Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn Co-Founder, Network-Effects Investor, and AI Operator – BBN Times

Reid Hoffman is one of the few people in technology who has been a founder, a scale operator, a venture partner, a public-company director, and a working theorist of how networks grow. Born August 5, 1967, in Palo Alto and raised in Berkeley, he co-founded LinkedIn in 2003, sold it to Microsoft for $26.2 billion in 2016, joined that board, and later told the company he would not stand for re-election in 2026 so he could return to “founder mode.” He is a partner at Greylock Partners, a co-founder of Inflection AI and Manas AI, an early investor in Facebook and Airbnb, and the author of books that turned private playbooks into public language: The Start-up of You, The Alliance, Blitzscaling, Masters of Scale, Impromptu, and Superagency. Forbes has recently placed his fortune around $2.7 billion, driven by LinkedIn equity, Greylock carry, and later AI and mobility stakes. The through-line is not a single product. It is a theory. Reid Hoffman treats careers, companies, and platforms as networks whose value rises when the right people join and stay. LinkedIn made that theory a consumer habit. Greylock made it a portfolio. Inflection, OpenAI’s early board years, Microsoft, and now drug-discovery work
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