Reid Hoffman is an author, businessman, and internet entrepreneur known as the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business and employment-oriented service for professional networking.
Early years and education
Reid Garrett Hoffman was born on August 5, 1967 in Palo Alto, California. He attended high school in The Putney School and graduated from Stanford University with a degree of B.S in Cognitive Science and Symbolic Systems in 1990. In 1993, Hoffman completed his Master’s degree in Philosophy from Oxford University. During his early childhood, Hoffman had always been interested in role-playing games. He once wrote that role-playing games helped him “appreciate the power of helping every person play the part of a hero on an epic journey.” He also believes that a software is “a powerful tool for moral inquiry”.
At the age of 12, Hoffman got his first paid job as an editor at a game company, and at 14, his name was featured on Chaosium’s RuneQuest role-playing game release, Borderlands.
Career
In April 1994, Hoffman joined Apple Computer as Senior User Experience Architect at eWorld, this was his first attempt to create a social network. Hoffman left Apple Computer in February 1996 and joined Fujitsu Software Corporation as Director of Product Management of Development. In 1997, he co-founded his first company SocialNet.com where he was also the Vice President – he did product management and development.
In 1998, Hoffman joined PayPal as a member of the Board of Directors at the founding of the company and became Executive Vice President from 2000 – 2002. He was responsible for all external relationships of PayPal.
In December 2002, Hoffman, along with former colleagues, co-founded LinkedIn and in May of the following year, it was officially launched as one of the first social networking site for professionals. Hoffman’s PayPal colleagues, Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois invested in LinkedIn. At first, 13 people who are associated with the company invited 112 more people. It was not easy but Hoffman believed he can get a million subscribers. “The year 2003 was all about tuning and viral growth.”
Hoffman decided he will take over the product side and hire Dan Nye for the CEO side. He also hired Deep Nishar from Google as vice president of products. LinkedIn grew from 9 million to 35 million members and sales increased to 900%. They also hired more employees and expanded to Europe.
In June 2008, a 5% stake of the company was purchased by Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, and other venture capital firms, giving the company a valuation of approximately $1 billion. Hoffman returned as CEO in December 2008, a week after Nishar was hired, while Nye left the company.
In November 2009, LinkedIn opened its office in India, with 3.4 million users in the country out of the 55 million user base globally. It also opened an office in Sydney and continued to expand in Asia-Pacific. In 2010, LinkedIn received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC valuing the company at approximately $2 billion, acquired Mspoke, and opened an international headquarter in Dublin, Ireland. The company ranked No. 10 in Silicon Valley Insider’s Top 100 List of most valuable startups in October 2010. By December in the same year, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.
IPO
LinkedIn filed for an IPO in January 2011 and traded its first shares in May 2011 at $45 per share and closed at $94.25. With this IPO, Hoffman owns a stake of an estimated worth of $2.34 billion. LinkedIn also earned $154 million in advertising revenue and it’s earnings continued to increase in the fourth quarter of that year.
In May 2012, the company reached a $188.5 million revenue and in November of the same year, it reported earnings-per-share of $0.22 on revenue of $252 million. In April 2014, the company leased a 26-storey building under construction in San Francisco’s SoMa district and its employees started to move-in in March 2016. In February 2016, LinkedIn share’s dropped 43.6% at $108.38 per share within a single day, losing $10 billion of its market capitalization.
In June 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $196 a share, a total value of $26.2 billion and Hoffman became a Microsoft board member on March 14, 2017.
Net Worth
Reid Hoffman’s net worth as of February 2019 is $1.8 billion.