Reid G. Hoffman is an America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

n entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

 and venture capitalist. Hoffman is best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

, a social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

 used primarily for business connections and job searching.

Early education and career

Hoffman was born in Stanford

Stanford, California

Stanford is a census-designated place in Santa Clara County, California, United States and is the home of Stanford University. The population was 13,809 at the 2010 census....

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, and grew up in Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. He attended high school at The Putney School

The Putney School

The Putney School is an independent high school in Putney, Vermont. It was founded in 1935 by Carmelita Hinton. It is a co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school, with a day-student component, located outside of Brattleboro, Vermont. Emily Jones is the director...

. He graduated from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1990 (where he won both a Marshall Scholarship

Marshall Scholarship

The Marshall Scholarship, a postgraduate scholarships available to Americans, was created by the Parliament of the United Kingdom when the Marshall Aid Commemoration Act was passed in 1953. The scholarships serve as a living gift to the United States of America in recognition of the post-World War...

 and a Dinkelspiel Award) with a B.S.

Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 in Symbolic Systems and Cognitive Science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

. He went on to earn an M.A.

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 in philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 from Oxford University in 1993.

Hoffman says he saw academia as an opportunity to make an "impact", but later realized that an entrepreneurial career would provide him with a bigger platform. "When I graduated from Stanford my plan was to become a professor and public intellectual. That is not about quoting Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

. It's about holding up a lens to society and asking 'who are we?' and 'who should we be, as individuals and a society?' But I realised academics write books that 50 or 60 people read and I wanted more impact."

So Hoffman pursued a career in business and entrepreneurship. After working at Apple Computer

Apple Computer

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

 and Fujitsu

Fujitsu

is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....

 in product management, Hoffman co-founded his first company, SocialNet.com, an online dating service.

PayPal

While at SocialNet, Hoffman was a member of the board of directors at the founding of PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

, an electronic money transmission service, and later joined the firm as a full-time employee. At the time of PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

's acquisition by eBay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

 in 2002, he was Executive Vice President of PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

. He was responsible for all external relationships for PayPal, including Payments Infrastructure (VISA, MasterCard, ACH, WellsFargo), Business Development (eBay, Intuit, others), Government (Regulatory, Judicial), and Legal.

LinkedIn

Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002. It was one of the first business-oriented online social networks. He was LinkedIn’s founding CEO for the first four years before becoming Chairman and President, Products in February 2007. Currently he is Executive Chairman. LinkedIn currently has 100 million members in over 200 countries. In July 2010, Tiger Global Management bought 1% of the company, valuing it at $2 billion. With the IPO of LinkedIn on May 19, 2011, Hoffman owns a stake worth an estimated $2.34 billion dollars, not including any potential benefits from Greylock Partners, where he was named a Partner in 2009.

Investing

After the PayPal sale to eBay, Hoffman became one of Silicon Valley's most prolific and successful angel investors. According to venture capitalist David Sze, Hoffman "is arguably the most successful angel investor in the past decade." He made 80 angel investments in technology companies. In 2010 Hoffman joined Greylock Partners and runs their $20 million Discovery Fund.

Facebook

According to David Kirkpatrick's book The Facebook Effect

The Facebook Effect

The Facebook Effect is a book by David Kirkpatrick and published by Simon and Schuster. It describes the history of Facebook and its social implications....

, Hoffman arranged the first meeting between Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-creating the social networking site Facebook, of which he is chief executive and president...

 and Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel

Peter Andreas Thiel is an American business magnate, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. With Elon Musk and Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO...

, which led to Thiel's initial $500,000 angel investment in the company. Hoffman invested alongside Thiel in Facebook's very first financing round.

Zynga

Hoffman personally invested and joined the board of directors in Zynga

Zynga

Zynga is a social network game developer located in San Francisco, United States. The company develops browser-based games that work both stand-alone and as application widgets on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace....

's first round of funding. Hoffman and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus

Mark Pincus

Mark Jonathan Pincus is an Internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Zynga, which makes online social games. Pincus also founded Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and SupportSoft. Pincus currently serves as CEO of Zynga, which had 232 million monthly active users as of July 1, 2011...

 co-own the Six Degrees Patent. According to SecondShares.com, Zynga is currently worth $5 billion.

Other investments

His other investments include Wikia

Wikia

Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...

, Permuto, SixApart, thesixtyone

Thesixtyone

thesixtyone is a streaming media website that uses collaborative filtering to organize, promote, and sell music uploaded by artists, many of whom are independent musicians. The site was founded by James Miao and Samuel Hsiung and received early investment from Paul Graham...

, Tagged

Tagged.com

Tagged is a social networking site based in San Francisco, California, United States, founded in 2004. Tagged allows members to browse the profiles of other members, play games, and share tags and virtual gifts. Tagged says it has 100 million members. , Quantcast reports Tagged monthly unique...

, IronPort

IronPort

IronPort Systems, Inc., headquartered in San Bruno, California, was a company that designed and sold products and services that protect enterprises against Internet threats. It was best known for IronPort AntiSpam, the SenderBase email reputation service, and email security appliances...

, Flickr

Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...

, Digg

Digg

Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...

, Ping.fm

Ping.fm

Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously.Making an update on Ping.fm pushes the update to a number of different social websites at once...

, Nanosolar

Nanosolar

Nanosolar is a developer of solar power technology. Based in San Jose, CA, Nanosolar has developed and commercialized a low-cost printable solar cell manufacturing process. The company started selling panels mid-December 2007, and plans to sell them at around $1 per watt...

, Care.com, Knewton

Knewton

Knewton is an adaptive learning company that has developed a platform to personalize educational content. The Knewton platform allows schools, publishers, and developers to provide adaptive learning for any student. Knewton recently announced a partnership with Pearson Education to power the...

, Kongregate

Kongregate

Kongregate is an online games hosting website owned by Gamestop Corporation, which allows users to upload user-created Adobe Flash or Unity3D games. It features an API that Flash and Unity developers can integrate into their games which allows users to submit high scores and in some games, earn...

, Last.fm

Last.fm

Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....

, Technetto, OneKingsLane, and shopkick.

Philanthropy

He serves on the boards of Do Something

Do Something

Do Something is a non-profit organization that motivates young people to take action around social changes through national campaigns and grants for projects that make an impact. The organization's CEO is Nancy Lublin, who founded Dress for Success in 1996.-History:The organization was co-founded...

 (organization for young people taking action), Kiva.org

Kiva (organization)

Kiva Microfunds is an organization that allows people to lend money via the Internet to microfinance institutions in developing countries around the world and in the United States, which in turn lend the money to small businesses and students...

 (a micro-finance organization), Mozilla

Mozilla Corporation

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey Navigator web browsers and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by a growing global community of...

 (creator of Firefox), and Endeavor Global

Endeavor (non-profit)

Endeavor is a non-profit organization that pioneered the concept of High-Impact Entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Its mission is to “lead the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best High-Impact Entrepreneurs around the...

 an international non-profit development organization that finds and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

External links

• LinkedIn management page including a brief biography of Hoffman
• Hoffman's resume on LinkedIn
• Podcast and videos of Reid Hoffman, speaking at Stanford University
• WSJ: Venture Capitalist's New Frontier: Where Cellphones Meet Retailing
• Profile of Reid Hoffman on Endeavor's Board of Directors