Rhymes with Cars

As I've mentioned in the past, one of the cool perks of working at Yahoo is having interesting luminaries from the industry come and speak about their successes, failures and general goings on around the industry. Yesterday, Reid Hoffman, the CEO of Linked and angel capitalist to everyoneandtheirmom.com (Flickr, Friendster, Facebook, Digg, Technorati, etc.) was here and gave a very interesting round table with Bradley Horowitz, our VP of Product Strategy. The conversation was a compelling discussion of LinkedIn, social networking, venture capitalists and other tid-bits of knowledge from such an accomplished person. Instead of summarizing the whole conversation, here are the bullets that I took away.

• With an undergrad at Stanford and a masters in Philosophy from Oxford, Reid has a big brain and an incredible vocabulary that seems to roll off of his tongue quite nicely. He used the word 'Frothy' to describe the current consumer Internet venture environment. I loved it.
• We are just scratching the surface of the consumer Internet and it will grow by leaps and bounds over the next 5 years.
• When making an investment, Reid looks at the market and makes certain that there is a significant difference in the company and it's competitors (Flickr to other photo sharing sites)
• Consumer Internet must relate to the 7 deadly sins to be successful - LinkedIn = Greed
• LinkedIn is trying very hard not mix a users business identity with their personal identity. Based on all of the issues with people not being hired based on their MySpace profile, this is a very good move.
• They probably won't add photos to LinkedIn due to EOE issues.
• As a rule of thumb, LinkedIn generally tries not to fuck up. It seems simple, but it is a good business lesson.
• Reid's rule of thumb for when he will forward a request for an introduction is when he feels that the recipient will thank him for it.
• A challenge that they are facing is that too many people use LinkedIn solely for job searches. How do you get them to look at LinkedIn as a tool to facilitate everything from investments to vacation plans and everything in between.
• Reid felt that Yahoo! Answers is the coolest thing that we have released in the last 18 months.
• He thought that one of the biggest issues that we have is our overall compatibility with Firefox. I don't think that anyone would argue that.
• Put the customer first and business second.
• Monster Networking was the best thing that he had ever seen a big company do for a little company. It justified the space and they launched a crappy product. How sweet is that?
• Invitation declines are awkward, but they are working on ways to make them more socially acceptable. I like that, as I felt like it gave me a reason to turn down invites of people that I don't know or don't know well. Also, I will be more cognizant of who I send invites to.
• He felt that there was a 70/20/10 rule to venture capitalists. 70% offer money, but a negative experience, 20% offer money, but add no value and 10% offer money and ad value. Find the 10%
• A venture investment is like a marriage based on a dinner and 2 PowerPoint slide shows.

And as an added highlight, Paul Stamatiou, Y!'s celebrity intern, posted pictures of my prematurely balding head all over Flickr. Note to self, sit behind Paul in future sessions.

technorati tags:yahoo, reidhoffman, linkedin

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