Reid Hoffman

He's like, oh, so they get their work done slowly because, you know, like you push them because they're trying to get the one that's actually like more. They spend too much time working. You're like, oh, that means they're unintelligent about how they do their work?

Right. So you can push them into where they're like, yeah, they can get a little disorganized when they're stressed. Okay, great. Right, and then you can, because when you get that from reference one, then when you're calling reference two, you say, oh, I heard that the person is disorganized. Like, can you tell me a little bit about that? Mm-hmm.

Yes. So no entrepreneur wins at every game. Generally speaking, as an entrepreneur, you should try to play the games that you have a massive competitive edge on. Same thing is true. So some people, for example... Like take Anil Bhusri at Workday, right? He is thoughtful, intentionally cultural building, very professional. So it's a HR product for work.

His contrarian idea was going to the cloud and that people are going to do cloud software for the first time. I think it was 500 people that Workday hired. He would always do a cultural interview at the end to make sure that the first 500 people all kind of shared cultural things. So once you get through all the competence and all the rest of the stuff, he would make sure that was a fit.

And that's part of how you get cultural coherence. That's like one example, right? Another example, Elon is the – Like, I have a big idea and I convince myself 100% that it's absolutely going to be the case. Like, I am going to settle Mars. We're going to terraform Mars in our lifetimes, which is... No, it's impossible.

No human being on the planet, including Elon, is going to do that within Elon's lifetime, right? But I'm going to go all in. I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to be technologically sophisticated. I'm going to work against the odds, right, in order to make that work. That's a... You know, Anil, very professional, understands the workplace mark.

Elon, like, I think I was like the second person he pitched SpaceX to. And his pitch, though, to my defense was, I'm going to send a turtle to Mars. And I'm like, that's not a business. And you're competing with national governments and like Russian subsidized rocket programs and so forth. This is not a good equity. I was wrong. He was right. There's not a good equity, you know, kind of play there.

So it was an idea. And I'm going to send a turtle to Mars. And then it became, I'm going to send a gelatinous cube with plant seeds in it to Mars because they'll grow. I'll be the first person who will send life to Mars. And you're like, well, okay. Right. What did you think genuinely when he said that to you? I thought he'd gone off his rocker.

No, no. I've always thought of him as one of the world's great entrepreneurs. Always? Yeah. Yeah, all the way back to PayPal days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, he has done repetitively amazing things. Now, he pitches everything with the same level of certainty. Right. Like, you know, I have this idea for online banking. I have this idea for boring tunnels under cities. I have this idea for creating a pneumatic tube for Hyperloop to all of them.

He has the same level of I am 1000 percent right that this is like guaranteed to be part of the future. Right. And I, you know, and I may be the unique person to make it happen. Right. So you have to have some discernment. But his on-base batting is pretty good. For such major ideas. But it's not 100%. People kind of excuse that, though.

Um... He hires well. Matter of fact, you can't be a great entrepreneur and not ultimately hire well. I think some people are better hirers. Some people also have – like are the kind of people that people would work for forever. Elon tends to burn people out a lot. Like there's lots of – burnt out people in his wake.

And when you go and talk to those people, what you hear is some people say, that was the best work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again. And other people say, that was the worst work experience ever, and I never want to work for him again. So they're all, I never want to work for him again.

So as kind of a dynamic, because he basically looks at them as disposable parts and go as hard as you can. And then afterwards, you're out. Don't care. Because he goes so hard. Yeah, he goes hard. But he also thinks your only relevance to me is can you help me with my mission? And after you're done, after you can no longer help me with my mission, you're not relevant to me anymore.

What do you think of that approach? That's not my approach. LinkedIn mirrors my approach. Like literally I am referenceable by every entrepreneur that I've ever worked with, right, as a board member and as an investor, right, who, you know, even ones that I've like fired as CEO and so forth. Those people will say he was really good to work with on these things.

They may also have some critical things. There's no problem with that. But like literally like when I'm pitching an entrepreneur, I just like call anyone that I've worked with.

Because I try to work with people in a way that even when we're at a difficult moment because I disagree with them intensely about how well they're doing or what they're doing or something else, that I'm doing it in a collaborative, constructive way. And so my goal is to work with people, like anyone I want to work with, Brian Chesky, you know, Mark Pincus, et cetera.

I want to be able to work with them for, you know, the rest of our lives.

Yes. You're 100% right.

That is 100% correct. And look, I respect it. I understand the burn people out, like treat them as disposable assets that when they burn out, you just jettison them. And you can be very... Elon's not the only entrepreneur who is very successful doing that, right? Right.