500 Inspirational Reid Hoffman Quotes On Success (2023)
1. âAll human beings are entrepreneurs.â
2. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman
3. âTeams win when their individual members trust each other enough to prioritize team success over individual glory; paradoxically, winning as a team is the best way for the team members to achieve individual success.â
4. âThe will to create is encoded in human DNA.â Reid Hoffman
5. âThese stewards of the company way are the intellectual and emotional foundation of the organization.â
6. âThe shift to multithreading usually occurs during the City stage of blitzscaling. Once the company has more than a thousand employees, the organization is large enough to support the creation of multiple divisions or business units.â
7. You remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesn't get found. It emerges.
8. âAll human beings are entrepreneurs.â Reid Hoffman
9. âMost of the valuable companies weâre focusing on in this book have gross margins of over 60, 70, or even 80 percent.â
10. âWhatever metric(s) you select, that information must be easy to access and provide clear context.â
11. âSo usually you have to have product distribution as more fundamental than what the actual product is.â
12. âTheodore Rooseveltâs famous dictum, âFar and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.â
13. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team. â Reid Hoffman (Click to Tweet!)
14. âWhich plan offers the most learning potential?â
15. âIf you spend thirty minutes researching a person in your extended network (LinkedIn is a great place to start), and tailor your request for an introduction to something youâve learned, your request will stand out.â
16. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too lateâ â Reid Hoffman
17. âYour network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and thatâs really powerful.â â Reid Hoffman
18. âRemember: If you donât find risk, risk will find you.â â Reid Hoffman
19. âThe person passionate about what he or she is doing will outwork and outlast the guy motivated solely focused on making money.â â Reid Hoffman
20. âBlitzscaling drives âlightningâ growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency, even in an environment of uncertainty. Itâs a set of specific strategies and tactics that allowed Airbnb to beat the Samwer brothers at their own game.â
21. âinvolve yourself in organizations that try to systemically improve society at a massive scale.â
22. âFounder Brian Chesky describes this strategy succinctly: âDo everything by hand until itâs too painful, then automate it.â
23. âTheĂ entrepreneurialĂ journey starts withĂ jumping off a cliffĂ and assembling an airplane on the way down.â
24. Entrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.
25. âSociety flourishes when people think entrepreneurially.â Reid Hoffman
26. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â
27. âblitzscaling is prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty.â
28. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team.â
29. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship.â
30. âIf you arenât embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late.â â Reid Hoffman. Please read a Wisdom Story about this quote.
31. âWhile the hypergrowth of blitzscaling is often synonymous with scrappy start-ups, blitzscaling can take place within larger, established organizations as well.â
32. âManagers are frontline leaders who worry about day-to-day tactics: they create, implement, and execute detailed plans that allow the organization to either do new things or do existing things more efficiently.â
33. âWhen youâre doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.â â Reid Hoffman
34. âIf youâre in permanent beta in your career, twenty years of experience actually is twenty years of experience because each year will be marked by new, enriching challenges and opportunities. â
35. âIn the words of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, âIf we are to preserve culture, we must continue to create it.â
36. âTheodore Rooseveltâs famous dictum, âFar and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.'â â Reid Hoffman
37. âIf you are not receiving or making at least one introduction a month, you are probably not fully engaging your extended professional network.ââ Reid Hoffman
38. âThe most entrepreneurial employees want to establish âpersonal brandsâ that stand apart from their employersâ. Itâs a rational, necessary response to the end of lifetime employment.â
39. âWhen anecdotal user feedback and data contradict each other, listen to the data.â
40. âBefore dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for youâas entrepreneurs do.â
41. âDisruption on its own is neither good nor bad, but it always involves change.â
42. âThe best ideas make you want to say âyesâ and ânoâ in the same breath.â â Reid Hoffman
43. âThe key is to combine new technologies with effective distribution to potential customers, a scalable and high-margin revenue model, and an approach that allows you to serve those customers given your probable resource constraints.â
44. âWhat great founders do is seek the networks that will be essential to their task⌠Usually itâs best to have two or three people on a team rather than a solo founder.â â Reid Hoffman
45. âWhen a market is up for grabs, the risk isnât inefficiencyâthe risk is playing it too safe. If you win, efficiency isnât that important; if you lose, efficiency is completely irrelevant.â
46. âWatch out for what Eric Ries dubbed âvanity metricsâânumbers that present a rosy picture of the business but donât actually reflect its key drivers of growth. Note that one companyâs vanity metric might be anotherâs key driver.â
47. âIn Real Estate The Wisdom Says âLocation, Location, Location.â In Consumer Internet, Think âDistribution, Distribution, Distribution.â
48. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to beâ â Reid Hoffman
49. âIronically, in a changing world, playing it safe is one of the riskiest things you can do.â Reid Hoffman
50. âFounderâ is a state of mind, not a job description, and if done right, even CEOs who join after day 1 can become founders.â â Reid Hoffman
51. âGood ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.â
52. âWinning careers, like winning start-ups, are in permanent beta: always a work in progress.â
53. âyou usually need more money to blitzscale than to fastscale, because you have to keep enough capital in reserve to recover from the many mistakes youâre likely to make along the way.â
54. âA good career plan accounts for the interplay of the three gearsâyour assets, your aspirations, and the market realities.â
55. âAt that point, even the most inveterate pirates will have to trade in their Jolly Roger for the flag of a legitimate, disciplined navy. If they donât, their organizations will devolve into chaos.â
56. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
57. âA team in the business world will tend to perform at the level of the worst individual team memberâ
58. âEvery Internet Entrepreneur Should Answer These Questions: How Do We Get To One Million Users? Then How Do We Get To 10 Million Users? Then How. Will You. Get Deep Engagement By. Your Users.â
59. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
60. âInnovation comes from long-term thinking and iterative execution.â
61. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â â Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
62. âThe question is: how you cross uneven ground, how you assemble networks around you.â
63. âThe key is to combine new technologies with effective distribution to potential customers, a scalable and high-margin revenue model, and an approach that allows you to serve those customers given your probable resource constraintsâ
64. âA growth team also helps by making growth a number one priority rather than a second- or third-class citizenâ
65. âThe billion-dollar tech startup was once the stuff of myth but now they seem to be everywhere.â Reid Hoffman
66. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â â Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
67. âPermanent beta is about the power of yet.â
68. âYou have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.â â Reid Hoffman
69. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn
70. âA startup, to a some degree, is a set of those challenges of, âIf you donât solve this, youâre dead.'â â Reid Hoffman
71. âMost often I am only interested in an idea if itâs going to get hundreds of millions of users. Thatâs the scale that I am always trying to play to.â â Reid Hoffman
72. âProduct/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.â
73. âWe donât celebrate failure in Silicon Valley. We celebrate learning.â Reid Hoffman
