# Reid Hoffman: Shaping the AI Era, Investing in Transformation and Calling on Europe - **Show:** In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - **Published:** 25 Feb 2026 - **Source:** https://shows.acast.com/in-good-company-with-nicolai-tangen/episodes/reid-hoffman-shaping-the-ai-era-investing-in-transformation - **Transcript:** https://podcasts.opennash.com/shows/in-good-company-with-nicolai-tangen/reid-hoffman-shaping-the-ai-era-investing-in-transformation-and-calling-on-europ-5b0561/ - **Provider:** OpenNash Podcasts (machine-generated) ## In brief Reid Hoffman argues that AI is the biggest technology shift of our lifetimes, and that it is not a bubble headed for collapse. He says most of the value comes from using it seriously now for research, coding, meetings and medicine. He also says Europe should build and compete in AI rather than just regulate it, and that young people should become AI natives. The tension is between speed and caution. Startups use AI quickly and see gains, while large companies try to remove every risk before starting and end up stalled. Hoffman sets the same contrast against the huge spending on chips and data centers, which he reads as a deliberate bet rather than a bubble. He also describes his investing as a bet on ideas that smart people think are wrong. ## Key insights 1. **Startups adopt AI faster than large companies** Hoffman says small startups use AI to move quickly with few employees, while big firms start with 'risk first' and want every risk reduced to zero. He compares that to refusing to drive from Oslo to Trondheim until every danger is removed. 2. **Recording meetings with AI is an easy start** Hoffman says AI can turn meeting recordings into notes, follow-up reminders and research questions, and that Greylock already records its meetings. He says most companies hold back over fears of legal liability and leaked information, which he thinks are often not real risks. 3. **Europe should build AI, not just referee it** Hoffman compares AI to a World Cup between the US and China, with Europe stuck as the referee. He suggests Europe trade data-center permits and energy support for compute access, and focus on global products such as medical applications built on centralized health systems. 4. **AI spending may reprice but not collapse** Hoffman says Nvidia's circular-looking investments are backed by real demand for compute, because every GPU is already in demand from customers and internal teams. He says a data center that cost $60 billion could still run profitably even if prices fall, so he expects a pricing correction rather than a banking-style collapse. 5. **Great investments look wrong to smart people** Hoffman says his best bets, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Airbnb and Zynga, were ones where clever people had a reason to doubt them and he believed he saw why they were wrong. He says missing one great company costs far more than backing a weak one. ## Questions this episode answers ### Does Reid Hoffman think AI is a bubble that will collapse? No. He says a pricing correction is possible, but a collapse is unlikely because demand for the computing power is real and a data center can keep running profitably even if prices fall. ### Why are large companies slower than startups at using AI? Hoffman says large companies tend to avoid downside first and want every risk, such as legal liability or leaked information, reduced to zero before starting. Startups have less to lose, so they can move fast. ### What is one simple way a company can start using AI today? Hoffman suggests recording all meetings and running an AI over the recordings. The AI can produce notes and suggested follow-ups, such as who needs to be told or who needs to approve something. ### What does Hoffman say Europe should do about AI? He says Europe should stop acting only as a referee and get into the game. That means striking deals with big US cloud companies for data centers and compute access, and building globally competitive applications, such as in medicine. ### What is blitzscaling and how does it relate to AI? Hoffman defines blitzscaling as taking the risk of going big in an environment of uncertainty. He says the AI build-out fits this, with companies investing heavily in compute before the payoff is clear. ## Facts - **Reid Hoffman** [0:03:16]: "OpenAI could only got to its position because Microsoft supported it, um, with compute." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:06:38]: "kind of the different kinds of molecules for therapeutics in Manus AI company I co-founded at the beginning of the year with, um, Siddhartha Mukherjee" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:07:13]: "probably leading adopters are a whole bunch of stuff in coding, um, because coding gives you a a engineers understand this, they're natural adopters." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:09:47]: "basically every organization should be saying we're recording all of our meetings and we're running an AI on the on the recording of the meeting." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:14:04]: "part of what we find in the venture community and Silicon Valley and in Greylock is that we record these meetings at all times." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:15:02]: "where I have a podcast called Possible, and we've released Possible in French, um, because, um, we we basically had AI, you know, kind of do all the translation and compute." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:27:43]: "literally the top half were the one that were written in English and translated to Hindi" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:23:16]: "I think it's roughly like $60 billion to get a gigawatt of compute" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:23:16]: "the precise definition of blitzscaling is, um, uh, taking the risk of going big in an environment of uncertainty" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:22:49]: "and the two places in the world that I see demonstrate blitzscaling in really robust, general ways are Silicon Valley and China." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:30:05]: "Like at a company like Microsoft, you know, each GPU is kind of being allocated between, like inference, where customers want it, cause basically you could sell all everything to customers." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:49:00]: "one of the things that made the PayPal network so noteworthy is PayPal sold to eBay in 2002" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:49:29]: "you ended up with all these people who had some money and believed in the internet and would go and create new companies." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:44:19]: "they declined a financing offer that was twice my valuation, uh, in order to work with me." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:44:47]: "It looks crazy, like some of my partners thought Airbnb was crazy." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:45:23]: "Now, occasionally it's longer, like one of the the Greylock investments is Roblox, and that took longer." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:48:26]: "the top tier Silicon Valley venture firms. They didn't deliberately, they don't directly collaborate with each other, but they tend to to to signal and draft off each other." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:51:15]: "in the case of LinkedIn, everyone thought there was no such thing as a professional network." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:51:45]: "In the Facebook case, people said, Oh, yeah, there's a lot of activity, but it's all college students, um, and they don't have any money" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:42:57]: "he's approaching the marketplace, the experience of travel, the experience of staying somewhere, the experience of hosting somewhere as a design thing." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:40:56]: "I helped set up, um, you know, kind of this program called Silicon Valley Comes to the UK" - **Reid Hoffman** [0:37:58]: "Google, which runs some of the best data centers in the world, when they applied their AI technology, figured out how to get savings of 40 in their data center." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:35:07]: "I'm one of these people who made a re a digital version of myself, Reid AI, and have demoed it in various ways." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:35:34]: "And one of the things I realized by creating Reid AI is that it's a small number of years where, like, voicemail goes away." - **Reid Hoffman** [0:53:39]: "my very first book is called The Startup of You, um, which came out of a commencement speech I gave to my high school" ## Transcript **[0:00:01] Nicolai Tangen:** Hi everyone, I'm Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and I'm here today with Reid Hoffman, who is the co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, board member at Microsoft, and one of Silicon Valley's most influential thinkers. And today we are basically going to talk about everything that's going on, AI, uh, human potential, all the things you've been up to, uh, Reid, so wonderful to have you here. **[0:00:25] Reid Hoffman:** It's great to be here. And, um, you know, one of these awesome things about the modern world is, you know, here I am in Seattle, there you are in Oslo, and we can have a fully robust conversation, um, That is not quite spanning the globe, but, uh, maybe in topic. **[0:00:49] Nicolai Tangen:** now, um, Reid, you've seen, uh, multiple tech cycles from, uh, web one zero to the current AI boom. Just how does it stack up compared to what you've seen before? **[0:01:00] Reid Hoffman:** Well, um, look, each new tech cycle, and even if you do a bit of history and you kind of go back to printing press and other kinds of things as as early versions of this is new and impressive and builds upon the old. And part of the current, you know, ai, um, just, you know, massive acceleration, much bigger than much quicker, much larger, more impact than anything else. Is cause it builds on the internet, it builds on the cloud, it builds on, you know, kind of the massive amount of data we have and the mass amount of compute we have, which then makes it possible to build these amazing learning machines. **[0:01:40] Reid Hoffman:** And so I think it's obviously the largest, um, now, in all large things, you know, you know, like in your industry, there's discussion of, you know, is it, is it a bubble? I don't think it is, um, if anything, like, I don't think it's a bubble. In the usual discussion of, you know, could it get to a collapse? But the impact upon all of society is probably gonna be the biggest of our lifetimes. And that's presuming that, you know, you and I have have have, uh, have at least a number of decades ahead of us. **[0:02:10] Reid Hoffman:** Um, and and I think that's stunning, cause in industry and in life and in society, I think the fact that we've now made, like, learning machines as part of our firmament of the humanist world, the society is is landmark. **[0:02:28] Nicolai Tangen:** hm, hm. Now you see this from both sides, given that you're on the Microsoft board, which is like, you know, the incumbent, and then you also invest in some of the new, you know, more disruptive companies. How does that shape your way of thinking? **[0:02:43] Reid Hoffman:** Well, um, you know, the frequent way that people put this kind of conversation is it gonna more benefit startups, more benefit large companies, is it gonna, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And the answer is massively all, and which one more? Um, I don't know. But I think it's important on the, you know, in kind of the ai, uh, you know, kind of the the revolution that we're doing. That we support both startups and large companies, both of them have a have a substantive role in their contribution to industry and society. **[0:03:16] Reid Hoffman:** So, for example, startups can't be doing, um, the kind of things that the frontier models are doing without at least the support of the frontier model companies. So, you know, like, for example, OpenAI could only got to its position because Microsoft supported it, um, with compute. And, you know, similarly, you know, that's what's happening with Anthropic and others, as it requires these, the hyperscalers and the massive cloud companies. Not only in the work they're doing themselves, but in the work they're doing to support the startups. **[0:03:44] Reid Hoffman:** On the other hand, the kind of risk and innovation in the startups is the thing that will drive a lot. So, like, for example, there's a another, you know, not, you know, relatively common meme that is, you know, like, well, enterprises are trying to deploy it and they're not deploying it that well. You know, is that? Does that mean that it's overhyped? And the answer is well, if you look at small startups and the way they're deploying AI, it's magical. **[0:04:10] Reid Hoffman:** I mean, the the the speed at which you can move with a smaller number, with an initial number of employees, uh, the way that you're. You can empower all aspects, from team meetings to productivity and all the rest, is already, like, massively in motion. And it's just the question of, well, you know, those companies will grow, and then the large companies will need to either adapt to that, probably with some speed in the next few years, or run the risk of being, you know, kind of horse and buggy companies. **[0:04:41] Reid Hoffman:** Once the automobile industry starts going, and so, um, so I think it's a, it's a kind of an, it's a all of it. The benefit of being on the Microsoft board is you see, you know, both what Microsoft's doing and and open ai and and you know, a whole bunch of of the different companies that partner with Microsoft, you know, Anthropic and code and and all these others. And, um, you know, by doing startups, uh, myself and through Greylock and other places, we, um, we can also see a number of that kind of the that that that bold edge innovation. **[0:05:14] Nicolai Tangen:** Where, where are you, uh, seeing the most kind of genuine, massive transformation now? Uh, as opposed to experiments? **[0:05:25] Reid Hoffman:** Well, so, um, so the sh- one of the things I tell people, um, and it's probably useful here too, is if you're not finding the current frontier models to be useful in some substantive way to you, like, for example, useful in your work. Not just, you know, create a sonnet for your kid's birthday, or, you know, take a picture of what's in your fridge and ask for what a recipe could be, which are great, um, but in some substantive way, um, that involves information analysis, research, um, decision support, et cetera. **[0:05:57] Reid Hoffman:** Then you're not trying hard enough. And in fact, you know, one of the things that I think for the frontier models is if you're engaging in a, um, substantive medical decision, and you're not using you or your doctor are not using, you know, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, you know, et cetera. For a second opinion, then you're also making a mistake. Um, and so there's all a whole bunch of of substantive into individual uses. I myself, you know, probably use, you know, kind of serious AI, not simple queries, not like, oh, you know, when was, um, you know, wh- when did, um, you know, the fall, you know? **[0:06:38] Reid Hoffman:** Like, chart all the different when all the different cryptos started and so forth. But like, you know, research, th- like light research things, but like deep ones, like, um, you know, like if I'm working on a book, like my book, Superagency, um, you know, what would a historian of technology give me a serious critique in what I'm doing? Or if I'm thinking about, um, kind of the different kinds of molecules for therapeutics in Manus AI company I co-founded at the beginning of the year with, um, Siddhartha Mukherjee, you know, what are the different, um, you know, attributes of the different kind of therapeutic molecules? **[0:07:13] Reid Hoffman:** Um, you know, between the, you know, different kinds of small molecules that you use as as as drugs and pharmaceuticals, and and what's the history of them been and so forth. And you can actually get pretty deep research now. That being said, I'd say the the probably leading adopters are a whole bunch of stuff in coding, um, because coding gives you a a engineers understand this, they're natural adopters. B It gives you a it's a precision in information work, uh, that, by the way, is a is a kind of a foreshadowing drum to what's gonna really happen in legal and medical and a bunch of other things. **[0:07:49] Reid Hoffman:** Cause, you know, other areas of precision, you know, here is coding precision. Both coding precision will be used for legal, medical, educational, et cetera. But also will be the pattern by which the similar kind of precision in those areas will also be flowering and developed. Um, so I think that's kind of where you see, you know, the kind of the most, you know, put into work and workflow, um, so