Reid Hoffman on how real friends make us better

Dialogues with Richard Reeves

What are friends for? To "help us be better versions of ourselves" is Reid Hoffman's answer. He has spent a lot of time thinking about the nature and importance of friendship for human flourishing. Reid is best known for his success as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist: he is co-founder of LinkedIn and PayPal, a partner at Greylock Partners and serves on the boards of Airbnb, Convoy, Edmodo, and Microsoft. The importance of relationships - networks, colleagues, friends, fellow citizens - runs through his philosophy and worldview. That is why he says that "entrepreneurship should include an embedded theory of human nature." Reid studied philosophy as a postgrad at Oxford and there's a strongly philosophical flavor to his work, and to our dialogue. At one point in the conversation he describes himself as a "predictive philosophical anthropologist", and I think by the end you'll see why. We discuss the value of philosophical thinking; the importance of what he calls an "embedded theory of human nature"'; the roles and responsibility of big tech and media companies: why the truth is slow and falsehood fast, and what we might do about that. We spend a lot of time unpacking why friendship plays such an important part in his ethical framework; our current political divides; the importance of truthfulness; and why he remains not a techno-utopian, but a techno-optimist. But we start with the question of why he has a Swiss Army knife in his car, and what that tells us about him.

Reid Hoffman

Podcast: Masters of Scale

Latest book: Blitzscaling, The Lightning-Fast Path to Building
Massively Valuable Companies

Website & blog: https://www.reidhoffman.org/

"Through friendship, a better version of myself"

"The Philosopher- Entrepreneur"

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/

Twitter: @reidhoffman

The Dialogues Team

Creator: Richard Reeves

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)