74. All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.
75. âSociety flourishes when people think entrepreneurially.â â Reid Hoffman
76. âA key element of leveraging network effects is the aggressive pursuit of network growth and adoption.â
77. âIronically, in a changing world, playing it safe is one of the riskiest things you can do.â â Reid Hoffman
78. âThe problem is that, by definition, business model innovation involves trying something that is new, and thus unproven!â
79. âWhat you say 'no' to is more important than what you say 'yes' to.â
80. âIn this sense, a business is far more like a sports team than a family.â
81. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â â Reid Hoffman
82. âHaving a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.â
83. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman
84. âThrowing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, youâre vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B.â â Reid Hoffman
85. âBefore dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you â as entrepreneurs do.â â Reid Hoffman
86. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team. â Reid Hoffman (Click to Tweet!
87. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product youâve launched too late.â â Reid Hoffman
88. âAn Entrepreneur Is Someone Who Jumps Off A Cliff And Builds A Plane On The Way Downâ
89. âProduct/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.â â Reid Hoffman
90. âEmployee networks are extremely valuable to companies as a source of information.â
91. âRemember, starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.â
92. âgrowth doesnât create value in and of itself; for that, it has to be paired with a working business model.â
93. âPay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.â Reid Hoffman
94. âIt is impossible to dissociate an individual from the environment of which he is a part. No story of achievement should ever be removed from its broader social context.â
95. âIf the gross margins of this new opportunity are low, the market size has to be even bigger to make it a big opportunity. You have to know that the ultimate size of the prize is worth it.â
96. âWhat great founders do is seek the networks that will be essential to their problem and their task.â
97. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â
98. âThink of a Foundational tour as a form of marriageâa long-term relationship that both parties anticipate will be permanent, in which both parties assume a moral obligation to try hard to make it work before ending the relationship.â
99. âOften itâs when you come in contact with challenges other people find hard but you find easy that you know youâre in possession of a valuable soft asset.â â Reid Hoffman
100. âa companyâs business model describes how it generates financial returns by producing, selling, and supporting its products.â
101. âIf your playbook is the same as your competitorâs, you are in trouble, because chances are they are just going to run your playbook with a lot more resources!â
102. âThe challenge when you think about product distribution is: how are you competing for potential customers or potential members timeâ
103. âHelp the people in your network and let them help you.â Reid Hoffman
104. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â â Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
105. âIdeally, the market itself is also growing quickly, which can make a smaller market attractive and a large market irresistible.â
106. âMake sure a certain percentage of the people that youâre hiring are generalists so that you can be, kind of reconfigured in the workforce pretty easily.â â Reid Hoffman
107. âSilicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.â
108. âItâs actually pretty easy to be contrarian. Itâs hard to be contrarian and right.â
109. âI donât normally think of like most successful moments, because like most entrepreneurs, I tend to think that however how high of a mountain Iâve climbed, Iâm always looking at the next mountain to climb.â â Reid Hoffman
110. âWhen the naysayers are loud, turn up the music.â
111. âA product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.â â Reid Hoffman
112. âBlitzscaling is a strategy and set of techniques for driving and managing extremely rapid growth that prioritize speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty.â
113. âWhat you say ânoâ to is more important than what you say âyesâ to.ââ Reid Hoffman
114. âYou turn the flywheel once and it keeps spinning on its own.â
115. âStart a personal blog and begin developing a public reputation and public portfolio of work thatâs not tied to your employer.â â Reid Hoffman
116. âmore on this in chapters 7 and 8.) Getting Value from Entrepreneurial Talent We three authors come from a business environment where the employment allianceâ
117. âPeople who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who donât.â
118. âthe only thing thatâs foreseeable about blitzscaling is that you will at some point encounter the unforeseeable.â
119. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship.â â Reid Hoffman
120. âWhen you have an idea, a classic entrepreneurial impulse is to hold the idea close to you and not tell people and thatâs almost always a mistake.â â Reid Hoffman
121. âIf you tune it so that you have zero chance of failure, you usually also have zero chance of success. The key is to look at ways for when you get to your failure checkpoint, you know to stop.â -Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn
122. âA business that isnât investing in tomorrowâs opportunities and technologies â well, thatâs a company already in the process of dying.â Reid Hoffman
123. âOften itâs when you come in contact with challenges other people find hard but you find easy that you know youâre in possession of a valuable soft asset.â
124. âPay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.â â Reid Hoffman
125. âWhat makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.â Reid Hoffman
126. âInstead, you need to learn as you go, solving more and more complex problems. And with luck, learning the answers to your questions just in time.â
127. âTake on the additional risk and discomfort of blitzscaling your company. Or accept what might be the even greater risk of losing if your competition blitzscales before you do.â
