20VC: Reid Hoffman on Investing in Airbnb and Passing on Stripe, The Different Styles of Truly Great Leaders, How To Think Through Ownership and Price in Venture & How To Ensure Venture Partnerships Always Have Trust and a Learning Mindset

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Reid Hoffman is a Silicon Valley stalwart in the modern technology world. On the investing side, he is a Partner @ Greylock, one of the leading venture firms of the last 2 decades with a portfolio including Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Figma, Appdynamics and Okta to name a few. Reid has led investments in Airbnb, Convoy, Coda and Aurora to name a few. As an operator, Reid co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network and before LinkedIn, Reid served as executive vice president at PayPal, where he was a founding board member. If that was not enough, Reid is the co-author of Blitzscaling and two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-up of You and The Alliance.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Reid made his way into the world of startups, came to found Linkedin and how that led to his joining Greylock?

2.) Does Reid consider himself an innate and natural leader today? How has his leadership style changed over time? What elements does Reid struggle with? How has he scaled to these leadership challenges? What does Reid believe are the different strands of leadership?

3.) How does Reid think about what separates the good from the great board members? What is the biggest danger for board members today? How do the very best founders manage their boards? How does Reid think about the weight of his words today?

4.) How does Reid think about the importance of ownership? How does Reid analyse price today? What was the story behind Greylock investing in Airbnb? What did Reid see so clearly and before anyone else saw it? What is the story with Stripe? Why did Reid turn Stripe down?

5.) How does Reid think about ensuring venture partnerships always have a learning mindset? What can be done deliberately to ensure this? Where do many people struggle here? How can partners develop trust within venture partnerships? Where does trust most often break down?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode

Reid’s Favourite Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited for the episode today.
0:04.0	Growing up, this guest was such an inspiration and a role model to me.
0:07.5	Really is an honour to have them on the show.
0:09.2	And so with that, I'm so excited to welcome Reid Hoffman, a Silicon Valley stalwart in the modern technology world.
0:14.6	On the investing side, he's a partner at Greylock, one of the leading venture firms of the last two decades, with a portfolio including the lights of
0:20.9	Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Figma, and many more incredible companies. Reid's also led investments
0:26.7	in Airbnb, Convoy, Coda and Aurora, to name a few. As an operator, Reid co-founded LinkedIn,
0:32.8	the world's largest professional network, and before LinkedIn, Reed serves as an executive vice
0:37.2	president at PayPal, where he was a founding board member. If that wasn't enough, LinkedIn, Reid serves as an executive vice president
0:37.5	at PayPal where he was a founding board member. If that wasn't enough, though, Reid's also
0:41.5	the co-author of Blitzscaling and two New York Times bestselling books, the startup of you and
0:46.7	the alliance. I'd also want to say a huge thank you though to Mark Pinkers, Shishir at Coda,
0:51.1	Dan at Convoy, Mike Dubot and David Z at Greylock. Some amazing question
0:55.3	suggestions today and I really did so appreciate that. But before we move into the show today,
0:59.5	I want to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success
1:03.6	in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature
1:08.2	solution used by millions to securely send and request
1:11.6	legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of $16 million in funding and
1:17.3	recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out HelloSign.com forward
1:23.3	slash 20VC to join the thousands of companies and founders who value fast, secure and simple
1:29.3	e-signatures. And speaking of beautiful products there, and honestly, cutting the crap, there are a few
1:34.0	products I truly could not live without and used 10 plus times a day. Affinity, it's a home screen
	...

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