Technology Entrepreneur biography
Reid Hoffman
A founder and investor whose career centers on professional networks and technology companies.
Photo: U.S. Secretary of Defense · CC BY 2.0 · Cropped for display
A career in connected services
Reid Hoffman is a co-founder of LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock. His work combines starting companies, helping them develop and writing about entrepreneurship. Before LinkedIn, he served as an executive at PayPal. This placed him inside the development of a payments business whose usefulness depended on connections between participants.
That sequence gives his career a particular continuity. Online payments and professional identity all depend on how people connect through a service. In each case, the product becomes more useful as it can support relationships between participants. Hoffman’s subsequent investing career extended that interest beyond companies he personally founded.
Sources [1]
LinkedIn and professional identity
LinkedIn was founded in 2003. It organized online networking around professional identity, employment and business relationships. A profile could serve as an enduring professional presence, while connections made it possible to discover people and opportunities through an existing network.
Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn on December 8, 2016. LinkedIn’s corporate announcement confirmed the close of the transaction. Microsoft subsequently appointed Hoffman to its board on March 14, 2017. These milestones document a move from establishing a professional service to participating in the governance of a larger technology company.
Investing, writing and explaining scale
Hoffman joined Greylock in 2009. The firm describes a focus on early-stage products with network effects. Rather than presenting his career solely as the LinkedIn story, this record places him in a broader network of founders and products. An investor can participate across several companies, while a founder must make decisions about a single organization’s direction and execution.
His official website also presents him as an author and host, with published work on careers, company growth and artificial intelligence. Books and conversations give him a way to explain ideas drawn from founding and investing to audiences beyond the companies themselves. The three strands remain connected: building businesses provides experience, investing broadens the range of situations he sees, and writing makes those observations available for discussion.
A few turning points
Career milestones
The evidence behind the account
Sources & further reading
The linked source material was checked on October 13, 2026. Roles and business relationships may change. Source numbers refer to the sections above.
- GreylockReid Hoffman
- LinkedInMicrosoft completes acquisition of LinkedIn
- Reid HoffmanReid Hoffman — official website
- MicrosoftMicrosoft announces addition to board and quarterly dividend
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