128. âYou need to think and act like youâre running a start-up: your career.â â Reid Hoffman
129. âThe value of being connected and transparent is so high that the roadbumps of privacy issues are much lower in actual experience than peopleâs fears.â â Reid Hoffman
130. âKalanick, in other words, was doing what felt good to him rather than what the organization needed.â
131. âWhat makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.â â Reid Hoffman
132. âItâs nice to be happy. But the meaning of life is meaning â whatâs the impact youâre having on the world. Suffering to accomplish that is a perfectly fine thing.â
133. âSuccessâŚis no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.â â Reid Hoffman
134. âPeople who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who donât.â â Reid Hoffman
135. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â - Reid Hoffman
136. âEconomic tough times are great times to be investing in the future.â
137. âDonât try a second channel until you have your main flywheel working. Most successful companies dominate one channel.â
138. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â â LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman
139. âBe persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible.â â Reid Hoffman
140. âAs Aaron Levie, the founder of the online file storage company Box noted in a tweet in 2014, âSizing the market for a disruptor based on an incumbentâs market is like sizing a car industry off how many horses there were in 1910.â
141. âTake intelligent and bold risks to accomplish something great. Build a network of alliances to help you with intelligence, resources, and collective action. Pivot to a breakout opportunity.â
142. âWhat got you here wonât get you there.â
143. âBefore dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you â as entrepreneurs do.â
144. âThe other main challenge of operational scalability comes from the strain of scaling up the nonhuman infrastructure of the business. It doesnât matter how much demand you generate if your infrastructure canât handle it.â
145. âIf you arenât embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late.â
146. âA business without loyalty is a business without long-term thinking. A business without long-term thinking is a business thatâs unable to invest in the future.â â Reid Hoffman
147. âPay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.â
148. âOpportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. Theyâre attached to people. If youâre looking for an opportunity, youâre really looking for a person.â â Reid Hoffman
149. âStockpiling facts wonât get you anywhere. What will get you somewhere is being able to access the information you need, when you need it.â
150. âWhen your organization is growing 300 percent per year, you might have to promote people before theyâre ready and then swap them out if they sink rather than swim.â
151. âAs a child, I wondered often, âWhy are we? What is the meaning of life?â These questions made me realize that life is what has meaningânot just individual lives, but all of our lives.â
152. âDuring the early stages of blitzscalingâFamily and Tribeâitâs easier to take risks because you donât have much to lose.â
153. âThe most entrepreneurial employees want to establish âpersonal brandsâ that stand apart from their employersâ. Itâs a rational, necessary response to the end of lifetime employment.â â Reid Hoffman
154. âMany blitzscalers, such as Amazon or the Chinese hardware makers Huawei and Xiaomi, deliberately price their products to maximize market share rather than gross margins. As Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, âYour margin is my opportunityâ
155. âFor life in permanent beta, the trick is to never stop starting. The start-up is you.â
156. âAs weâve already seen, most great ideas look dumb at first. Being contrarian doesnât mean that dumb people disagree with you; it means that smart people disagree with you!â
157. âThere are opportunities that you get during crises times. Crises times are a great time to start a business.â Reid Hoffman
158. âRelationships help you find opportunities.â Reid Hoffman
159. âYou have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.â Reid Hoffman
160. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â â Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
161. âItâs very conventional to say that youâre a contrarian these days.â
162. âFreedomâs just another word for nothing left to lose.â
163. âWhen evaluating market size, itâs also critical to try to account for how lower costs and product improvements can expand markets by appealing to new customers, in addition to seizing market share from existing players.â
164. âA networker likes to meet people. I donât. I like accomplishing things in the world. You meet people when you want to accomplish something.â
165. âIf youâre not growing, youâre contracting.â Reid Hoffman
166. âThe only way to thrive in this fast-changing world is to accept the inevitability of change.â
167. âSocial networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.â
168. âWhatever the situation, actions, not plans, generate lessons that help you test your hypotheses against reality.â â Reid Hoffman
169. âIn public market investing, as in many things, you achieve big success when youâre both contrarian and right.â
170. âHard work isnât enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. Itâs actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness.â â Reid Hoffman
171. âAll humans are entrepreneurs, not because they should start companies, but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship.â - Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
172. âAll humans are entrepreneurs, not because they should start companies, but because the will to create is encoded in human DNAâ â Reid Hoffman
173. âBy 2030 over 2 billion jobs will disappear.â
174. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â Reid Hoffman
175. âtechnological innovation alone doesnât make for a thriving company.â
176. What will get you somewhere is being able to access the information you need, when you need it.
177. âAn entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff, and builds a plane on his way down.â â Reid Hoffman
178. âThe person passionate about what he or she is doing will outwork and outlast the guy motivated solely by making money.â â Reid Hoffman. Please read a Wisdom Story about this quote.
