What Are the Tech Billionaires Really Like? (Your Radical Questions with Reid Hoffman)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reid Hoffman is one of the founding fathers of the modern technology industry – an early investor and champion of the world of AI and the co-founder of the largest professional network in the world, LinkedIn. In this episode, he answers your questions on whether tech leaders understand the scale of their responsibility over the job market, how politicians will deal with the potential repercussions of tech on the working class, how AI could be used for evil, and what his contemporaries Elon Musk and Sam Altman are really like.
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Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Monday.
Amol Rajan presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and hosts University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was the BBC’s media editor and the editor of The Independent newspaper.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Rufus Gray and Oscar Pearson. Digital production was by Joe Wilkinson and Beth Pritchard. Technical production was by Stephen Bailey. The Senior News Editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, welcome to your radical questions. This is where I put your magnificent questions |
| 0:10.1 | to one of our guests. You can engage very, very directly with them through me, and I will |
| 0:15.0 | really pursue answers on your behalf. What a chance, what an opportunity for you to connect with |
| 0:18.7 | the amazing people we have in this studio. |
| 0:21.3 | And our guest today, our guest on Thursday's episode, is a man who has lived many lives. |
| 0:26.3 | He was one of the founders of PayPal. |
| 0:28.1 | There are too many companies to mention. |
| 0:29.3 | I think the main thing you might know is that he was a co-founder and really the big brains behind LinkedIn, which now has 1.3 billion users. |
| 0:36.3 | He's an entrepreneur, an author of many, many books, |
| 0:39.0 | including blitzscaling, super agency, at the start of you. Those are just the three that I've read. |
| 0:44.9 | He's an AI pioneer investor and billionaire, and he is Reid Hoffman. Reid, good to see you. |
| 0:49.9 | Great to see you. Fantastic to have you with us. Our first question is from Michael. |
| 0:55.0 | Hi, Reid. It's Michael here. |
| 0:56.0 | So my question is much of the public conversation rightly focuses on 16, 24-year-olds who are |
| 1:03.0 | out of work, but there is quite a wave of redundancies affecting people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, |
| 1:09.0 | especially across the tech and creative industries. |
| 1:11.5 | And I see this on my LinkedIn feed day after day after day. |
| 1:14.9 | Platforms like LinkedIn were once seen as engines, opportunity, luring people in with |
| 1:20.4 | materialized opportunity. |
| 1:22.8 | Yet many now describe them as crowded, low quality connections, opaque hiring, and roles that don't seem |
| 1:29.5 | to materialise creating real mental, financial and emotional injury. From your perspective, |
... |
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