Reid was recently interviewed by Keith Ferrazzi, author of two notable books on relationships, Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back? Keith asked Reid about pivoting as the entrepreneur of your own career: “What do you think is more difficult in the pivoting process: Changing the nature of who you are, whether it’s a…
Are you (or someone you know) a college student leader dedicated to improving yourself, your networks, and your communities? Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha are pleased to announce The Start-Up of You Student Fellowship. This new program aims to accomplish two things: (1) recognize the most entrepreneurial student leaders in the world, and (2) empower them…
In the book we write that a career competitive edge emerges when you build assets in pursuit of real aspirations that account for the market realities. Single assets (skills, experiences, connections) in isolation don’t have much value. Consider Joi Ito, head of the MIT Media Lab. He was born in Japan but raised in…
Reid and Ben just wrote a long guest post at Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek blog about how to take intelligent career risk. We’re going to pick a winner from the person who leaves a comment on the post and answers these questions: – What change do you want to make in your career in…
In 1985, when Howard Schultz (current CEO of Starbucks) was preparing to launch coffee bars in America modeled after those already in Italy, he and his partners didn’t just launch the stores on a whim. They first did everything in their power to understand the dynamics of the market they were entering. They visited five…
Conventional wisdom among car companies used to be that you couldn’t talk about safety, because doing so might remind customers that you could die while driving. So the industry as a whole talked about anything else: styling details, new colors, faster engines, and so on. Except for one Swedish carmaker. Instead of shying…
Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on seeing the world from another person’s perspective. In relationships it’s only when you put yourself in the other person’s shoes that you begin to develop an honest connection. Discovering what people want, in the words of start-up investor Paul Graham, “deals with the most difficult problem…
After eBay acquired PayPal, the members of the PayPal executive team each moved on to new projects but stayed connected, investing in one another’s companies, hiring one another, sharing office space, and the like. There are no membership dues, no secret handshakes, no monthly meetings; just informal collaboration. Yet these connections have spawned some…
Careers, like start-ups, are punctuated with breakouts. On a typical résumé—and even on a LinkedIn profile—there’s a reverse chronological listing of jobs held, all presented in the same size type and font. But on its face this is misleading. Our professional lives are not a sequence of equally important jobs. There are always breakout projects,…
Relationships are living, breathing things. Feed, nurture, and care about them: they grow. Neglect them: they die. This goes for any type of relationship on any level of intimacy. The best way to strengthen a relationship is to jump-start the long-term process of give-and-take. Do something for another person. Help him or her. But how?…