179. âThe underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform.â
180. âthe cold and unromantic fact is that a good product with great distribution will almost always beat a great product with poor distribution.â
181. âOpportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. Theyâre attached to people. If youâre looking for an opportunity, youâre really looking for a person.â
182. âThe team you build is the company you build.â
183. âNot only CAN anyone be an entrepreneur, but they MUST be.â
184. âOne thing I learned in '97, when I thought the right time to found a company was during a swing-up, is that it's much better to start during an economic downturn. Partnerships are easier; hiring is easier; and the competition starts later.â
185. âWhether you want to learn a new skill or simply be better at the job you were hired to do, itâs now your job to train and invest in yourself.â â Reid Hoffman
186. âhis personal website, Casnocha.com.â
187. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â
188. âIf you can get better at your job, you should be an active member of LinkedIn, because LinkedIn should be connecting you to the information, insights and people to be more effective.â
189. âNo business can grow forever, simply because no market is infinite. You blitzscale when your market is big or growing fastâ
190. âOne of the most underrated and underappreciated proven patterns is the news feed. Facebookâs powerful network effects allow the site to attract its users, but its innovation of the news feed has made it a world-class business.â
191. âIf I ever hear a founder talk about oh this is how I have a balanced life so on and so forthâ-âtheyâre not committed to winning.â â Reid Hoffman
192. âThird, blitzscaling opens up access to capital, because investors generally prefer to back market leaders.â
193. âIn software, speed to market, speed to learning is really key. In hardware, if you screw it up, youâre dead. So accuracy really matters.â
194. âGenerally, you should start adding threads when itâs strategically necessary, and with a realistic assessment of the negative impact that multithreading will have on organizational focus, resource efficiency, and so on.â
195. âMercenaries go for the sprint; missionaries go for the marathonâŚ.â
196. âYou jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.â
197. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â â Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
198. âFor example, I was one of the first start-up leaders in Silicon Valley to borrow the âchief of staffâ concept from the realm of politics and established corporations.â
199. âWhat makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.â
200. âData is the lifeblood of decision making for any company, but it is particularly fundamental if it informs the design of your product, or if acquisition marketing is your key distribution strategy.â
201. âWe believe that when the right talent meets the right opportunity in a company with the right philosophy, amazing transformation can happen.â
202. âIn a sentence, as you meet your friends and new people, shift from asking yourself the very natural question of âWhatâs in it for me?â and ask instead, âWhatâs in it for us?â All follows from that.â
203. âSeeing what someoneâs reading is like seeing the first derivative of their thinking.â
204. âBlitzscaling is unlikely to prove successful if another company has already achieved first-scaler advantage.â
205. âIf you don't start out aiming for the big game, you almost never can get there.â
206. âNew companies rarely have the reach or resources to simply pour money into advertising campaigns. Instead, they have to find creative ways to tap into existing networks to distribute their products.â
207. âI've often said that starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way downâ
208. âBlitzscaling is prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty.â â Reid Hoffman
209. âWe donât celebrate failure in Silicon Valley. We celebrate learning.â â Reid Hoffman
210. âA business that isnât investing in tomorrowâs opportunities and technologies â well, thatâs a company already in the process of dying.â â Reid Hoffman
211. âGreat opportunities almost never fit your schedule.â â Reid Hoffman
212. âWhat happens during recessions, is you have less windfalls just helping you cover mistakes. You have to be more careful about not making mistakes.â â Reid Hoffman
213. âIf you donât start out aiming for the big game, you almost never can get there.â
214. âFigure out how to get into the networks because they are what amplifies your learnings, give you access to opportunity, information and Intelligence to know what to do.â
215. âIf you tune it so that you have zero chance of failure, you usually also have zero chance of success. The key is to look at ways for when you get to your failure checkpoint, you know to stop.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
216. âThe person passionate about what he or she is doing will outwork and outlast the guy motivated solely by making money.â
217. âItâs great to be one to three years too early. Ten years too early is terrible.â
218. âWe donât know of a single start-up that succeeded without starting out as single-threaded. That focus is the key to beating larger competitors in the early stages of a companyâs existence.â
219. âThe value of being connected and transparent is so high that the roadbumps of privacy issues are much lower in actual experience than peopleâs fears.â
220. âPart of the entrepreneurial thing is there are lots of ways to die.â
221. âEvery internet entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to 1 million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users.â Reid Hoffman
222. âGet busy livinâ, or get busy dyinâ. If youâre not growing, youâre contracting. If youâre not moving forward, youâre moving backward.â
223. âGet busy livinâ, or get busy dyinâ. If youâre not growing, youâre contracting. If youâre not moving forward, youâre moving backward.ââ Reid Hoffman
224. âThey scribbled observations in notebooks.â
225. âBroadly, the meaning of life comes from how we interact with each other. The internet can reconfigure space so that the right people are always next to each other.â