far. But, you know, part of the reason, of course, I invested in Manus, um, and and and co-founded it with S with Siddhartha Mukherjee, was because it's like, well, but there's these other areas that people aren't thinking about yet, like drug discovery. **[0:08:29] Reid Hoffman:** What does an AI native drug discovery company look like? Um, that are, uh, you know, part of the thing that I think we will also see, you know, simply, you know, uh, amazing, stunning magic on **[0:08:41] Nicolai Tangen:** hm, hm, uh. Are you surprised that we are not seeing productivity gains yet, that we're not really seeing it in the productivity numbers? **[0:08:48] Reid Hoffman:** Uh, I'm not surprised yet. I mean, although, you know, of course, um, what is that old line? I see computers everywhere, but not in the numbers. Um, you know, is kind of like the, you know, kind of, uh, like, there's a bunch of different things within the within the kind of GDP side, where it's a kind of an odd measurement. Um, now, that being said, um, I definitely see it in all the startups. And I think what's in part happening is companies figuring out what to do. **[0:09:17] Reid Hoffman:** Because most of the things like the classic way a company experiments with and builds technology is they go, okay, this. This group of, you know, three, five, ten people are go gonna go do a little proof of concept, and we're gonna see what comes of that. Well, AI, um, can work in some of those areas, but you have to be selective about what the project is. So, for example, like, if your project is, and this is one of the things I think, you know, call it within, you know, two-ish years, it could be four to five, but, um, it could already happen. **[0:09:47] Reid Hoffman:** Now is any, like, basically every organization should be saying we're recording all of our meetings and we're running an AI on the on the recording of the meeting. Not just for the transcript, but also to do all of the suggested follow-ups. It's like, um, hey, did you you you mentioned this? You should probably you should probably re- uh, let Nikolai know and make sure that that's the case. Or, you know, you should, um, uh, uh, make sure that you get approval from Satya on the following thing. **[0:10:17] Reid Hoffman:** Or this other group is doing this. Um, like, all of that kind of thing is a already, like, the technology's there to go. You should already be doing it. I'm doing it, you know? Um, you know, work groups should be doing this, and yet most companies aren't doing that. There isn't a massive acceleration in terms of speed, information, risk analysis, you know, updating communication functions, you know, and a whole stack of things, which would then begin to get into the numbers in any industry. **[0:10:47] Reid Hoffman:** And that's the kind of thing that I think we, you know, like, as opposed to a proof of concept, just start doing all the meeting stuff or both. **[0:10:56] Nicolai Tangen:** What, what? What do you think are the biggest hurdles that you see for large organizations trying to integrate AI effectively? **[0:11:04] Reid Hoffman:** Well, typically, um, most large organizations for with a rational basis kind of start with a um, like, risk first, you know, avoid downside first, gain upside second, um. And part of the reason is cause a large organization usually has a whole bunch of assets, not just brand and market position and capital, and the way that's developed over the years and decades to be efficient and have a market position and so forth. And so it has a position to say, hey, don't take risks on these things, or or choose these risks very selectively. **[0:11:42] Reid Hoffman:** But that leads to a general, and that's part of the reason why you tend to do a proof of concept as a little thing on the side. That leads to a like, don't introduce anything until you've run all the risks to zero. And one of the things that with AI is it could say, well, hey, there's a bunch of unknown risks here. Like, for example, we're doing the meeting thing that I'm talking, that I'm talking about. **[0:12:05] Reid Hoffman:** Well, what happen if we have all these transcripts of meetings? Is that gonna increase legal liability? Is that gonna increase information bleed and flow? And, you know, might some of this information get outside of the enterprise in a way that's concerning? And and we worry about these probabilistic machines, like, do the probabilistic machines misconstrue something? And then that that that causes an error, and you c- you can list all the different errors, and you go, Oh, we should make sure all the errors are brought to zero before we do anything. **[0:12:34] Reid Hoffman:** And you're like, Well, um, that's a little bit like saying, you know, um, I'm gonna, you know, uh, drive from Oslo to Trondheim, and I'm gonna red- I'm gonna, I'm going to get all of the, uh, I'm gonna eliminate every risk before I get on the road. And you're like, Yeah, it's not gonna work, you'll never, you're never gonna get on the road. Um, and so I have to, I obviously, I mean, **[0:12:56] Nicolai Tangen:** have to say, I'm pretty, I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by your local knowledge here. Have you actually dr- have you actually driven there? **[0:13:02] Reid Hoffman:** I have not, um, but but, Well, you're uh, it is on welcome to it. It is on my bucket list to come to Norway, not just cause of northern lights, but the fjords and all the rest. So so I, I know a little bit about, uh, uh, Norway's, uh, geography. A f- a friend of It's mine is a is a a Norwegian born and has been talking to me about sailing in the fjords for at least two decades. **[0:13:22] Nicolai Tangen:** very good now. Uh, I do. I do think it's interesting because it's the first time I've seen the potential for compliance officers to kill companies. You know, yes, **[0:13:32] Reid Hoffman:** And it's one of the things where you gotta go look, is this really a risk? Not could there be something, or would there be a bad press article or something else? But it's like, is it really a risk? Cause if it's not really a risk, like, deploy, iterate and learn, right? And and so, like, I th- actually think, like, I, I, it's literally the the real question is just when do we get to where? It's considered to be weird when you're not having an AI in the meeting helping you with the various aspects of the meeting. **[0:14:04] Reid Hoffman:** Cause, like, you know, part of what we find in the venture community and Silicon Valley and in Greylock is that we record these meetings at all times. Now because it gives us, uh, a set of notes, it gives us easy follow-ups, it gives us something that we can run through AI to say, Hey, can you do research on these questions, right? That we that we came up with, you know, cause, you know, part of what, um, like, like, if peop- if this is news to people, you're not using AI enough. **[0:14:32] Reid Hoffman:** Which is one of the things we do right now is you can trade off, call it minutes of compute to instant research, like, very, very different than what you get from a Google search and so forth. And so you go, okay, you know, I'm really interested in, um, you know, what is the pattern of data centers going to evolve, and, you know, kind of energy ecosystem and and and green energy. You can very easily set, you know, the AI deep research queries on this and get some really good answers. **[0:15:02] Reid Hoffman:** Not perfect, not doesn't say errors, but really good answers, like beginnings of answers in like 10 minutes, cause it does, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes of compute and does that. And by the way, part of what the the frontier models are developing is they're developing the capability for this to work coherently in compute for hours to get to a result. And so, like, for example, w- you know, some of what my team does, um, like, for example, where I have a podcast called Possible, and we've released Possible in French, um, because, um, we we basically had AI, you know, kind of do all the translation and compute. **[0:15:41] Reid Hoffman:** And, like, he sets it on the Eve, he goes to bed, he sets it going in the morning, and in the evening, goes to bed, gets up in the morning, checks it, sees which things needs to be fixed, et cetera, et cetera. That this is gonna become part of a a work process, and so having compute, the amplifying of our labor, is like, it's here now. Um, it's, it's, um, one of my favorite science fiction authors, William Gibson wrote Neuromancer and others. **[0:16:07] Reid Hoffman:** One of his quotes that I really like is