CEO Diaries: LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman: The Truth About Elon, Zuck, & Building Great Companies!

Over the next six weeks, we’re bringing you the most unmissable moments from The Diary of a CEO, a masterclass in work, business, and entrepreneurship. These are the lessons that built some of the most iconic companies in the world, shared by the visionary CEOs behind them. We begin with Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. In this powerful conversation, Reid breaks down the surprising trait that separates good entrepreneurs from the greats and why ignoring it could be your biggest mistake. He shares the story of whats like working with Elon Musk, what most people get wrong about ambition, and the brutal trade-offs that come with building at scale. You’ll learn how different leadership styles create different outcomes and what it really takes to build companies that last. Visit - www.linkedin.com/DOAC Listen to the full episode here - Spotify - https://g2ul0.app.link/kXUCbNYywTb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link/AkpmkV6ywTb Watch the Episodes On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  There's a reason I love today's conversation. It is with the founder of a platform that we probably all use called LinkedIn. And the guy that made that platform is Reid Hoffman. The reality of running a small business is that switching off is never really an option. Even when you try, the ideas, the excitement and all the responsibility is always there. And because you're always switched on, it's only fair that your hiring partner should be too. LinkedIn Jobs, who are the sponsor of this moments episode, has been that hiring partner for me and for years. Because it's always working away in the background. My team can post our jobs for free, share them with our networks and reach top talent all in the same place. So let's get into today's conversation.

• 0:40Steven Bartlett?

  On all these great people you've worked with, specifically, you know, during that PayPal period of your life. One of the things I was reflecting on is they're all independently successful people. But they're all very different people. And that in and of itself is evidence that there's not one version of success. There's many different types of success. Presumably, there's many different types of entrepreneur leader.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03Steven Bartlett?

  Give me a flavour of the different types of entrepreneurs you've worked with. And what, you know, because I sat with Walter Isaacson. And he talked to me about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and I was like, Steve's really great at hiring people. Elon's not as good at the people team building part, but he's better at this part.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yes. So no entrepreneur wins at every game.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try to win to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on. Same thing is true. So some people, for example, like take a Neil Buscemi at Workday, right? He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional. So it's a HR product for work. His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people were going to do cloud software. For the first. I think it was 500 people that Workday hired. He would always do a cultural interview at the end because to make sure that the first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things. So, once you get through all the competence and all the rest of the stuff, he would make

• 2:10Speaker 01

  sure that was a fit and that's part of how you get cultural coherence. That's like one example, right? Another example, Elon is the, like, I have a big idea and I convince myself 100% that it's absolutely going to be the case, like, I am going to settle Mars, we're going to terraform Mars in our lifetimes, which is, no, it's impossible. No, no human being on the planet, including Elon, is going to do that within Elon's lifetime, right? But, I'm gonna go all in, I'm gonna work really hard, I'm gonna be technologically sophisticated, I'm gonna work against the odds, right? In order to make that work.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  That's a, you know, Anil, very professional, understands the workplace mark. Elon, like, I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to, and, and his pitch though, to my defense, was, I'm gonna send a turtle to Mars. And I'm like, that's not a business, and you're competing with national governments and like, Russian subsidized rocket programs and so forth, this is not a good, I was wrong, he was right, right? There's not a good equity, you know, kind of play.

• 3:25Steven Bartlett?

  He pitched it to you as an investor?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. At what point was SpaceX out when he pitched it?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  That was before he started.

• 3:33Steven Bartlett?

  So it was an idea?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yes. And I'm gonna send a turtle to Mars, and then it became, I'm gonna send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it to Mars, because they'll grow, I'll be the first person who will send life to Mars, and you're like, okay, right?

• 3:46Steven Bartlett?

  What did you think genuinely when he said that to you?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  I thought he'd gone off his rocker.

• 3:52Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 3:53Steven Bartlett?

  Of course you would, yeah, like someone's friend, my friend said that to me. I think I'd make a couple of calls just to check in.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 3:59Steven Bartlett?

  Like, is Elon doing OK? He just told me about this turtle.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:03Steven Bartlett?

  It's like, that's not a business.

• 4:06Steven Bartlett?

