A review of Eric Motley’s Madison Park In 2005, Eric Motley decided to leave his job at the White House, where he worked as Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. Like all departing White House staffers, Eric had an opportunity to pose for a photo with his boss, George W. Bush, to mark…
In working on the podcast Masters of Scale, I’ve come to a perhaps surprising conclusion. There are no true “masters of scale.” I believe we are all, at best, what I call “infinite learners” — people who not only enjoy learning, but need to be constantly learning on the job. This describes so many of the iconic…
Collusion. Corruption. Covfefe. In 2017, it was easy to get distracted — and distraught — by President Trump’s Category 5 tweetstorms and the news cycles they drove. And thanks to the connectedness we now experience through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we often feel every newsworthy event with both apocalyptic urgency and a sense of fatigue that can paralyze us…
It’s hard enough to be a Master of Scale; to earn that title, you have to have both the opportunity and skill to build a world-leading company or organization. Now imagine how difficult it is to be a 4-time Master of Scale — in two domains that are radically different. That’s exactly what Barry Diller…
In the past decade, the term “pivot” has become an integral part of the Silicon Valley lexicon. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that the place that gave birth to FailCon — a conference to learn about failure — would embrace the concept of “if at first you don’t succeed….” Yet most entrepreneurs think of pivoting too…
Some entrepreneurs start their journey with a detailed plan that they follow to the letter. Jeff Bezos, for example, always had a plan for how Amazon would leverage the infinite shelf space of the internet to become the “everything store.” Or consider that in 1980, when Studs Terkel asked a young bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger…
I’ve known Peter Thiel since we were undergrads at Stanford, when the most common phrase either of us used in our conversations was “How can you possibly believe that?” Yet despite disagreeing on so many topics and in so many ways, we made a great team — whether I was helping Peter build PayPal, or…
Uber recently named Dara Khosrowshahi as its new CEO. I’ve known Dara for a number of years, and Uber has made an excellent choice in picking him. Dara is a steady, capable, well-respected executive, which will be important as he works to turn around Uber’s woes, including multiple lawsuits, government investigations, a troubled culture, and most recently,…
In April 2015, a mother in Flint, Michigan concerned about the city’s seemingly tainted water supply contacted Marc Edwards, an engineering professor who had previously helped expose a similar issue in Washington DC. While the initial tests Edwards made on samples the woman provided revealed high levels of lead in Flint’s water, local officials and…
Entrepreneurship for the Sustainable Development Goals My keynote remarks at the UN General Assembly’s High-Level Event on Innovation and Technology – SDG Innovation. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Excellencies: Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here with you today. My name is Reid Hoffman. I’m the founder of LinkedIn and a partner at the…
This post is part of theBoardlist‘s #BeABetterBoard series of posts and interviews with leading CEOs and VCs from the tech industry. Thought leaders share what they’ve learned while serving and managing boards, what they wish they knew when they started, and what they’re focusing on now. Here are a few of my reflections. The ideal board…
Today, I am excited to announce our investment in Entrepreneur First. At Greylock, our mission has always been to back and support entrepreneurs who are building disruptive, market-transforming consumer and enterprise software companies. We focus on early stage startups and help scale their ideas on a global scale. By investing in EF, we are both investing…
I’m excited to share the news that Michael McCullough, MD is joining Greylock as an Entrepreneur in Residence. Michael and I overlapped at both Stanford and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and I was a Marshall Scholar. But I only met Michael when I returned to Silicon Valley and he was one of the entrepreneurs…
Every growing startup is surrounded by fires — whether issues of product, market, competition, or operational scalability. Smart entrepreneurs don’t try to fight every fire. Instead, they figure out which fires they can let burn — so they can focus on the ones they absolutely have to fight. It’s a delicate balance, because if you…
Silicon Valley has a remarkable track record of producing valuable technology companies. Of the 13 high-tech companies in the world that are worth over $100 billion, six of them hail from Silicon Valley. All of their headquarters sit in a 50-mile stretch from San Francisco to San Jose. Not bad for a region that accounts…