226. âWhen youâre doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.â
227. The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.
228. âTo change the world, startup entrepreneurs need to capitalize on the relatively small number of transformative opportunities they encounter early on in their journeys. This is equally true when it comes to your career.â
229. âBusiness model innovation is how start-ups are able to outcompete established competitors who typically hold a host of advantages over any upstarts.â
230. âIf youâre not growing, youâre contracting.â â Reid Hoffman
231. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
232. âEasy success had transformed the American auto companies into risk-averse, nonmeritocratic, bloated bureaucracies.â
233. âBrian Chesky of Airbnb defines culture in a simple and concise way: âa shared way of doing things.â
234. âHelp the people in your network and let them help you.â â Reid Hoffman
235. âItâs better to be in front of a big change than to be behind it.â â Reid Hoffman
236. âUnfortunately, for far too many, focused learning ends at college graduation. They read about stocks and bonds instead of reading books that improve their mind.â
237. âEntrepreneurial employees possess what eBay CEO John Donahoe calls the founder mind-set. As he put it to us, âPeople with the founder mind-set drive change, motivate people, and just get stuff done.â
238. âThis emphasis makes sense in an environment where companies need to seek product/market fit for new and rapidly changing products and markets.â
239. âHard work isnât enough, and more work is never the real answer.â Reid Hoffman
240. âFor many people â20 years of experienceâ is really one year of experience repeated 20 times.â
241. âSilicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.â â Reid Hoffman
242. âThird prize is youâre fired,â
243. âFinished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.â
244. âUntil you hear âno,â you havenât been turned down. Keeping your options open is frequently more of a risk than committing to a plan of action.â
245. âBe persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible.â
246. âVirality almost always requires a product that is either free or freemiumâ
247. âYou have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.â
248. âWhen Selina Tobaccowala joined SurveyMonkey in 2009, she had to build up the companyâs data infrastructure quickly.â
249. âwhile we knew meetings were important, we didnât designate a note taker to capture key points and action items, a common and basic practice in Silicon Valley.â
250. âA leaderâs job is not to put greatness into people, but rather to recognize that it already exists, and to create the environment where that greatness can emerge and grow.â
251. âWhen the naysayers are loud, turn up the music.â â Reid Hoffman
252. âFor life in permanent beta, the trick is to never stop starting.â â Reid Hoffman
253. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
254. âTo put WeChat in an American context, itâs as if one single service combined the functions of Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Venmo, Grubhub, Amazon, Uber, Apple Pay, Gmail, and even Slack into a single megaservice.â
255. âWhen you have an idea, a classic entrepreneurial impulse is to hold the idea close to you and not tell people and thatâs almost always a mistake.â
256. âItâs nice to be happy. But the meaning of life is meaning â whatâs the impact youâre having on the world. Suffering to accomplish that is a perfectly fine thing.â â Reid Hoffman
257. âUntil you hear âNo,â you havenât been turned down.â
258. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team. â Reid Hoffman
259. âEverything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.â â Reid Hoffman
260. âThe reality is: a founder is someone who deals with a ton of different headaches and no one is universally super powered.â
261. âA networker likes to meet people. I donât. I like accomplishing things in the world. You meet people when you want to accomplish something.â Reid Hoffman
262. âFor many people âtwenty years of experienceâ is really one year of experience repeated twenty times.â â Reid Hoffman. Please read a Wisdom Story about this quote.
263. âIt is like the feeling you have when someone says your first name all the time in conversation and you know heâs been reading Carnegie.â
264. âA big market has both a large number of potential customers and a variety of efficient channels for reaching those customers.â
265. âThereâs an ability to learn & adapt, an ability to constantly have a vision thatâs driving you, but to be taking input from all sources.â
266. âUntil you hear âNo,â you havenât been turned down.â â Reid Hoffman
267. âIf you donât start out aiming for the big game, you almost never can get there.â â Reid Hoffman (This is one of the best Reid Hoffman quotes for entrepreneurs. Set high goals!)
268. âIf you are not receiving or making at least one introduction a month, you are probably not fully engaging your extended professional network.â
269. âA major mistake made by many start-ups around the world is focusing on the technology, the software, the product, and the design, but neglecting to ever figure out the business.â
270. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.ââ Reid Hoffman, co-founder LinkedIn
271. âSociety flourishes when people think entrepreneurially.â
272. âSuccess is no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.â
273. âUltimately, the alignment of interests, values, and aspirations increases the odds of a long-term strong alliance between a company and its talent.â â Reid Hoffman
274. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy is, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman (Entrepreneur)
275. âThe opportunity to build an enduring product far outweighs the cost of alienating a few users along the way. And the sooner you internalize that trade-off, the faster youâll move along the path to scale.â â Reid Hoffman
276. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a teamâ - Reid Hoffman
277. âThe fabric of society, of a network of relations, is key to being successful.â
278. âBrilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.â
279. âThe metaphor that I frequently use for entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane plane on the way down.â
280. âWe canât recall a single instance of a company that grew to a massive scale by leveraging the virality of a paid product.â
281. âA business without loyalty is a business without long-term thinking. A business without long-term thinking is a business thatâs unable to invest in the future.â
282. âThe value of being connected and transparent is so high that the roadbumps of privacy issues are much lower in actual experience than people's fears.â
283. âYou remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesnât get found. It emerges.â Reid Hoffman
284. âOne of the phrases I frequently look for is infinite learning curve.Because each entrepreneurial pattern is to some degree unique and new.â
285. âFar and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.â
286. âOne of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it's making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it's the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know you're dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you.â
287. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
288. âif you need to choose between getting to market quickly with an imperfect product or getting to market slowly with a âperfectâ product, choose the imperfect product nearly every time.â
289. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â Reid Hoffman
290. âwhile geography can present challenges to blitzscaling, they become much more solvable if youâre aware of them.â
291. âThere are opportunities that you get during crises times. Crises times are a great time to start a business.â â Reid Hoffman
292. âA leaderâs job is not to put greatness into people, but rather to recognize that it already exists, and to create the environment where that greatness can emerge and grow.â â Reid Hoffman
293. âThe first step to scale is to renounce your desire to scale.â
294. âI actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.â
295. âIronically, in a changing world, playing it safe is one of the riskiest things you can do.â
296. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a teamâ â Reid Hoffman
297. âEveryone Is Now An Entrepreneur, Whether They Recognise It Or Not.â
298. âWhat can we do to surprise you?â or âWhat would it take for me to design something that you would literally tell every single person youâve ever encountered?â
299. âPeople should be part of building the future rather than feeling like the future is beingâ
300. âIf You Are Not Embarrassed By Your First Product, Then YouâVe Launched Too Late.â
301. âGreat opportunities almost never fit your schedule.â
302. âPeople who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who donât.â Reid Hoffman
303. âItâs better to be the best connected than the most connected.â
304. âI donât normally think of my most successful moments, because like most entrepreneurs, I tend to think that however high of a mountain Iâve climbed, Iâm always looking at the next mountain to climb.â
305. âOne lunch is worth dozens of emails.â
306. âI am most heartened when Iâm talking to a team when theyâre reasoning to each other.â
307. âIn the venture capital industry, just picking winners is a losing strategy. The goal is to pick blockbusters, companies that can scale from a team of founders in a garage to a multi-billion dollar IPO in less than a decade.â Reid Hoffman
308. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â â Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist
309. âAt a higher level of abstraction, successful scale-ups place more emphasis on adaptation than optimizationâ
310. âA great leaderâs drumbeat doesnât force people to follow them; it inspires them to want to move in the same direction.â
311. âAn inflection point at your company or industry usually will require you to either change your skills or change your environment. In other words, it will often require you to pivot.â
312. âSeeing what someoneâs reading is like seeing the first derivative of their thinking.â â Reid Hoffman
313. âUnfortunately, for far too many, focused learning ends at college graduation. They read about stocks and bonds instead of reading books that improve their mind.â â Reid Hoffman
314. âGreat companies and great businesses often seem to be bad ideas when they first appear because business model innovationsâby their very definitionâcanât point to a proven business model to demonstrate why theyâll work.â
315. âFinished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.â
316. âIdeally, most of the top executives of a company should be on Foundational tours.â
317. âBefore dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.â
318. âOne of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks itâs making cold calls to strangers. Actually, itâs the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know youâre dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you.â
319. âEntrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.â
320. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â â Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
321. âIf youâre not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â
322. âEverything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.â - Reid Hoffman
323. âIf you run out of market headroom, all that speed and momentum will come to a crashing halt as you slam into your marketâs ceiling.â
324. âI think, as a rule of thumb, if youâre a good entrepreneur you can assume that your instincts are right 95 percent of the time and your ideas might be right 25 percent of the time.â