  Has your opinion of him changed over time in terms of his potential and ability as an entrepreneur?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  No, no, I've always thought of him as one of the world's great entrepreneurs.

• 4:18Steven Bartlett?

  Always?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, all the way back to PayPal days.

• 4:21Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, he has done repetitively amazing things. Now, he pitches everything with the same level of certainty. Right? Like, you know, I have this idea for online banking. I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities. I have this idea for creating a pneumatic tube for Hyperloop. All of them, he has the same level of, I am 1,000% right that this is like guaranteed to be part of the future. Right? And I, you know, and I may be the unique person to make it happen. Right? So you have to have some discernment. But he's, his, you know, on base batting is pretty good.

• 5:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, for such major ideas.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  But it's not, it's not 100%.

• 5:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, people kind of excuse that, though.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 5:06Steven Bartlett?

  If you get.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  If you get one that's big, that's fine, right? Yeah.

• 5:12Steven Bartlett?

  On the hiring side, has he been, is he up there with the best or is he not a direct hire of people like Steve Jobs was?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  He hires well. Matter of fact, you can't be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  I think some people are better hirers. Some people also have, like, are the kind of people that people would work for forever.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Elon tends to burn people out a lot. Like, there's lots of burnt-out people in his wake. And when you go and talk to those people, what you hear is, some people say, "That was the best work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again." And other people say, "That was the worst work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again." So, they're all, "I never want to work for him again." Right? So, you know, as kind of a dynamic, because he basically looks at them as disposable parts. And, you know, "Go as hard as you can." And then afterwards, you're out. Don't care. Because he goes so hard? Yeah, he goes hard. But he also thinks, "Your only relevance to me is your relevance. Your only relevance to me is, can you help me with my mission? And after you're done,

• 6:27Speaker 01

  after you can no longer help me with my mission, you're not relevant to me anymore."

• 6:33Speaker 01

  What do you think of that approach? That's not my approach. Right? LinkedIn mirrors my approach. Like, literally, I am referenceable by every entrepreneur that I've ever worked with. Right? As a board member and as an investor. Who, you know, even ones that I've, like, fired as CEO and so forth. Those people will say, "He was really good to work with on these things." They may also have some critical things. There's no problem with that. But like, like, literally, like, when I'm pitching an entrepreneur, I just like, call anyone that I've worked with.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Right? Because I try to work with people in a way that even when we're at a, at a, at a difficult moment, because I disagree with them intensely about how well they're doing or what they're doing or something else, that I'm doing it in a collaborative, constructive way. And so, my goal is to work with people, like, anyone I want to work with. Brian Chesky, you know, Mark Pincus, etc. I want to be able to work with them for, you know, the rest of our lives.

• 7:41Steven Bartlett?

  What's interesting is I think these strategies fundamentally come down to what you think matters in life the most because you could optimize, even you could optimize more for building more companies or something at the expense of something else and it's a trade off of something else. Like you could go harder, but there's a trade off happening here. And we often, because Elon's done these crazy things like the cars and the near links and this tunnels and now the AI and the X and the spaceships and stuff. We go, oh my God, that's so amazing. And I do that as well as a bunch of like, fuck no, one person can do that much. But we almost never talk about the trade off.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. You're 100% right.

• 8:18Steven Bartlett?

  And we, and it's so, this goes back to the point about self-awareness. It's like, it's so tempting for the like, the brain to go, oh my God, I want that. That's what I want. Because you're not seeing the trade off. You're not seeing the darkness.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  That is 100% correct. And look, I respect it. I understand the burn people out, like treat them as disposable assets that when they burn out, you just jettison them. And you can be very, Elon's not the only entrepreneur who is very successful doing that. Right? But for example, on the other side, like if you go to Mark Zuckerberg and you talk to the people who work for him, they're like, that was great. That was the best working experience of my life. Of course I'll work for them again.

• 9:00Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. I hope you found today's conversation helpful and insightful. If you're ready to join two and a half million other small businesses already using LinkedIn for hiring, head over to LinkedIn.com slash D O A C now. That's LinkedIn.com slash D O A C to find your next exceptional hire.