From: allin
Reed Hoffman, known as a venture capitalist, board member at Microsoft, and co-founder of LinkedIn, worked alongside David Sacks at PayPal [00:02:11]. He shared his early memories and contributions to the company, highlighting the unique environment that fostered innovation and resilience.
Early Days and Contributions
Hoffman recalled meeting David Sacks through Peter Thiel, who had hired Sacks from Stanford [00:02:41]. Sacks quickly grasped the “game” PayPal was playing, and Hoffman noted that each executive made key contributions to PayPal’s success [00:02:59]. He specifically learned from Sacks’s “maniacal focused on the kind of the the cycle of how the product worked on eBay” [00:03:09].
David Sacks confirmed that Hoffman was on the board of Confinity (which later became PayPal) and then joined full-time [00:03:48]. He described Hoffman as PayPal’s “Emissary” who managed to “keep all these dogs at Bay” — referring to larger entities like Visa, Mastercard, eBay, and Citibank that were trying to challenge the company [00:04:09]. Hoffman was “in charge of making sure that these existential issues didn’t blow up on us” [00:04:36].
Culture and Key Moments
Hoffman noted that PayPal’s recruitment strategy, led by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, focused on individuals with “tremendous focus on on… intense learning curves” and high performance [00:05:11].
One of his most striking memories involved the merger with X.com (which became PayPal) and Elon Musk:
“literally the first meeting I had with Elon is Bill Harris is a complete disaster we need to fire him right away like like before we get to the first board meeting we need him fired and I’m like uh Elon you need to talk to Peter about this” [00:06:18] This event, jokingly referred to as “The Nut House coup,” involved plans formulated at Antonio’s Nut House in Palo Alto [00:07:01].
Post-PayPal and AI Investments
Hoffman became one of the founding investors in OpenAI and was an early donor [00:07:45]. He led OpenAI’s first commercial series, investing from his foundation even though traditional investor metrics like a go-to-market plan or business plan were not yet in place [00:21:49]. He did not receive shares for his initial $10 million donation to the non-profit aspect of OpenAI [00:24:26].
He continues to invest in AI, noting he has been doing so since 2014-2015 [00:17:00]. He believes there will be winners in both open-source and proprietary AI models, and that the future will involve “networks of models” rather than a single “God model” [00:15:25], [00:18:58].# Reed Hoffman’s Role in PayPal’s History
Reed Hoffman, known as a venture capitalist, board member at Microsoft, and co-founder of LinkedIn, worked alongside David Sacks at PayPal [00:02:11]. He shared his early memories and contributions to the company, highlighting the unique environment that fostered innovation and resilience.
Early Days and Contributions
Hoffman recalled meeting David Sacks through Peter Thiel, who had hired Sacks from Stanford [00:02:41]. Sacks quickly grasped the “game” PayPal was playing, and Hoffman noted that each executive made key contributions to PayPal’s success [00:02:59]. He specifically learned from Sacks’s “maniacal focused on the kind of the the cycle of how the product worked on eBay” [00:03:09].
David Sacks confirmed that Hoffman was on the board of Confinity (which later became PayPal) and then joined full-time [00:03:48]. He described Hoffman as PayPal’s “Emissary” who managed to “keep all these dogs at Bay” — referring to larger entities like Visa, Mastercard, eBay, and Citibank that were trying to challenge the company [00:04:09]. Hoffman was “in charge of making sure that these existential issues didn’t blow up on us” [00:04:36].
Culture and Key Moments
Hoffman noted that PayPal’s recruitment strategy, led by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, focused on individuals with “tremendous focus on on… intense learning curves” and high performance [00:05:11].
One of his most striking memories involved the merger with X.com (which became PayPal) and Elon Musk:
“literally the first meeting I had with Elon is Bill Harris is a complete disaster we need to fire him right away like like before we get to the first board meeting we need him fired and I’m like uh Elon you need to talk to Peter about this” [00:06:18] This event, jokingly referred to as “The Nut House coup,” involved plans formulated at Antonio’s Nut House in Palo Alto [00:07:01].
Post-PayPal and AI Investments
Hoffman became one of the founding investors in OpenAI and was an early donor [00:07:45]. He led OpenAI’s first commercial series, investing from his foundation even though traditional investor metrics like a go-to-market plan or business plan were not yet in place [00:21:49]. He did not receive shares for his initial $10 million donation to the non-profit aspect of OpenAI [00:24:26].
He continues to invest in AI, noting he has been doing so since 2014-2015 [00:17:00]. He believes there will be winners in both open-source and proprietary AI models, and that the future will involve “networks of models” rather than a single “God model” [00:15:25], [00:18:58].