325. When you're doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.
326. âFinished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.â â Reid Hoffman
327. âWeak cultures are diffuse; people act differently, and donât understand each other, and it becomes political.â
328. âTrust and mutual value creation helps both employer and employee compete in the marketplace.â
329. âYour teams need the abilityâand the manpowerâto relentlessly pursue a specific objective; asking a team to split its time between two different business lines is likely to result in the failure of both.â
330. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â âReid Hoffman, LinkedIn Co-Founder, and Venture Capitalist
331. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team. -- Reid Hoffman
332. âStart a personal blog and begin developing a public reputation and public portfolio of work thatâs not tied to your employer.â
333. âThe way you deal with bullies is you change their economic equation. Make it more expensive for them to hassle you.â â Reid Hoffman
334. âThe real secret of Silicon Valley is that itâs really all about the people.â
335. âThe team you build is the company you buildâ
336. âEstablish an identity independent of your employer, city, and industry.â â Reid Hoffman
337. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â â Reid Hoffman
338. âOne of the tests that I frequently use in an interaction is I push on the idea and what Iâm looking for is both flexibility & persistence.â
339. âOne of the challenges you face as you build up your data capabilities is that your strategy can disappear behind the numbers. The numbers might not measure the real health of the business or reveal the real major threats you face.â
340. âDonât ask people, âWhat do you think of my idea?â Ask them, âWhatâs wrong with my idea?â
341. Whatever the situation, actions, not plans, generate lessons that help you test your hypotheses against reality.
342. âSociety flourishes when people think entrepreneurially.â â Reid Hoffman
343. âif the fires at your start-up are burning money but not touching the customer, and if youâre able to afford the waste, you might be able to literally buy time and ignore them.â
344. âProduct/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.â â Reid Hoffman
345. Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.
346. âYour network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and thatâs really powerful.â
347. âIn the Family stage, you should hire only generalists.â
348. âGood ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.â â Reid Hoffman
349. âEmbracing chaos, on the other hand, means accepting that uncertainty exists and therefore taking steps to manage it.â
350. âTechnology innovation is the most common trigger for launching a new market or upending an existing one.â
351. âA lot of smart people are prone to over-analysis and tend to become paralyzed by indecisionâ
352. âFounder Brian Chesky describes this strategy succinctly: âDo everything by hand until itâs too painful, then automateâ
353. âFirst mover Advantage doesnât go to the company that starts up, it goes to the company that scales up.â
354. âIn contrast, a growth teamâs engineers can move far faster because building scalable and extensible testing infrastructure is a core part of their jobs.â
355. âitâs not necessarily any easier to sell a low-margin product than a high-margin product.â
356. âEverything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.â Reid Hoffman
357. âMost often I am only interested in an idea if itâs going to get hundreds of millions of users. Thatâs the scale that I am always trying to play to.â Reid Hoffman
358. âInvolve yourself in organizations that try to systemically improve society at a massive scale.â â Reid Hoffman
359. âYou remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesnât get found. It emerges.â â Reid Hoffman
360. âFirst mover Advantage doesnât go to the company that starts up, it goes to the company that scales up.â â Reid Hoffman
361. âNot only can anyone be an entrepreneur, but they must be.â â Reid Hoffman
362. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
363. âThe most basic growth factor to consider for your business model is market size.â
364. âThe first technique of blitzscaling is to design an innovative business model that can truly grow.â
365. âFor life in permanent beta, the trick is to never stop starting.â
366. âIn the venture capital industry, just picking winners is a losing strategy. The goal is to pick blockbusters, companies that can scale from a team of founders in a garage to a multi-billion dollar IPO in less than a decade.â â Reid Hoffman
367. âWhen the Naysayers Are Loud, Turn Up the Musicâ
368. âNo one cares who you are or are not dating on LinkedIn.â
369. âAn entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff, and builds a plane on his way down.â Reid Hoffman
370. âThe slide shows he created for my book The Start-up of You have been viewed nearly fifteen million times.â
371. âMy belief and goal is that every professional in the world should be on a service liked LinkedIn.â â Reid Hoffman
372. Whatâs yours?)
373. âI strongly believe that as a whole company, you canât get behind more than three to five metrics.â
374. âYour network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and thatâs really powerful.â Reid Hoffman
375. âSizing the market for a disruptor based on an incumbentâs market is like sizing a car industry off how many horses there were in 1910.â
376. âRather than delegate work youâre doing to others, can you hire people who amplify the work you do? The goal here isnât to free you up from your work so that you can do other things; itâs to make the things you do much more impactful.â
377. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â â Reid Hoffman (This is one of my favorite Reid Hoffman quotes and advice. Whatâs yours?)
378. âEntrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing theyâre doing as something thatâs going to be the whole world.â â Reid Hoffman
379. âThe only time that it makes sense to blitzscale is when (whether for offensive or defensive reasons) you have determined that speed into the market is the critical strategy to achieve massive outcomes.â
380. âThe key thing for all businesses, and especially of course technology businesses or businesses that employ technology as a key kind of strategic advantage, is you always have to be investing in the future.â â Reid Hoffman
381. âIf you want to find out how resourceful you can be, shrink your budget. Move your deadlines up. See how you cope. This may make you more resilient to actual hardships that inevitably arise.â
382. âIt's better to be the best connected than the most connected.â
383. âRelationships help you find opportunities.â
384. âYou remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesnât get found. It emerges.â
385. âNetwork effects generate a positive feedback loop that can allow the first product or service that taps into those effects to build an unassailable competitive advantage.â
386. âI like to generate fresh, innovative ways to play defense by asking my team, âIf we were trying to compete with ourselves, what we would do? What if we were a start-up? Google? Facebook? Microsoft?â
387. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship.â â Reid Hoffman
388. âSociety flourishes when people think entrepreneurally.â
389. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team.
390. âAn entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.ââ Reid Hoffman. Please read a Wisdom Story about this quote.
391. âitâs better to be in front of a big change than to be behind it.â
392. âEach year, I ask, âNow that I have this knowledge, these resources, what can I do?'â â Reid Hoffman
393. âLaser Careers. Main Thing Careers. Portfolio Careers.â
394. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â â Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn
395. Take action and believe in yourself. Dreams do come true.
396. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â
397. âOne of the classic Silicon Valley plays is to move from an app to a platform so that you can attract people to build on and to your platform (thereby leveraging the network effect of compatibilityâ
398. âGiving birth to something that could possibly change the lives of millions of people for possibly decades, hundreds of years, whatever the length of time the run is, is a great feeling.â
399. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
400. âHow you manage your own personal career is the exact way you manage a small business. Your brand matters.â â Reid Hoffman
401. âYou should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.â
402. âThe key issue when youâre looking at cost cutting is to always plan for the future.â â Reid Hoffman
403. âIf youâre not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â â Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
404. âThe person passionate about what he or she is doing will outwork and outlast the guy motivated solely focused on making money.â Reid Hoffman
405. âyour chief of staff should amplify your business impact: he or she should be a businessperson who can not only make certain decisions for you but also triage the important decisions that you have to make yourself.â
406. âHard work isnât enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. Itâs actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness.â
407. âI believe I am skilled at _ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_, I believe I find meaning in _ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_, I believe the market needs _ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_ďťż_.â
408. âIn crisis times, itâs actually not more difficult to motivate your staff, because everyone gets much more focused on how they control their own economic destiny.â Reid Hoffman
409. âA networker likes to meet people. I donât. I like accomplishing things in the world. You meet people when you want to accomplish something.â â Reid Hoffman
410. âGreat companies and great businesses often seem to be bad ideas when they first appear because business model innovationsâby their very definitionâcanât point to a proven business model to demonstrate why theyâll work.â â Reid Hoffman
411. âHaving a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.â â Reid Hoffman
412. âThe future is sooner and stranger than you think.â Reid Hoffman
413. âstarting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. If you run out of money for the fuel and parts you need to get airborne, no one will ever get to find out how efficiently you spent it along the way!â
414. âIf I ever hear a founder talk about oh this is how I have a balanced life so on and so forth â theyâre not committed to winning.â
415. âMany people think you get career stability by minimizing all risk. But ironically, in a changing world, thatâs one of the riskiest things you can do.â
416. âchange is the only constant,â
417. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product youâve launched too late.â Reid Hoffman
418. âChange is the only constant.â â Reid Hoffman
419. âAll humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.â â Reid Hoffman
420. âIn this sense, the world of tomorrow will be more like the Silicon Valley of today: constant change and chaos.â
421. âSuccessful blitzscaling is an exercise in serial problem solving.â
422. âA lot of smart people are prone to over-analysis and tend to become paralyzed by indecisionâ â Reid Hoffman
423. âOnly spend money to fix things that are on the critical path to reach the next phase of scale;â
424. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â â Reid Hoffman
425. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
426. âSilicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.â Reid Hoffman
427. âIf your company lacks meaningful official values, take the liberty of defining those values for your team.â
428. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.â
429. âEstablish an identity independent of your employer, city, and industry.â
430. âThrowing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, youâre vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B.â
431. â âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman
432. âThe second growth factor needed for a strong, scalable business is distribution.â
433. âan allyâs references can help expand your circle of collaborators more quickly, enabling you to tackle ambitious new projects like writing a book.â
434. âIf you want to build a strong network that will help you move ahead in your career, itâs vital to first take stock of the connections you already have.â â Reid Hoffman
435. ââKeeping your options openâ is frequently more of a risk than committing to a plan of action.â â Reid Hoffman
436. âFinished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.â â Reid Hoffman
437. âSometimes freedom from normal rules is what gives you a competitive advantage.â Reid Hoffman
438. âYouâve got to keep your personal learning curve ahead of the companyâs growth curve.â
439. âOnce the executive has earned the teamâs trust and credibility, consider promoting him or her.â
