Disruptive Personalities: Reid Hoffman - Timizzer

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For those with a vision, insight, inspiration and perseverance Web 2.0 can be an entrepreneur or investor?s goldmine. One man with of these qualities and many more besides is San Francisco based businessman Reid Hoffman.

In the online worlds of social media and Silicon Valley Hoffman is a legend, one of the guiding lights driving the modern era of community technology forward, and one of the most financially successful men to prosper from the revolution since the birth of the internet.

In the beginning, however, being a pioneer of making money from the internet wasn?t something that was on his radar. Initially passionate about school and study, Hoffman graduated from Stanford University in 1990 and, after winning a Marshall Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom, completed his education in 1993 with an M.A in philosophy from Oxford University.

Despite initially having a keen passion for academics he decided to move away from the world of the university library and into the one of business and entrepreneurialism in an attempt to have ?more of an impact? on the world. He worked at Apple and Fujitsu in produciton, before starting his first company SocialNet.com, an online dating service. This lead to a seat on the board of directors of the founding of electronic funds transfer mechanism PayPal in 1998, with Hoffman holding the position of Executive Vice President when the company was acquired by eBay in 2002.

By 2002 Hoffman had already achieved phenomenal financial and entrepreneurial success. However, all these accomplishments would be dwarfed by subsequent ventures.

In December of that year Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, the first social networking site aimed directly at the business community, and was the company?s CEO for the first four years of its existence.

Under Hoffman?s guidance the company expanded rapidly. It rode, and also inspired, the wave of a new generation clamouring for increased access to shared information and communities online, a sentiment that Hoffman recognised and mastered.

Since its inception LinkedIn has grown to being one of the largest and most significant social networking sites on the internet with over 130 million users globally. It is an internationally recognised brand and is often mentioned in the same sentence as Facebook and Twitter as being one of the most high profile social websites active on the internet.

And it was in May 2011 that Hoffman officially joined the billionaires club when LinkedIn became the first high profile social networking website to launch on the stock market. The LinkedIn IPO was originally prices at $45 a share but doubled its value on the first day of trading, pushing the company?s valuation over the $9 billion mark. Hoffman?s stake is currently worth something in the $1.8 billion range, and this doesn?t include his cut from venture capital firm Greylock Partners? stake, which is valued at $1.3 billion.

It?s expected that other social networking behemoths including Facebook, the largest site of them all, will follow LinkedIn?s lead in floating on the stock exchanges in the near future.

It was also in 2002 that Hoffman turned his hand to investment. In addition to presiding over the substantial success of LinkedIn Hoffman is also renowned for being one of the most accomplished angel investors in the online business market, with stakes in a number of high profile internet giants as well as running Greylock Partners? $20 million Discovery Fund.

Hoffman had the insight to invest in the very first financing round of Facebook, understanding the unlimited potential of Mark Zuckerburg?s global creation, along with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.

He is or has been an angel investor in over 80 Silicon Valley companies, the vast majority of which have gone on to achieve incredible success, including household names such as Wikia and Flickr.

In addition to Facebook Hoffman?s greatest investment triumph is online social games creator Zynga, the company responsible for many of the community games accessible through social networking sites such as Facebook (e.g Mob Wars, Farmville).

Hoffman took a seat on the board at Zynga after investing during the company?s first round of financing, the company has since been floated on the stock exchange, and has a market capitalisation value of over $8.4 billion.

Most recently Hoffman became an author, releasing a co-written book titled ?The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform your Career?. In it Hoffman explains how instead of towing the corporate line modern day professionals should think of their career as a personal start-up business to get ahead of the competition in an increasingly savage job market.

And if you?re looking for the person who can explain the benefits of start-ups in the 21^st century, a good place to start would be Reid Hoffman.

Source: http://www.timizzer.com/investors-cut/disruptive-personalities-2/

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