Reid Hoffman

His parents were lawyers who divorced before his first birthday, and Hoffman grew up in Palo Alto absorbing Silicon Valley's culture directly rather than moving into it later. He studied symbolic systems and cognitive science at Stanford, graduating in 1990, then won a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford and took a philosophy degree in 1993, planning at one point on an academic career. He turned instead to Apple and then Fujitsu, working on early online services before the internet had much of a mainstream audience, then co-founded a dating platform, SocialNet, in 1997 that never took off the way he wanted. What did take off was the network he had been building the whole time, not the company.

That network became LinkedIn, which he co-founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 as a professional networking site nobody else was building. He joined PayPal's board at its founding, then served as chief operating officer, absorbing the operational habits of the group later called the PayPal Mafia. When LinkedIn went public in 2011, his stake was worth roughly 2.34 billion dollars; Microsoft bought the whole company for 26.2 billion in 2016, and Hoffman joined its board the following year. He moved into venture capital at Greylock Partners in 2009, funded Airbnb's first round, personally introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel in a meeting that became Facebook's first outside investment, and by 2012 Forbes ranked him third among tech investors.

Hoffman solicited donations for the MIT Media Lab from Jeffrey Epstein and met him on MIT's campus in 2013; a released 2014 email showed Hoffman discussing "ice cream" for "the girls" tied to Epstein's circle, and 2023 reporting placed him on Epstein's private island, which he said was for fundraising purposes he did not know the full nature of. He also funded a 2017 disinformation operation targeting an Alabama Senate race without fully vetting its methods, and later apologized publicly for it. Both episodes sit oddly against a public identity built on "blitzscaling" and networked trust — a philosopher-investor whose signature books argue that alliances and reputation are the real infrastructure of a career, twice caught trusting the wrong alliance.

As of 2026 Hoffman sits on Microsoft's board, has scaled back his day-to-day role at Greylock, and keeps building: Inflection AI, largely absorbed by Microsoft in a 650-million-dollar 2024 staffing deal, and Manas AI, a drug-discovery venture co-founded with Siddhartha Mukherjee in January 2025. Forbes puts his net worth near 2.7 billion dollars. He resigned from OpenAI's board in March 2023 over conflicts of interest, and has become a visible funder of Democratic causes, including E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit against Donald Trump. Whether the Epstein disclosures reshape his reputation is still unfolding, not yet settled either way.

Reid Hoffman's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• LinkedIn company
  Co-founded December 2002, launched May 2003; sold to Microsoft for $26.2 billion in 2016 2003
• The Start-Up of You book
  With Ben Casnocha; argued individuals should manage careers like entrepreneurs 2012
• Masters of Scale other
  Long-running podcast interviewing entrepreneurs and leaders, launched May 2017 2017
• Blitzscaling book
  With Chris Yeh; on rapid-growth startup strategy 2018
• Inflection AI company
  Co-founded with Mustafa Suleyman; core staff hired by Microsoft for $650 million in 2024 2022

• 1990 aged ~23 Graduates Stanford with a degree in symbolic systems
• 1993 aged ~26 Completes a philosophy degree at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar
• 2000 aged ~33 Joins PayPal's board, later becoming COO
• May 5, 2003 aged 35 Launches LinkedIn
• 2009 aged ~42 Joins Greylock Partners as a venture capital partner
• 2011 aged ~44 LinkedIn goes public
• June 2016 aged 48 Microsoft acquires LinkedIn for $26.2 billion
• March 2023 aged 55 Resigns from OpenAI's board
• January 2025 aged 57 Co-founds Manas AI for AI-driven drug discovery

• Elon Musk b. 1971
  Engineer and entrepreneur whose companies have advanced electric vehicles, reusable rockets, and neural interfaces. PayPal Mafia colleague
• Mark Zuckerberg b. 1984
  Co-founder of Facebook who built the world's largest social media platform and reshaped global communication. introduced him to Thiel and Facebook's first funding
• Peter Thiel b. 1967
  PayPal co-founder and first outside investor in Facebook whose contrarian views shaped Silicon Valley culture. PayPal Mafia colleague
• Sam Altman b. 1985
  Technology executive and investor whose leadership in generative artificial intelligence has had major but still-unsettled historical consequences. fellow OpenAI board member