Reid Hoffman

Working on key strategic issues day-to-day at Linkedin. My focus is broad strategy, innovation, and key initiatives. Linkedin connects the worlds professionals for information sharing, productivity, and success. Your professional network is how you stay competitive as a professional: sharing tips on work practices, benchmarks, and key tools. Your professional network is how you stay up to date on your industry: key trends, information, and transformations. Your professional network is how you get the best opportunities: a job, a client, a consulting contract, or other business connections. Linkedin helps you collaborate with your network on productivity, information, and success.

Greylock Partners works with entrepreneurs to build market-transforming companies. Current Greylock portfolio includes companies like Linkedin, Facebook, Workday, Airbnb, Pure Storage, Cloudera, Edmodo, Shopkick, Dropbox, Pandora, and SumoLogic. I represent Greylock on the boards of Airbnb, Edmodo, Shopkick, and Wrapp. James Slavet and I partner on Greylock's investment in Coupons.com.

My primary focus is world-class entrepreneurs with new categories of ideas with the possibility of massive scale. I also focus on companies in domains where my product and innovation experience applies strongly: consumer internet, enterprise 2.0, mobile, social gaming, online marketplaces, payments, SAAS, and social networks. I collaborate with Simon Rothman on Greylock's Marketplace initiative.

Getting a reference through someone I know is the best way to get attention from me as an investor.

Airbnb is the world’s largest community-driven hospitality company. Whether it’s a chic urban loft, a stylish treehouse, or an artist’s garden retreat, with unique listings in 34,000+ cities and 190+ countries, travelers can feel at home wherever they go. Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world — online or from a mobile phone.

Edmodo connects learners with the people and resources they need to reach their full potential. On Edmodo, teachers are at the center of a dynamic and engaging network that connects them to students, administrators and parents, and surfaces the world’s best resources and formative assessment tools that contribute to better learning outcomes. Founded in 2008 and used by 91 of the top 100 U.S. school districts, Edmodo was designed to protect the privacy and security of students and teachers by providing a closed, private platform in which they can collaborate, share content, and leverage educational apps to augment in-classroom learning. These powerful capabilities enable teachers to personalize learning for every student. Edmodo will always be free for teachers and students.

Xapo combines the convenience of an everyday bitcoin wallet with the security of a deep cold storage vault. By bringing together convenience that bitcoin users want everyday with the security they require for saving, Xapo is the most secure, reliable, and easy way to manage and store your bitcoin.

Evangelists and champions of the free and open web-platform, Firefox. Firefox allows consumers the experience they want, all software and internet companies to build extensions, and open-source developers to contribute freely and democratically. Firefox works to keep a free, open web -- both through its own platform and by inspiring other browsers to create open apis and platforms with great consumer experiences.

Kiva provides an entrepreneur's marketplace for social micro-lending. The entrepreneurs are pre-vetted by micro-finance organizations. They are then listed on Kiva's web marketplace, and interested and motivated lenders can lend money for the creation of businesses. It is a paradigm case of teaching to fish rather than giving fish.

QuestBridge is a revenue generating non-profit which now places more talented low-income youth into 28 top colleges including Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Amherst, MIT, Williams, and Yale. Approximately 1500 Quest students were accepted to our partner colleges in 2008 alone (146 at Stanford for instance, and 11% of the entering class of Amherst). .

QuestBridge envisions a world where America's leadership encompasses thoughtful and broad-minded decision makers drawn from every economic segment of society. QuestBridge revolutionizes the way leading colleges and universities recruit talented low-income students, and the way these students approach their once-in-a-lifetime educations and futures.

QuestBridge aims to create a singular place where exceptionally talented low-income students can navigate educational and life opportunities. QuestBridge recruits, develops, and supports motivated low-income students – beginning in high school through college to their first job – to be successful at America’s best colleges, graduate schools, and companies.