the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. **[0:16:17] Nicolai Tangen:** well, you have a lot of, uh, the future where, uh, you know, where you live, and also in, uh, Silicon Valley, do you think, uh, that dominance is under threat? For, for instance, from, um, immigration policies and so on? **[0:16:31] Reid Hoffman:** Well, for sure, I mean, look, one of the things that, um, uh, is, there's multiple things that are crazy about the current administration's, uh, global relations. Um, you know, one is, um, you know, the US. is a country for every decade built on being the best superpower for immigration in the entire world. It's part of what's gotten the US. to where it is, and Silicon Valley is a microcosm of that. I mean, how much of Silicon Valley has been built by, you know, immigrants from all over the world, um, including both Western and Eastern Europe. **[0:17:11] Reid Hoffman:** Like a lot of very smart, uh, people coming to Silicon Valley in the US. from there, also India, you know, also China, et cetera. So the immigration is one. But the next, of course, is that part of our ability to have global industry is because we have very good global relation or have had good global relationships. Um, that has been, you know, kind of most catastrophically damaged in the entire history since World War II by this administration, right? **[0:17:39] Reid Hoffman:** I mean, they they going out and saying, you know, uh, give us our your lunch money or we're gonna tariff you. Um, as kind of a bully tactic on this kind of stuff is is is terrible ways to deal with partners, tra- uh, trade uh, trading allies and other things. And so that's another area of of of significant damage. Um, and so, yes, I think there's there is some of the areas that we've had as historic strengths are under extreme challenge. **[0:18:09] Reid Hoffman:** Now. That being said, part of what I want Europe to do more of is to get more into the technology game. Like one of the things I've told various, you know, uh, you know, I, I take trips through, uh, the UK and France and Italy and other places. And I say, Look, um, getting in the AI game directly is important. Let me give you a European metaphor, which is I'm using the word football in the European sense, not in the American sense. **[0:18:36] Reid Hoffman:** Which is, if you think of, uh, AI as a football game, World Cup match between the US. and China. And what Europe tries to be is the referee. There's two problems one is the referee never wins, and two, no one really likes the referee. So you gotta get on the pitch, right? You gotta be doing stuff, and it's really important. And they say, Well, we're, we're behind, and we don't have the hyperscalers and compute, so go do deals with the hyperscalers in order to get compute. **[0:18:58] Reid Hoffman:** And So how there's this whole **[0:18:59] Nicolai Tangen:** would you? So what would you? So what would you do specifically? So now I give you, well, so now I'm, uh, let's say now I don't know who I am, but I am somebody with a little power. And I say, Hey, Reid, can you? Can you fix, uh, Europe and AI, what do you do? **[0:19:11] Reid Hoffman:** well, um, it's work, it's not easy. Uh, uh, one is, I'd say, go do deals with the various, uh, companies that are hyperscalers that can build a bunch of compute. Those deals don't necessarily require money, they could just be here. We like, we have facilitated a bunch of energy, data center permits, ability to build stuff, to be able to build your business here, you know, build and build these data centers. In return for this facilitation, we wanna make sure that you are enabling, um, kind of European companies to be able to access that compute, um, either in in building new applications or inference for deploying them. **[0:19:53] Reid Hoffman:** And in return for that, um, we also want you to make sure that you're, you know, y- that some of your AI technology, that if you happen to be building it, is also deployable in a kind of a a s a a good way within the European sector. And you say, well, but that's still a bunch of US. technology, of course, you're gonna have a bunch of US. technology. Um, not just the least of which is like the the the semiconductors, the chip infrastructure, cause, you know, NVIDIA, obviously, but then TPUs and, you know, other kinds of things as ways of doing this. **[0:20:22] Reid Hoffman:** But there's a tremendous amount of value in the applications, there's a tremendous amount of value in, like, where do we bring our, you know, kind of areas of competitive advantage? Um, like, for example, if I was, if I was being a, you know, European entrepreneur, I'd say, well, um. One of the benefits we have of centralized medical systems is we can use that centralized medical system to build a whole bunch of different unique medical applications. And we should do that, and we should, we should dominate that, not just within Europe, but globally. **[0:20:52] Reid Hoffman:** I mean, one of the things that, you know, most often is the mistake in how European governments say, well, we just need to have a European one, you know, we just we, we just need to have an Austrian one. And it's like, No No, uh. Technology industry is strongest when it's global, so you wanna say which of the ones that we can build that are global, which are the things that are like Spotify, like AdGen, like, you know, et cetera. **[0:21:13] Reid Hoffman:** And how do we get those kinds of things? Cause, you know, here are some, and how do we have a like kind of global competitiveness with the edges that we have here? Um, and I think that's the kind of thing that I, you know, um, basically, every, every, every, uh, you know, uh, European leader who reaches out, I try to help. **[0:21:31] Nicolai Tangen:** You, uh, um, continuing on the the topic of, uh, ramping and scaling, you you wrote the book on on Blitzscaling, right? And um, does that playbook work for for AI, where the scarce resources are GPUs and and electricity, and and not users? **[0:21:49] Reid Hoffman:** um, well, uh, it is actually centrally like, I think, uh, if anything, the AI. So, first, back up. So for those who don't know, the reason I wrote this book, Blitzscaling, it was like, kind of, like, what is the lessons I learned from how Silicon Valley builds the technology companies of the future? And if you take the greater Silicon Valley area, like, like the entire metropolis area, it's seven plus million people, and that's not all in the tech industry. **[0:22:17] Reid Hoffman:** That's just, you know, in like everything in the Bay Area, which is, you know, a little over twice the size of Ireland. And why does more than half of the global Nasdaq come out of Silicon Valley? And there's a whole set of different things immigration we mentioned before, but one of them is it. It's this learning about how to build the technology companies, to create the platforms, the networks, the the the um, uh, the kind of the the global technologies of the future through these companies. **[0:22:49] Reid Hoffman:** And the answer is blitzscaling, and the two places in the world that I see demonstrate blitzscaling in really robust, general ways are Silicon Valley and China. Which is part of the reason why they're two technology hubs. And so it's like, look, the more that we have, especially in Europe, but like in the rest of call it Western democ- democracy, world of of ability to build places like Silicon Valley and to have tech center innovations. I think the better off the world is, the better off even Silicon Valley is. **[0:23:16] Reid Hoffman:** So that's the reason why I wrote it. Now, if you look at what's happening with, and the precise definition of blitzscaling is, um, uh, taking the risk of going big in an environment of uncertainty, right? That is exactly what's happening with AI. Like, if you look at, you know, the discussion around AI bubbles and everything else, it's like, well, we have such conviction that large scale training is gonna build such interesting learning machines. That we're investing, like, I think it's roughly like $60 billion to get a gigawatt of compute to do, and, you know, we're trying to get from multiple gigawatts in multiple companies to to be able to build this stuff in a way that that we can **[0:23:58] Reid Hoffman:** then deploy it through other gigawatts of compute in inference. Because this will have such a elevating effect to everything that we're doing in, um, think of it as, you know, um, work, life and society, um, and so, but and but yet, you know, it's like, well, you know, w- We see OpenAI making some money, and we see Anthropic making some money, but like, is there any of the rest of it? And that's exactly what Blitzscaling is, so that's what we're doing. **[0:24:27] Reid Hoffman:** Now. There are, you know, there's there's limited numbers of GPUs, um, that are growing as fast as they can. There's limited data centers growing as fast as they can, and there's limited energy. And, um, you know, interestingly, energy may end up being the the weird. Once again, almost back to the days of oil, the geopolitical issue that really, you know, kind of puts all this stuff together. But by the way, of course, you also need data, and you need talent, and critically, you need a loop of adoption. **[0:25:00] Reid Hoffman:** And all of those things are part of what, you know, kind of makes the AI revolution. So I think the if blitzscaling is, frankly, I'm thinking about writing some of this, um, up in the next couple months, is blitzscaling is. There's specifically, like all of the rules, uh, in the blitzscaling book are being applied, and there's more that are being developed and added. **[0:25:21] Nicolai Tangen:** Hm, another, um, another thing you talked about is the kind of the splinternet, the fragmentation of the internet. Uh, how are we seeing the same type of developments happening now in the AI world, i.e. the race between the US. and and China mainly? **[0:25:38] Reid Hoffman:** Well, um, there's this whole question around, like, generally speaking, it's good to have kind of just like a global trading system and a global communication system, a global telecom system and a global transport system. There's good to have a lot of stuff that's global. And, of course, you need to balance it out with various issues of national culture, control, sovereignty, et cetera, as ways of doing it. And the natural instinct that most people have, given how important the internet and digital is, is like, and very few do it, other than China, is to kind of say, well, I have my own, and it's kind of federated. **[0:26:17] Reid Hoffman:** And so I think that that the kind of splinternet, there's still a lot of tensions heading in that direction. It's again, I think, among the problems that the current administration, uh, is creating for the American people, American industry. Because, you know, I think they're, if anything, they're accelerating that. Um, you know, like, you know, the tariff policy is a good way to try to, um, incent other people to trade with China versus the US. I think that's a that's a deep danger. **[0:26:46] Reid Hoffman:** Um, and uh, and then similar on the kind of the internet side, so I think that's important. Now, that being said, roughly speaking, the things that are successful within global platforms are the things that get the broadest possible base. So one of the reasons why, you know, AI tends to be, um, most naturally trained out of English versus, call it any of the other Western languages, is because the vast majority of the content that's in the data and everything else allows that to happen. **[0:27:18] Reid Hoffman:** And matter of fact, in the when I when I was on the OpenAI board and got early access to GPT four, one of the things I did as kind of an experiment is I had GPT four. Write some poems in English, then write some poems in Hindi, and then write some poems in English and translate them into Hindi. And then I went to some of my poetically minded Indian friends and said, Okay, without it's kind of blind taste test, which of these poems are better? **[0:27:43] Reid Hoffman:** And all of the poems, literally the top half were the one that were written in English and translated to Hindi because of the the the ability to have that language generous there. And so that's gonna be one of the things that as we get to the splinternet, is gonna say, well, actually, in fact, we're gonna have to rely upon the languages, you know, for the inference engine and everything else that have the vast majority of the data for the training of these things. **[0:28:07] Reid Hoffman:** Doesn't mean that we can't ultimately get to a Norwegian system, a Swedish system, you know, um, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But like, it's, it's gonna be, um, uh, you. To get the high quality system, you're gonna have to start with some of the inferences. Now, in a classic European thing, you say, well, you don't have just do English, you can do English and Chinese and a few others. And we can be pluralistic in how to do it, in case there's any latent, you know, kind of cultural biases and so forth, to try to be kind of a little bit more of a pluralist understanding. **[0:28:38] Reid Hoffman:** Which is one of the things that I love about what Europe's been doing in, you know, kind of the post World War II uh era. And that could be something that is, um, that is an a a feature, uh, rather than a challenge, uh, for what's going on. But, you know, you have to kind of navigate those things. And so I think the um, the tendency is the splinternet will still be there, but need to be resisted substantially in at least some vectors. **[0:29:03] Nicolai Tangen:** Hm, hm. When you look at the the amount of capital flowing into data centers and chips and energy, and and the circularity, uh, and the new kind of debt issuance and so on, what are what are your reflections when it comes to the speed of the development here, So speed of magnitude? **[0:29:20] Reid Hoffman:** it, yeah, so it's a natural worry to say something like NVIDIA invests in a company, uh, puts a bunch of money in the company. The company then buys more NVIDIA chips, and then NVIDIA invests in other countries that buy more NVIDIA chips. And this would be a classic bubble if the only use of those NVIDIA chips was doing things that didn't have, kind of, call it, were separate economic productivity. Like, if, um, if you didn't have this view where, like, part of what I think is coming with AI is we're gonna get intelligence with a scale and and, uh, 24 by 7 availability of electricity, so intelligence is gonna be as available as electricity. **[0:30:05] Reid Hoffman:** Well, that's from these compute centers. And so the fact that they're building all this compute isn't like its own little isolated bubble that's gonna collapse. It actually is creating the compute infrastructure that we already see, even in these very early days, a tremendous amount of demand for cause. Like at a company like Microsoft, you know, each GPU is kind of being allocated between, like inference, where customers want it, cause basically you could sell all everything to customers. **[0:30:32] Reid Hoffman:** Two is, um, in, uh, internal groups that wanna do R D themselves in building it, and three, you know, it's kind of like, uh, groups that wanna do, um, uh, you know, like, deploy things in terms of their products. So you, you've got, you've got, um, you've got all, all, all these computing competing for it. And so even if you suddenly ramped down the training speed a great deal, there would still be a lot of economic, uh, demand for the compute. **[0:31:04] Reid Hoffman:** Now, a little bit of how I think about this is it's kind of I. I don't think the AI bubble as getting to a collapse is, you know, is actually in fact a real worry. The AI bubble leading to potential pricing corrections is definitely, of course, possible. Because you go well, but look, look at the astronomical prices and and so. And you say, well, but actually, in fact, you know, like, if you created a data center for, call it $60 billion, you know, you're still gonna run the data center. **[0:31:35] Reid Hoffman:** You can, and you can run it profitably, but you may not run it profitably from a cost basis of $60 billion. If all of a sudden, you know, like, like, the the the level of demand takes the premium off it, right? It could be that as a as a risk, but that's not a bubble correction. That doesn't create the kind of contagion and debt and banking and other kinds of things that people most worry about with bubbles. **[0:32:00] Reid Hoffman:** And that's the reason why I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm not that, uh, concerned with the current worries about, you know, is it circular around trips or other kinds of things? Because what I actually see it as kind of a evolution takeoff to getting a compute infrastructure there that we have intelligence available essentially with the same scale and, uh, an always-on availability that electricity has. **[0:32:32] Nicolai Tangen:** Hm, hm. Related to this, what do you think the primary computing device will look like in the future? **[0:32:39] Reid