The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Hoffman learned he was ousted from Socialnet's board via Series C paperwork
“Amongst the things they did is when we were raising the Series C round, the way that I learned that I was no longer going to be a board member was that the financing paperwork showed up, and that was just what was in the financing paperwork.”
Hoffman: Capitalism is a great technology but a mediocre philosophy
“I mean, capitalism is, you know, the thing I frequently say about capitalism is, is a great technology and a mediocre philosophy.”
Hoffman predicted web users would maintain distinct professional and social identities
“The way the world's going to change is everyone's going to have a real name identity on the world, on the web, where that real name identity is going to be in different categories. There's going to be a social identity. There's going to be a professional ident…”
Hoffman: Contrarian ideas give runway only if founders possess unique knowledge
“The fact that a lot of people, smart people, thought it was dumb means that you have a runway to start it, that you're being contrarian. Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to be right or not. And in order to get to the judgment that you might be right and …”
Hoffman advises professionals to head directly to the center of the action
“You know, the career advice that I give people is to go to where the central, the heat of the action is. In the industries or the products or the services that you care about, and then, you know, just work your way up from there being at the center of the acti…”
Hoffman: Internet users ultimately care most about real-world relationships
“But what really matters to them is their real life world and their real life relationships. So let's build a platform for how people build out those relationships.”
Hoffman: VCs fund either the current hot thing or wildly different bets
“You tend to be able to raise money from venture capitalists if it's either the current hot thing or something that's wildly different so that some VCs might think, oh, that's really interesting. I should take a different bet, and that tends to be how you shoul…”
Hoffman: Early startup failures build essential humility and objectivity
“I actually think that those kinds of failures are really good because you learn from them, and so you learn to keep a certain amount of humility, you learn to keep a certain amount of objectivity, you realize that, you know, that kind of the I am Superman kind…”
Hoffman: Competing over bank account size is spiritually self-destructive
“I've never kind of thought about it as a kind of a race for, like, whose bank account is biggest. Because I just think that's useless. It's not a spiritual identity. It's actually self-destructive to your own spiritual character.”
Hoffman: Socialnet's key mistake was targeting dating instead of professional networking
“What I had decided was the mistake around social net was targeting a dating business versus doing the new category, which is working network and professional network.”
Hoffman: Entrepreneurs should seek out their smartest critics early
“The right way as an entrepreneur to start is to say you want to go to the smartest possible critics and refiners, say what's wrong, what's challenging, what they did.”
Hoffman: LinkedIn succeeded through steady compounding rather than instant consumer virality
“Usual consumer internet things are you either hit the oil well and it goes to the moon, or it never goes. LinkedIn was one of those ones that compounded year after year. So you never really kind of got to the oil well, but we got to compounding and our relevan…”
PayPal was viewed as a weird niche project when Hoffman joined
“When I joined, it wasn't a hot startup. When I joined, it was kind of thought to be a little weird thing. It was a hot startup by about six months later.”
PayPal was in acquisition talks with four companies before Hoffman officially joined
“By the time that I, between I had agreed to join, which is in December and then joined, December, and joined, we were already in conversations with four different companies about buying PayPal.”
eBay attempted to route all platform transactions through Billpoint instead of PayPal
“EBay had bought a company called Billpoint, which it owned a hundred percent of, and it launched on its platform, and it wanted everything to go through Billpoint, nothing to go through PayPal.”
Hoffman: There is a very low probability I will start another company
“I think so. You know, it's kind of this never say never thing, but you know, there's a wide variety of really important organizations that I sit on the boards of. Microsoft, obviously, one of them. Airbnb, Convoy there's a set of these different you know, kind…”
Hoffman attributes his adult resilience to childhood instability
“Like, you know, one of the traits that I think defines me more as an adult is being very capable as a firefighter, and I think that resilience comes from the instability and uncertainty in childhood.”