“Hard work isn’t enough, and more work is never the real answer.”

– Reid Hoffman

In this special episode, we explore the “10 Commandments for Startup Success” as taught by the one and only Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Twitter). Reid has been on the show before, and he is often referred to as “The Oracle of Silicon Valley” by tech insiders, who look at his company-building and investing track record (which includes Facebook, Airbnb, Zynga, Flickr, and more) with awe.

Reid is Co-Founder of LinkedIn, which has more than 300 million users and sold to Microsoft for $26.2B. Prior to that, he was Executive Vice President at PayPal, which was purchased by eBay for $1.5 billion. At PayPal, he was nicknamed “firefighter-in-chief” by CEO Peter Thiel. Noted venture capitalist David Sze says of Reid, “[he] is arguably the most successful angel investor in the past decade.” They are now both partners at Greylock Partners, a top-tier venture capital firm.

The “10 Commandments” in this episode are drawn from the entire first season of Masters of Scale, one of my favorite podcasts, also hosted by Reid. But that’s not all… there is plenty of new footage, including 6-10 new questions posed by yours truly to Reid, some of my own startup observations, and lots of great cutting-room floor material from people like Brian Chesky (Airbnb) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).

On Masters of Scale, Reid shares his theories on how companies scale from zero to a gazillion, and he explores them with famous founders. It’s one of the few podcasts that has a permanent home on my phone.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did!

Listen to it on iTunes.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing “save as.”

Want to hear another podcast featuring Reid Hoffman? — Listen to this prior conversation. In this episode, we discuss the habits and behaviors of highly successful people, using board games to develop strategy, the 3 types of CEOs, best lessons from his network, and much, much more (stream below or right-click here to download):

This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. I reached out to these Finnish entrepreneurs after a very talented acrobat introduced me to one of their products, which blew my mind (in the best way possible). It is mushroom coffee featuring chaga. It tastes like coffee, but there are only 40 milligrams of caffeine, so it has less than half of what you would find in a regular cup of coffee. I do not get any jitters, acid reflux, or any type of stomach burn. It put me on fire for an entire day, and I only had half of the packet.

People are always asking me what I use for cognitive enhancement right now — this is the answer. You can try it right now by going to foursigmatic.com/tim and using the code Tim to get 20 percent off your first order. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you’ll be disappointed.

This podcast is also brought to you by Headspace, the world’s most popular meditation app (with more than four million users). It’s used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace’s free Take10 program — 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It’s like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive, and it’s had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free for a few days and see what I mean.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Selected Links from the Episode

Connect with Reid Hoffman:

Masters of Scale | LinkedIn | Greylock Partners | Twitter

Reid’s last appearance on this podcast: The Oracle of Silicon Valley, Reid Hoffman (Plus: Michael McCullough)
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
The Joe Rogan Experience
5-Bullet Friday
The Muse
Bevel Shave System
Global Citizen Year
Y Combinator
Stripe
My angel investments
Uber
Eight Years after Eve.Com Collapsed, a Founder Returns to the Game with Minted by Dan Kaplan, VentureBeat
Idealab
Etsy
Kickstarter
10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: What I Learned by Ben Casnocha
Foot Faults and the Rage They Can Cause by Greg Bishop, The New York Times
Shopify
The Rome of Augustus, Harvard University
OODA loop
SoftBank
Ocean Spray
Google’s Best New Innovation: Rules Around ‘20% Time’ by Kathy Gersch, Forbes
Pure Software
Musk Launches Company to Pursue ‘Neural Lace’ Brain-Interface Technology, Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence
The original Netflix culture deck post at SlideShare
The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) by Joseph Campbell
Endeavor
Cemex
America’s Silent Jewish Majority: ‘If I Am Only For Myself, Then Who Am I?’ by Jeffrey E. Schwarz, Huffpost
The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Reid Hoffman Could Spend Hundreds of Millions to Fix Some of the Country’s Biggest Political Problems by Tony Romm, Recode
Moringa Leaf Powder
How Linkedin’s Reid Hoffman Jumped off a Cliff and Built an Airplane by Drake Baer, FastCompany
The Unemployed Philosophers Guild

Show Notes

Commandment 1: Expect rejection. [09:14]
Commandment 2: Hire like your life depends on it. It does. [19:26]
Commandment 3: In order to scale, you have to do things that don’t scale. [25:37]
Commandment 4: Raise more money than you think you need — potentially a lot more. [36:18]
Commandment 5: Release your products early enough that they can still embarrass you. Imperfect is perfect. [44:45]
Commandment 6: Decide. Decide. Decide. [1:00:16]
Commandment 7: Be prepared to both make and break plans. [1:03:13]
Commandment 8: Don’t tell your employees how to innovate. [1:07:21]
Commandment 9: To create a winning company culture, make sure every employee owns it. [01:12:32]
Commandment 10: Have grit and stick with your hero’s journey. [1:23:22]
Bonus Commandment 11: Pay it forward. Use the momentum of your own success to move the success of others. [1:26:03]
What would Reid’s billboard say? [1:29:25]
Books most gifted and influential. [1:29:48]
What has Reid changed his mind about in the last few years? [01:30:52]
Recent purchase of a hundred dollars or less that has had the most positive impact on Reid’s life. [1:32:09]
Advice for a college senior about to enter the “real” world. [1:32:36]
Reid’s advice for a thirty-year-old version of himself. [1:33:15]
Favorite failures? [1:33:58]
The worst advice Reid hears commonly dispensed in his field. [1:34:54]
What’s an unusual habit or an absurd thing that Reid loves? [1:35:56]
Rules or criteria that lead to a “yes” from Reid. [1:36:40]

Selected Links from the Episode

Show Notes

People Mentioned