Hoffman:** Huh? Um, I'm not sure. Um, **[0:32:45] Nicolai Tangen:** I mean, the kind of stuff that, uh, Johnny Ives is working on, Apple AI is working on some things. Have you have you had a look at it? **[0:32:52] Reid Hoffman:** I haven't. Um, the Johnny Ive, uh, got purchased, uh, in the company after I was on the board. Um, the um, like, it's a little bit of kind of, like, classically with technology, is like, will there be something that surprises you? The answer is absolutely yes. Um, can you predict the surprise? Much harder and an easy way to look foolish. Um, I do think that there's a real value in all of the scale compute that's going on. **[0:33:20] Reid Hoffman:** So the fact that there's a tremendous amount happening through massively centralized data servers is, I think, a continuing trend. Now, that being said, you know, like, for example, take a little bit of what the electric vehicle revolution is. Electrical vehicle revolution is not just electric, it's a and, you know, the green and all the rest. But it's also putting a data center with sensors on wheels, and that data center with data center with sensors means all kinds of things. **[0:33:49] Reid Hoffman:** That doesn't mean autonomous vehicles, but it also means a much more real-time map for, you know, mobil- mobility, um, uh, emergency management, you know, a bunch of other things that are all there. I mean, imagine, like, for example, you have a whole bunch of autonomous vehicles and you need to get the emergency vehicle through. Currently, if it's got gridlock on a highway, you just kinda hodge drive on the side, the side of the road, side streets, et cetera, et cetera. **[0:34:14] Reid Hoffman:** You literally could go AVS, you know, clear the way, and they all kinda go okay and then clear a channel and the fire trucks can get through, the ambulances can get through, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, this is all part of all of that part of revolution. And, of course, that will have a lot of local compute and local compute areas. Now, I guess what I would say is, I think it's too early for the whole glasses revolution being the next social thing. **[0:34:39] Reid Hoffman:** I mean, variety of companies are doing some pretty interesting work there. Um, uh, I don't know about these pins and other things. I mean, the classic thing tends to be is, hey, if it works pretty well with your phone, we're all pretty acculturated to the phone, right? So, um, so what does that mean? Exactly? Is kind of an interesting question. I do think that the notion of, like, an always-on AI assistant for all of us is just a question of when and how. **[0:35:07] Reid Hoffman:** Um, than than if, um, because, you know, the kind of, um, like, for example, I don't know if, if, if your listeners track the fact that, you know, I'm one of these people who made a re a digital version of myself, Reid AI, and have demoed it in various ways. And part of what I was doing that is cause normally, when people talk about deep fake, they they tend to say, Oh, that's just bad. It's like it's imitation, it's gonna be used for, like, cyber hacking and phishing and and political misinformation. **[0:35:34] Reid Hoffman:** And oh, and by the way, those are all legitimate issues, uh, serious ones, um, but I was like, Okay, let's play with it, cause there's always something we can steer towards that's good. And one of the things I realized by creating Reid AI is that it's a small number of years where, like, voicemail goes away. Because what happens when, when, when someone calls Nikolai, Nikolai AI answers and says, Hey, you know, da, da, da, and then it says, Oh, it's Reid, and oh, this is really important. **[0:36:03] Reid Hoffman:** Let me see if I can interrupt him. Hold on, let me get I'll get like, hold on a second, let me, second, he's like, No, actually, he's in a board meeting right now. Um, can I take a message? He'll probably be able to call you back. I don't know, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, would that work for you? You know, that's what it's gonna become, right, as part of it. And by the way, part of the kind of the the digital avatar version is it's it's the representation of you in terms of how you're doing it. **[0:36:25] Reid Hoffman:** And so that's, you know, part of what I think is saying. And that will also be edge compute. And so you're asking, what are the AI devices of the future? And it's kind of like every single device that has a has anything of compute capability will start adding AI to it. And some devices that don't currently have compute capability will have compute capability added into them. Um, in order to do it, like, for example, you can imagine, you know, pretty easily, like washing machines as part of being green and saving electricity. **[0:36:53] Reid Hoffman:** You kind of say, Hey, just set it up to run. When the grid has already got a, you know, has already got a surplus of energy. And so I'm being green about, you know, using energy that that is otherwise unused and not creating the spikes that cause the whole expense. And then, and then you'll have, you know, simple compute in your washing machine and dryer, you know, as as instances of doing that. So anyway, so, like, I think perhaps the answer is actually everywhere, as I think about your question, **[0:37:26] Nicolai Tangen:** I think it's just so much fun to be alive, so exciting. No, **[0:37:30] Reid Hoffman:** yes, no, no, it's it's look we're. We've created the most amazing technology in human history, more, uh, b- better learning, uh, device than the book, et cetera. Now, of course, it builds on them, but it's just it's, um, you know, like, for example, people like to talk about, and I think this is mostly just people who misunderstand. Like, oh, is there's gonna be a huge spike in in energy because of use of AI electricity, and is that gonna be an and a climate impact? **[0:37:58] Reid Hoffman:** And the answer is, well, uh, if you're using intelligence, you can use intelligence to to to mitigate climate impact. And so as long as you're using some of this electricity, AI electricity for, um, for being smart about the climate, you're gonna be a net benefit. And as a tangible example, Google, which runs some of the best data centers in the world, when they applied their AI technology, figured out how to get savings of 40 in their data center. **[0:38:24] Reid Hoffman:** And that's not going to, you know, these old, inefficient grids and all the rest of this stuff, which would be a very natural way to to really get a lot more energy efficient using intelligence. **[0:38:34] Nicolai Tangen:** hm, read, uh, let's, uh, change tacks here a bit, uh, and um, we'll put in a little jingle here so that, uh, people understand that actually we are moving slightly to another side here. Um, now you are, you've seen so many entrepreneurs, uh, in your life, what? What are the common characteristics of great entrepreneurs? **[0:39:02] Reid Hoffman:** One good thing for many entrepreneurs is there isn't just one archetype, right? Since, you know, again, we're talking European, you know, there may be multiple Jungian archetypes, uh, for this, and, um, but, you know, important characteristics are to be super ambitious, right? Um, if cause you don't shoot for the stars, you don't even get to you, you can't get to the moon, um, as a way of doing it. To be both, um, like, like, kind of believe in, you know, that kind of huge outside capability, but also learning and adjusting. **[0:39:37] Reid Hoffman:** It isn't believe against any data and belief, but it's like it's a hey, I think I can do this. Um, as you know, one of the definitions of entrepreneurship is your plans outstrip your current resources. Um, cause almost by definition, that's true for all entrepreneurs, every stage along their entrepreneurial journey. Um, they have to be able to take risks smartly. Um, frequently, you know, the issue is like, Oh, just take risk, and it's like, no, no, no, like, like, risk blow you up all the time. **[0:40:05] Reid Hoffman:** But um, there is no entrepreneurship without risk. It's one of the challenges with a general European framework, cause they say, well, we wanna minimize risk because we really like the stability of what we have. And you're like, well, but there is no innovation without risk, and there is no innovation without making errors. And so you have to allow errors and risk, and you correct for them, right? You don't, you know, it doesn't mean you allow them forever, but you kind of you, you go out and and and you play. **[0:40:34] Reid Hoffman:** So that has to be another