses because you're hiring a bunch because you're planning for the future. And if the future is going to be very big, you need to hire people, or suddenly you go to boom to bust, then all of a sudden, you're kind of battening down the hatches and trying to sail, you know, through the storm, it's a different thing. So part of it is making good decisions about, well, how long is a boom cycle going to be, you know, don't plan on it going forever.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Decision
Long
People
Copy Quote
The key thing for a CEO to keep their head in the game is recognize that there's turbulent times, plan for, you know, bad luck as well as good luck, keep people focused on what the key, you know, business wins are, and you know, provide the energy that people always need in order to, you know, to go into battle because, you know, work is hard and go into work and do that well. And provide a good leadership beacon for that. In other words, it's the same thing that makes good leadership in any other time.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Good Luck
Keys
Winning
Copy Quote
Times of economic crises can change what the competitive landscape looks like, because when, for example, you have boom times, capital is easy to come by, growth is easy, sometimes what you focus on is, you know, how to accelerate in the boom. During economic crises, the question is, the companies that come out of, you know, that are sailing through that with the best liquidity, both assets on the balance sheet, making money, ability to grow their businesses, get a disproportionate competitive advantage.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Focus
Growth
Sailing
Copy Quote
People generally worry about social networking more than they need to. In kind of consumer internet investing and on social and professional networks, I kind of look at time spending and time efficiency. You know, time saving sites. So on time spending sites, things where you play lots of games or that sort of thing, you might worry about a productivity loss if people are spending a lot of time doing that. So if there's a lot of kind of addictive gaming going on during work hours, that won't be as helpful to you.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Games
Loss
Play
Copy Quote
Probably the biggest mistake that I made personally is I knew early on that I wanted to go into start-ups and creating kind of software that could help change the lives of millions of people. And basically what I did is I kind of went, okay, well, I need a set of titles and I need a checklist of skills, and I ran through all that, and that wasn't a useless thing, but what I didn't realize, and, you know, and no one gave me the right advice for doing this, is that actually your network, in essentially, is your career.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Mistake
Skills
Useless Things
Copy Quote
When thinking about how to deploy kind of professional and social networking into your business, it's really not a question of if, it's a question of when. And the reason is, just think about the fact that those businesses that adopt new technologies to operate efficiently and use them to get a competitive edge are the businesses that in fact, you know, it becomes one more competitive advantage. Whether it's a fax machine or a mobile phone or a new way of doing financing or any of these things, you know, these are key things to do.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Technology
Phones
Thinking
Copy Quote
I think the right way to do this is just to step up and do it, so I actually think we'll see more of that over the next coming weeks, because I think they'll say, "We'd like to be good for business and quiet on politics, but this is too urgent, it is too much of a key crisis in who we are going to become as Americans. We can risk too much, and so we have to step forward." And I think you will see more and more people stepping forward, like Howard Schultz, Steve Case and other folks, in order to try to make a difference in this [Donald Trump] election.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Differences
Keys
Thinking
Copy Quote
My greatest influences are actually probably a set of different teachers. And these teachers, most prominently at my high school, but also a few others, helped kind of instill in me, thinking thoughts about how life is meaningful in terms of how we all kind of live in a network of people and how you interact with those people is part of what makes life essentially meaningful and then kind of concepts to think about, how do you add value to other people's lives? How do they add value to yours? And how do you kind of form a community together in the network?
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Teacher
Meaningful
School
Copy Quote
If you have to conduct layoffs, which is always a regrettable thing, there's kind of three things that are very important. One is to communicate well with your employees in order to help them understand why it is you're doing, and how. Second is to make sure that the employees who are part of the go forward, understand kind of what happened and are not like the ground doesn't keep moving. It's like, okay, we did that, we're moving forward, here we go. And then for the employees that you unfortunately have to let go, try to provide as much support for them as possible.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Letting Go
Moving
Order
Copy Quote
Well, well-run companies always have a focus on growth and the two lines, which includes profit. The key thing during, I think, tough times, is to make sure that you've covered the basis for when something, you know, essentially things taking longer, bad luck, adversity, other kinds of circumstances may occur. Make sure that you can monitor to win, it's potentially, you know, something is going to go wrong, monitor early enough, and then take appropriate action to essentially counteract that or shift your strategy or plan, even if in fact something is not working out as well as it is.
Reid Hoffman / Entrepreneur
Running
Adversity
Winning
Copy Quote

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Reid Hoffman Quotes - Page 5

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