Reid Hoffman Quotes

It’s tempting to assume she achieved this despite the “Nos.” But in truth, each of those 148 “Nos” was a clue that ultimately made her business even stronger. Some sharpened her view on who her user was — and who her user wasn’t. Some helped her grasp how her competition might think. And some gave her an early warning about the ways her company might fail. At the end of the fundraising process alone, Kathryn had a roadmap marked with every potential pitfall she’d need to navigate around — and the unexplored territory she could explore ahead of any competitors.

In public market investing, as in many things, you achieve big success when you’re both contrarian and right.

Whether you want to learn a new skill or simply be better at the job you were hired to do, it’s now your job to train and invest in yourself.

Chesapeake moved faster than any other company in its industry, deploying an army of land men to aggressively lease as much land as possible, with instructions to pay whatever was necessary, without knowing whether the gas deposits would justify the price. Hiring an army of land men and paying top dollar for leases sight unseen seemed inefficient…until the wells started producing.

Instead, 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.

Network 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.

for many people “twenty years of experience” is really one year of experience repeated twenty times.

No business can grow forever, simply because no market is infinite. You blitzscale when your market is big or growing fast

An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.

Teams 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.

I believe I am skilled at __________, I believe I find meaning in __________, I believe the market needs __________.

What is your organization trying to do? How are you trying to achieve those goals? What acceptable risks are you incurring to achieve those goals more quickly? When you have to trade off certain values, which ones take priority? What kind of behavior do you hire, promote, or fire for?

Technology innovation is the most common trigger for launching a new market or upending an existing one.

A lot of smart people are prone to over-analysis and tend to become paralyzed by indecision

it’s important to leave yourself time and space for reflection and feedback. It’s easy to get caught up in an endless to-do list and to lose sight of what is important. That’s one of the things I learned from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Mark and Sheryl meet first thing every Monday and at the end of every Friday — no matter how busy they are or what else has come up. The Friday meeting is especially important because it gives them time to look back over the week and reflect on what they’ve learned.