Reid Hoffman Quotes

In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you'll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.

In a startup, there have to be challenges. Otherwise, someone else would have done it already. And that's almost the most exciting part.

Entrepreneurs have a natural inclination to go it alone. While this do-it-yourself spirit can help you move forward, adding an element of collaboration into the mix can make you unstoppable.

The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won't start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.

Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right.

A lot of the entrepreneurs and founders have big dreams and are on a mission to build things that the world has never seen before.

The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind's problems. I believe that very much.

Innovation and creativity are the juiciest parts of running a business.

I'm also a big believer of being a scrappy entrepreneur. To be successful you don't have to have all this crazy start-up capital or a ton of knowledge. I think it's actually helpful sometimes to not know all the rules because that way it's easier to break them. And that's why it's so much easier for younger people, I think, to start companies that are challenging more traditional business models than older people. Especially if you're trying to do something good.

Silicon Valley tends to believe in the individual who creates a small group and does something big.

The reason that Google was such a success is because they were the first ones to take advantage of the self-organizing properties of the web. It's in ecological sustainability. It's in the developmental power of entrepreneurship, the ethical power of democracy.

When Facebook famously moved out to Palo Alto, there were people in the same house Facebook was based in working on different ideas. It is vital to remember that.

BuzzFeed started as a lab with a small team where we would play with ideas.

I like entrepreneurial people; I like people who take risks.

Not every innovation in transportation is going to come from government or even a large enterprise. There are smart people out there with tools and skills to come up with great ideas.

An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is.

If the idea is really new and unique and big, other people will all think it is bad and is going to fail.

I think like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Failure is a great teacher. At the same time, you must remember, success will never last... Whether it's tech or fashion, it must be for the customer.

I think entrepreneurs are born and not created, and so I think you see a lot of similarities among entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. Their backdrop may be very different, but their drive to create a business and to create jobs remains very much the same, whether it's in Silicon Valley or Kandahar or Kabul.

Innovation happens everywhere.

People are still very focused on the startup story: Risk-taking founders, with a bold idea, some capital and a network supportive environment, go out and take the shot on goal. But the problem is, this is no longer the truth about what makes Silicon Valley so special.

The essence of my way of doing business is to not accept the traditional way things are done.

Startups, by their nature, are entrepreneurial - testing new things, launching new products, and disrupting themselves. That's why you join a startup in the first place - to create, to stretch beyond your current capabilities, and to make an outsized impact.

Great founders live for chaotic moments.