thing that they're capable of. Another one is you have to be able to learn the journey, and the learning the journey is lots of things. It's like, it's do you have a do you have a product or service idea? Can you assemble talent? can you assemble capital? Can you do the initial things to get your business together? Can you then be growing and scaling your company, which means scaling the executives and scaling yourself? **[0:40:56] Reid Hoffman:** Um, you know, and doing all of that, and and that kind of, um, we have this, this phrase in American English, multi-tooled athlete is really important now. Part of that for an entrepreneur, whether she or he is doing this, is to be kind of like, Okay, that's not my tool, but I can hire someone who has that tool. Cause you're assembling, like, part of it is entrepreneurial companies and entrepreneurs launch through networks. It's one of the reasons why, like, I helped set up, um, you know, kind of this program called Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, because it was like, you know, bring the Silicon Valley network and learnings into the UK. **[0:41:33] Reid Hoffman:** And we've done that occasionally in other places too, Japan, France, other thi- other places, and it's the cause. We want more of this kind of understanding. But you need that kind of not just with the founders, but you also need it with the executives and early employees and a bunch of other things in order to play that out. And the the the founder needs to be, you know, kind of knowing that that's what they're looking for. **[0:41:55] Reid Hoffman:** That they're always trying to assemble the strongest possible network to realize this vision. That is, uh, evolving and changing as the market changes and as scale changes. Um, and so that's the set of attributes you want. But sometimes, by the way, like, and then you get to where are the places you must have a c- complete edge? Well, some industries, like, you've gotta be a really good salesperson, some industries, you gotta be a real good finance person, some industries you have to be a really good engineer, some industries you have to be a really good product person. **[0:42:24] Reid Hoffman:** And one of the things I look at when different, uh, you know, companies is is this person a fit to this problem now? And as it scales? And so, like, for example, one of the the kind of, um, aphorisms that tends to, uh, circulate around Silicon Valley is, oh, you wanna invest in people who started coding before they were twelve years old. And by the way, that's a good sign for it. They're deeply immersed in software, they have reflexes, software tech, they understand it, they understand kind of what the different patterns are and how they're evolving. **[0:42:57] Reid Hoffman:** But like, for example, Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, was not that he's a design person. But so, you know, classic, that's a classic aphorism, there's a lot that's good to it. But I look at Brian, I go, he's perfect for Airbnb. Because he's approaching the marketplace, the experience of travel, the experience of staying somewhere, the experience of hosting somewhere as a design thing. Where he comes from RISD, and the design attribute is actually, in fact, the right attribute. **[0:43:25] Reid Hoffman:** So it's it's kind of different sets, and that's part of the reason why not just different fitness functions, but different kinds of ways are of entrepreneurs are better at different kinds of businesses. Some are very good at at enterprise, and others suck at enterprise, some are very good at consumer, and many suck at consumer. So it's kind of a different set of configurations. **[0:43:45] Nicolai Tangen:** So now you sit in your Greylock office and in iCom, how long time does it take for you to decide whether I'm worth backing or not? **[0:43:53] Reid Hoffman:** Well, it depends a little bit. Um, ideally, like I did with the Airbnb folks, I had reference checked them before I met with them, so I interrupted them. I think it was a few minutes into the pitch and I said, I'm gonna make you an offer to invest, let's you t you t take the rest of this pitching session as a work session, and let's let's work together on this stuff. So you get to see me, I get to see you, we can see if this is a good match. **[0:44:19] Reid Hoffman:** And it's one of the reasons why, you know, they, uh, they declined a financing offer that was twice my valuation, uh, in order to work with me. Because they said, Hey, this is like, he is actually helping us solve these problems, that's actually, in fact, really valuable. So that, you know, can happen. Airbnb is an example. Um, you know, Zynga, um, uh, Facebook, um, you know, these are other companies that I, you know, basically made an investment decision in the first minutes in. **[0:44:47] Reid Hoffman:** Um, sometimes it takes days, um, because sometimes you've got a sense of, okay, um, I need to reference check afterwards, sometimes it's okay. I wonder what the competitive landscape looks like here, or are there other people developing technology like this, or do I think that this technology will bear fruit at the right sequence? Because usually, the like, the ideal thing in a venture investment is for my kind of style is at day zero. It looks crazy, like some of my partners thought Airbnb was crazy. **[0:45:23] Reid Hoffman:** At year two and three, it looks like feasible, and year five, it looks five to seven, looks obvious, right? Is kind of the is kind of, and so you go, okay, well, that's your timeframe for the evolution. Now, occasionally it's longer, like one of the the Greylock investments is Roblox, and that took longer. You know, it does happen, um, but it's like, that's kind of a classic timeframe, and AI is obviously compressing this in some ways. **[0:45:46] Reid Hoffman:** Um, th- so this is a pre-AI kind of, uh, heuristics on timeframe. Um, **[0:45:51] Nicolai Tangen:** now you said, you s you said, uh, that it's more damaging to pass on a great investment than to back a poor one. And I guess in the old day, it was about protecting your downside, then in the venture capital world, it was about not missing out on the big thing. But it seems like the whole world is now moving into the VC way of thinking, we must not miss out on the next great thing. But instead of the tickets being $1 million, they're like $500 million, right? **[0:46:14] Reid Hoffman:** yeah, no, exactly. Um, well, it's still true that on the venture world, and generally speaking, investing in tech. If you can get into some of the great ones, that's all that matters, and missing one of those matters a lot more. Now. That doesn't mean if you're presented with 20 investments and none of them are are the great ones and you put all your money into that, that it's not going to be horrific for you, right? You have to get some of the great ones. **[0:46:36] Reid Hoffman:** Like, the corollary to that statement is if you're not getting some of the great ones, better not to play at all right. And so, and that's one of the reasons why people tend to, you know, a lot of capital goes towards open AI, goes towards Anthropic, you know, goes towards, you know, the ones that they go. Well, these ones I think are very, very likely to work, um, you know, kind of as a direction, and so um, but I th- So I think it's still the case that it's, you know, like, if I think this could be one of the great ones, then I tend to have to talk my way out of investing than talk my way into investing. **[0:47:20] Reid Hoffman:** Um, but the but the challenge of that is that, you know, you have to have a pretty good, sharp edge about is it really possibly one of the great ones? I mean, like, more or less, like, you see all kinds of silly stuff where people talk themselves into things where you're like, no. Like, the the universe in which that's one of these great tech investments is kind of the universe in which, like, you know, 30 volcanoes in the in the world go off at the same time. **[0:47:49] Reid Hoffman:** It's not po- It's not impossible that that happens, but, oh my god, it's a totally different world. And so, um, uh, and so you have to have a good sense of is it actually, in fact, realistically possible? Um, and if so, then, you know, with some energy on it. Cause the vast majority of companies obviously fail, and the vast majority of compa- companies do not become industry-defining, transforming companies. **[0:48:13] Nicolai Tangen:** And the vast majority of venture capital companies don't make particularly much money, but a few at the very top make it a heck of a lot of