40 Facts About Reid Hoffman

Reid Garrett Hoffman was born on August 5,1967 and is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author.

Reid Hoffman is currently a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners and a co-founder of Inflection AI.

Reid Hoffman was an avid tabletop roleplaying gamer as a child.

Reid Hoffman attended high school at the progressive The Putney School in Vermont, where he engaged in farming activities.

Reid Hoffman graduated from Stanford University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in Symbolic Systems and Cognitive Science.

Reid Hoffman was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study abroad, on which he earned an Master of Studies in Philosophy from Wolfson College, Oxford in 1993.

Reid Hoffman joined Apple Computer in 1994, where he worked on eWorld, an early attempt at building an online service.

Reid Hoffman later worked at Fujitsu before co-founding his first company, SocialNet.

Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002 with two former colleagues from SocialNet, from his time at Fujitsu.

Reid Hoffman was LinkedIn's founding CEO for the first four years before becoming chairman and president of products in February 2007.

At the time of LinkedIn's IPO on May 19,2011, Reid Hoffman owned a stake worth an estimated $2.34 billion, not including any potential benefits from Greylock Partners, where he was named a partner in 2009.

Reid Hoffman believes that many people still do not know how to use its service and it is LinkedIn's job to help them out.

Reid Hoffman became a Microsoft board member on March 14,2017.

Reid Hoffman was a founding investor in the artificial intelligence research company OpenAI.

In March 2022, it was announced that Reid Hoffman was co-founding a new startup, Inflection AI, with his long-time friend and Greylock colleague, Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind.

On March 3,2023, Reid Hoffman resigned from his board seat at OpenAI, citing a desire to avoid conflicts of interest between his board seat at OpenAI, investments in AI technology companies via Greylock Partners, and role as founder of Inflection AI.

Since 2009, Reid Hoffman has provided venture capital to dozens of businesses across industries, including consumer and transportation technology, finance, and artificial intelligence.

Reid Hoffman served on Zynga's board of directors from March 2008 to June 2014 and currently serves on several public boards, including Aurora, Joby Aviation and Microsoft.

Reid Hoffman has made multiple investments in transportation technology companies, including Aurora, Convoy, Nauto, Nuro and Joby Aviation, among others.

An early advocate for cryptocurrency, Reid Hoffman led Greylock's 2014 Series A financing round in Xapo, a company that developed a bitcoin wallet product.

Reid Hoffman is co-author, with Ben Casnocha, of the career book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform your Career.

Reid Hoffman is co-author, with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, of the management book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age.

Reid Hoffman is co-author, with Chris Yeh, of the book Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies.

Reid Hoffman serves on the advisory council of the MIT Media Lab and is a supporter and chair of the advisory board for QuestBridge.

In 2013, Reid Hoffman provided a $250,000 matching grant to Code for America.

In July 2016, Reid Hoffman funded the $250,000 cash-prize MIT Media Lab MIT Disobedience Award, an award created by Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito to honor and recognize acts of disobedience resulting in positive social impact.

Reid Hoffman is a long-time supporter of Second Harvest of Silicon Valley and in 2021, in response to the massive increased need due to the pandemic, offered to match any donations to the food bank, up to $2million.

Reid Hoffman is one of the backers of the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, a joint venture between the MIT Media Lab and the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Reid Hoffman is on the board of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, whose mission is to "advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition", and launched the institute's Hoffman-Yee Research Grants to "fund interdisciplinary teams with research spanning HAI's key areas of focus: understanding the human and societal impact of AI, augmenting human capabilities, and developing AI technologies inspired by human intelligence".

Reid Hoffman is listed as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which he was elected in 2015.

In 2016, Reid Hoffman contributed $220,000 in support of Democratic candidate for Vermont governor Matt Dunne, according to a mass-media disclosure filed at the Vermont Secretary of State's Office.

In 2016, Reid Hoffman created a card game modeled after Cards Against Humanity intended to poke fun at US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In December 2018, the New York Times broke a story alleging that Reid Hoffman had "put $100,000 into an experiment that adopted Russia-inspired political disinformation tactics on Facebook" during the 2017 special Senate race in Alabama, which allegedly targeted Roy Moore voters.

In 2018, Reid Hoffman helped fund Alloy, a company founded to legally exchange data with affiliated Democrat groups like super PACs.

Reid Hoffman supplied half of the 35 million dollars to start it.

Reid Hoffman shut down in 2021 after failing to live up to its promise.

Reid Hoffman has been an outspoken proponent of democratic institutions and voting rights and in 2021 published a piece on LinkedIn entitled Protecting Voting Rights: Good for America, Good for American Business.

In 2020, Reid Hoffman penned a piece that argued for making Voting Day a holiday.

Reid Hoffman gave at least $500,000 to the Mainstream Democrats super PAC, which was founded in February 2022 and has since spent more than $1 million supporting the campaigns of moderate Democrats Henry Cuellar and Kurt Schrader.

In October 2022, Reid Hoffman joined the Defense Innovation Board, an independent advisory board for the United States Department of Defense.