440. âSuccess...is no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.â
441. âDistribution Product Revenue model Operations Competition Whatâs next?â
442. âyou need to think and act like youâre running a start-up: your career.â
443. âHow you manage your own personal career is the exact way you manage a small business. Your brand matters.â Reid Hoffman
444. âNo matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if youâre playing a solo game, youâll always lose out to a team.â â Reid Hoffman
445. âIf you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youâve launched too late.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
446. âNovelist Jonathan Franzen gets it right when he says inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticityâ
447. âEach year, I ask, âNow that I have this knowledge, these resources, what can I do?'â
448. âItâs better to be the best connected than the most connected.â â Reid Hoffman
449. âSo usually you have to have product distribution as more fundamental than what the actual product is.â Reid Hoffman
450. âThe fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.â âReid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
451. âWhen Iâm raising money, this fundraising, Iâm thinking about the next fundraising. Iâm thinking how Iâm set up for it.â
452. âOpportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. Theyâre attached to people. If youâre looking for an opportunity, youâre really looking for a person.â
453. âWhether you want to learn a new skill or simply be better at the job you were hired to do, itâs now your job to train and invest in yourself.â
454. âInnovation comes from long-term thinking and iterative execution.â â Reid Hoffman
455. âYou gotta be both flexible and persistent.â
456. âIce melts into water; water boils into steam. As a start-up scales up from one phase to the next, it undergoes fundamental changes as well.â
457. âEverything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.â
458. âFor many people 'twenty years of experience' is really one year of experience repeated twenty times.â
459. âKeeping your options openâ is frequently more of a risk than committing to a plan of action.â
460. âAn entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.â â Reid Hoffman, American Internet entrepreneur.
461. âRemember: If you donât find risk, risk will find you.â
462. âWhen the quality of the questions drops, he knows, mid-pitch, that the real conversation is overâthe rest is noise.â
463. âAn entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.â
464. âIf you are not receiving or making at least one introduction a month, you are probably not fully engaging your extended professional network.â â Reid Hoffman
465. âData only exists within the framework of a vision youâre building to, a hypothesis of where youâre moving to.â
466. âIf something worthwhile will be riskier in five years than it is now, be more aggressive about taking it on now. As you age and build more assets, your risk tolerance shifts.â
467. âThere are only three ways to scale yourself: delegation, amplification, and just plain making yourself better.â
468. âOne of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing theyââŹâ˘re doing as something thatââŹâ˘s going to be the whole world.â
469. âThere is a scientific term for out-of-control growth in the human body: âcancer.â In this context, uncontrolled growth is clearly undesirable. The same is true for a business.â
470. âDonât have anything to do with closed-minded people. Being open-minded is much more important than being bright or smart.â
471. âWe donât celebrate failure in Silicon Valley. We celebrate learning.â
472. âAn entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.â
473. âThe real value creation comes when innovative technology enables innovative products and services with innovative business models.â
474. âTheodore Rooseveltâs famous dictum, âFar and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.'â
475. âold economyâ businesses often have low gross margins. Growing wheat is a low-margin business, as is selling goods in a store or serving food in a restaurant.â
476. âOne lunch is worth dozens of emails.â â Reid Hoffman
477. âThis is classic when you begin thinking about what is a great founder is, you navigate what is apparent paradoxes.â
478. âEvery internet entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to 1 million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users.â â Reid Hoffman
479. âOften itâs when you come in contact with challenges other people find hard but you find easy that you know youâre in possession of a valuable soft asset.3â
480. âSecond, you can leverage your lead to build long-term competitive advantages before other players are able to respond.â
481. âIf something worthwhile will be riskier in five years than it is now, be more aggressive about taking it on now. As you age and build more assets, your risk tolerance shifts.â
482. âGet busy livinâ, or get busy dyinâ. If youâre not growing, youâre contracting. If youâre not moving forward, youâre moving backward.â â Reid Hoffman
483. âFar and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.â5â
484. âAs you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is youâre fired. Get the picture?â
485. âMany people think you get career stability by minimizing all risk. But ironically, in a changing world, thatâs one of the riskiest things you can do.â
486. âFirst, you can take the market by surprise, bypassing heavily defended niches to exploit breakout opportunities.â
487. âStockpiling facts wonât get you anywhere. What will get you somewhere is being able to access the information you need, when you need it.â â Reid Hoffman
488. âYou gotta be both flexible and persistent.â Reid Hoffman
489. âUltimately, the alignment of interests, values, and aspirations increases the odds of a long-term strong alliance between a company and its talent.â Reid Hoffman
490. âBe persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible.â
491. âHelp the people in your network. And let them help you.â
492. âYou remake yourself as you grow and as the world changes. Your identity doesnât get found. It emerges.â
493. âThe same instincts that make us good students can make us lousy entrepreneurs.â â Reid Hoffman
494. âfor many people âtwenty years of experienceâ is really one year of experience repeated twenty times.â
495. âSo if you want to truly learn from your customers, you have to be willing to follow them wherever they lead you, and even let them hijack your product and use it in ways you hadnât intended.â
496. If you want to build a strong network that will help you move ahead in your career, it's vital to first take stock of the connections you already have.
497. âThere are no job descriptions for founders. If the role doesnât change, thereâs something wrong.â
498. âOne lunch is worth dozens of emails.â â Reid Hoffman
499. âProfessional loyalty now flows "horizontally" to and from your network rather than "vertically" to your boss, as Dan Pink has noted.â
500. âThrowing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, you're vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B.â
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See All1. âRarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. âHere, open it, itâs perfect. Youâll love it. â Opportunities â the good ones â are messy