Reid Hoffman

An accomplished entrepreneur, executive and angel investor, Hoffman has played an integral part in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, including LinkedIn and PayPal. He possesses a unique understanding of consumer behavior and the dynamics of viral businesses as well as deep experience in driving companies from the earliest stages through periods of explosive growth.

Reid joined Greylock Partners in 2009. His areas of focus include consumer Internet, enterprise 2.0, mobile, social gaming, online marketplaces, payments, and social networks. Reid likes to work with products that can reach hundreds of millions of participants and businesses that have network effects.

Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service, in 2003. LinkedIn is thriving with more than 63 million members in 200 countries around the world and a diversified revenue model that includes subscriptions, advertising and software licensing. Hoffman led LinkedIn through its first four years and to profitability as Chief Executive Officer.

Prior to LinkedIn Hoffman served as executive vice president at PayPal, where he was a founding board member. At PayPal he was responsible for all external relationships, including payments infrastructure, business development, international, government and legal. Reid was instrumental to PayPal’s acquisition by Ebay and responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo.

Reid is a board observer at Airbnb and Swipely, an advisor to Groupon, a director at Zynga, Mozilla Corp., Shopkick, Wrapp, Edmodo, and Kiva.org, and the Executive Chairman at LinkedIn. He is an angel investor in numerous influential Internet companies, including Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Ning, Six Apart and Zynga.

Hoffman earned a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a Bachelor’s degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, where he graduated with distinction. In 2010 Reid was the recipient of an SD Forum Visionary Award and named a Henry Crown Fellow by The Aspen Institute.