Reid Hoffman Quotes - Page 2

There are opportunities that you get during crises times. Crises times are a great time to start a business.

You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.

Economic tough times are great times to be investing in the future.

One 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.

Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.

Society flourishes when people think entrepreneurally.

The entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.

The future is sooner and stranger than you think.

The reality is: a founder is someone who deals with a ton of different headaches and no one is universally super powered.

Trust and mutual value creation helps both employer and employee compete in the marketplace.

We believe that when the right talent meets the right opportunity in a company with the right philosophy, amazing transformation can happen.

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.

Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.

Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.

One 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.

One of the tests that I frequently use in an interaction is I push on the idea and what I'm looking for is both flexibility & persistence.

During normal times or boom times, there are some parts of the business that are going to so well, that that can cover for weakness and other parts of the business. What happens during recessions, is you have less windfalls just helping you cover mistakes. You have to be more careful about not making mistakes.

I don't normally think of like most successful moments, because like most entrepreneurs, I tend to think that however how high of a mountain I've climbed, I'm always looking at the next mountain to climb.

The key issue when you're looking at cost cutting is to always plan for the future.

It's better to be the best connected than the most connected.

In software speed to market, speed to learning is really key. In hardware if you screw it up you are dead. So accuracy really matters.

Every individual is essentially now a small business and entrepreneur.

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.

The 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.

The underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform.