![]() Hoffman and his wife, Michelle Yee, also attended the state dinner in late September for Xi Jinping, the President of China. One was for a small group that included Toni Morrison and the actress Eva Longoria, convened to give Obama advice about his post-Presidency. In June, Hoffman helped organize the guest list for a dinner party for Obama in San Francisco, and he has had conversations with Obama at several meetings and dinners at the White House. In a private forty-five-minute meeting in the Oval Office in 2012, Pincus gave the President a PowerPoint presentation on what he calls “the product-management approach to government.” Obama telephones him now and then, sometimes at home, and Pincus and his wife have been Obama’s dinner guests. Since then, they have had the opportunity to spend time with Obama. “I made a connection between the things we were talking about with the President and the Summer of Love,” Pincus said.ĭuring President Obama’s reëlection campaign, in 2012, Hoffman and Pincus each gave a million dollars to Priorities USA, the Democratic Super PAC. “Anything top of mind? ’Cause I have a list.” Hoffman tries to begin all meals with a ritual in which both parties write down a list of the topics they want to discuss. He was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. “Actually a re-recruiting dinner.” He is a forty-nine-year-old triathlete, small and lithe, with a long flop of hair. “I have a recruiting dinner,” Pincus said. “Is he somebody you think is cool and fun? No? I’m interviewing him on Wednesday.” “Joss Whedon,” Hoffman said, referring to the film and television director who specializes in material about vampires and comic-book characters. He bustled in a few minutes late, sat down, and pulled out a small notebook filled with an indecipherable scrawl. At dinner, Hoffman was wearing two watches, one on each wrist-an Apple Watch and a competing product-so he could see which one he liked better. He befriended Pincus about twenty years ago, when the two met in the Bay Area to discuss business ideas, and discovered that they both believed that social media would be the next big thing in Silicon Valley. He is a big, broad-faced man with tousled brown hair, who typically dresses for work in black shorts, a black T-shirt, running shoes, and white socks. If someone told you that Hoffman was the equipment manager for a Pearl Jam tour, it wouldn’t seem like a casting error. He recently published two books on how to be successful in business, and is finishing a third, whose working title is “Blitzscaling.” His business is based on the idea of managing your career through relentless networking, which is something he enjoys. Breakfasts and dinners are a big part of Hoffman’s life. Illustration by Stanley ChowĮarly on a Monday evening in June, Reid Hoffman, the founder and executive chairman of the business-oriented networking site LinkedIn, met Mark Pincus, the founder and chief executive of the gaming site Zynga, for dinner at a casual restaurant in Portola Valley, California, a wealthy residential town at the western edge of Silicon Valley. Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, has a premise about how the economic world will work from now on. ![]()
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