it, right? Because they get because they get the first pick, I guess, the mayonnaise, Well, it's it or what is the mayonnaise? **[0:48:26] Reid Hoffman:** well, so, um, the the McKinsey did a study a couple decades ago, and they found that what happened is the top tier Silicon Valley venture firms. They didn't deliberately, they don't directly collaborate with each other, but they tend to to to signal and draft off each other. And that's, you know, one of the things where identifying the really top companies and top tier teams, it's like a it's it's again. One of the ways to analyze Silicon Valley investing is through networks, networks, entrepreneurs, networks of of executive talent, but also networks of angel investors and networks of venture capitalists. **[0:48:56] Reid Hoffman:** And it's Tell us about that network. **[0:48:57] Nicolai Tangen:** te- tell it, tell, tell us about your PayPal network. **[0:49:00] Reid Hoffman:** Oh, right, um, well, so, um, uh, I thank you. I usually refer to it as PayPal network, as you know, most people refer to it as PayPal Mafia. It's like, it's not criminal, it's a network. Um, the um, so, one of the things that made the PayPal network so noteworthy is PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, which was kind of the, you know, the kind of the at the kind of the the the, you know, kind of the mid to kind of two thirds of the way through the internet. **[0:49:29] Reid Hoffman:** Winner, um, maybe midway. And so you ended up with all these people who had some money and believed in the internet and would go and create new companies. LinkedIn, my own, mostly YouTube, you know, Yelp, whole number of different companies got created in this time. And, um, and then the ability to do angel investing in a variety of these, in a variety of these companies. And that was part of the reason why it was viewed to be such an awesome network. **[0:49:56] Reid Hoffman:** Because what we would do in, you know, 2003 is we'd be calling each other saying, Hey, did you see this? the did you see this company? Uh, this project, this looks really good, it could be one of the things that's really good. Um, you know, that's part of how, you know, I reconnected with, uh, Chad and Steve at YouTube, you know, and other things. And that's part of what made, um, you know, kind of, uh, so many good companies, uh, coming out of that, uh, initial group of, uh, founders and investors from the PayPal network. **[0:50:27] Reid Hoffman:** Um, and I think they, you know, the the um, you know, it's one of the things that has now been, cause these get learned in Silicon Valley, is that part of what happens is, you know, venture capital firms go and look at them, they say, Hey, you know, will this company x, you know, say Roblox, be a generative thing of a bunch of new people coming out? And which I should I should go see which of the people are gonna come out of that and be the next generation of founders and so forth, and and I should go research them. **[0:50:54] Reid Hoffman:** And that's another of the learning loops in Silicon Valley. So, anyway, PayPal was one of the early icon ones. **[0:51:01] Nicolai Tangen:** hm. If you were to look at, um, your most successful investments, PayPal, Facebook, Airbnb and so on, what was it that you saw that other people didn't see? Is there a general theme? **[0:51:15] Reid Hoffman:** Um, well, I'd say broadly, including LinkedIn, of course, in this, you know, as Yeah, of an investor and entrepreneur, course. um, is I saw? I saw why a number of smart people would think it was a dumb investment, and I saw why I thought I was right. So it's the contrarian and right thing. So, um, you know, in the case of LinkedIn, everyone thought there was no such thing as a professional network. People wouldn't put their, you know, their CVs online. **[0:51:45] Reid Hoffman:** There wouldn't be a utility of collaborating with people other than a currently in your company, et cetera, et cetera. And so that, you know, that was a LinkedIn thing, and you couldn't ever get the network to scale to do it. In the Facebook case, people said, Oh, yeah, there's a lot of activity, but it's all college students, um, and they don't have any money, and college students, and sure, they'll, they're. You know, the amount of pure raw generation of time is important, but for college students, who's gonna pay for it? **[0:52:09] Reid Hoffman:** The advertising market's not very good, college students aren't gonna pay, business model's bad. Um, for Airbnb, it's, oh, it's really strange that, you know, uh, that you're gonna rent a room or apartment, or, you know, or or a house from a stranger. And what is the tru- and how do you build the trust and and how does that happen? And, you know, part of the the theory there is actually, in fact, there's such demand for better, more unique experiences than hotels, um, and at different price points and different locations. **[0:52:38] Reid Hoffman:** And and it enables a network of entrepreneurship in the hosts for doing it. That that will actually evolve to a kind of product that then becomes a brand name, like Xerox or Kleenex or that kind of stuff in terms of how it operates. Cause that people now refer to it as an Airbnb, um, as a as a way of doing it. Um, Zynga is like people actually wanna play casual games with each other. Gaming is not just a not just a hardcore. **[0:53:02] Reid Hoffman:** Like people say, well, no, no, this is a halo and a, you know, and the hardcore gaming is no, no, no. There's this new category of games that social networks enable, um, for for for how it is. And you basically go through, you know, almost all of my investments, and it's that I don't know. Here's why a bunch of smart people think it doesn't work, and here's what I, um, betting on that does work. Now, by the way, some of my failures are in that too, cause my bet was wrong, right? **[0:53:28] Reid Hoffman:** But but that's the but that's the thing that leads to the, you know, industry transforming successes. **[0:53:32] Nicolai Tangen:** hm, hm. Given all that, and given all your experience, what is your advice to young people? **[0:53:39] Reid Hoffman:** Uh, well, um, the longer version of it is my very first book is called The Startup of You, um, which came out of a commencement speech I gave to my high school, um, so it's precisely it's, it's, it's. Take all the entrepreneurial lessons that I learned from Silicon Valley. Cause, by the way, I think we're all becoming need to be much more entrepreneurial in times of disruption. Doesn't mean you need to start a company if it's right for you, great, but but only a small number of people should start companies. **[0:54:04] Reid Hoffman:** But you have to lead your career in a much more entrepreneurial way, as opposed to like the oh, I go apprentice at IBM, and then I work my way up, you know, you know, career ladder of type X within the company, and then we get a job at another company and so forth. And that's, but it's like industries are changing, job tracks are changing. You know, what is a marketer gonna look like in five and ten years versus what a marketer looks like today? **[0:54:25] Reid Hoffman:** Given AI is gonna be totally different, so you have to be entrepreneurial in learning and using the tools. And so that's part of the the kind of the the startup view on entrepreneurship of which there's a lot more depth in the startup view. But the central thing, of course, is the like, one of the things for the next X years that young people should pitch firms on is, I'm a native AI user. You need to be AI transformed. **[0:54:51] Reid Hoffman:** Here's the way that my experience with AI can come help you and your organization. Right? Um, and I think that's a very important thing to do because all of these companies are gonna be looking at these going, um, shit, we need this transformation. Who is AI native? And one of the things I gave this, uh, talk in Bologna a couple years back is, you know, you guys are generation AI. That's the thing you should be leaning into and deploying for your path to work and life success. **[0:55:20] Nicolai Tangen:** Good advice to generation AI. Uh, Reid, you kinda feels like part of generation AI as well. So, uh, it's been just tremendous to talk to you. Wow. What a what a story. What an experience. Just I I Been so much fun. **[0:55:34] Reid Hoffman:** I think we can you can opt to join it, which I'm trying to. I try to, you know, I try to use AI in new ways every week. **[0:55:40] Nicolai Tangen:** Absolutely. Well, I have I finished my name with AI, so I'm kinda part Of it. But, Uh, big thanks.