Words of Wisdom from Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman

by Scott Edward Walker on April 25th, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our weekly series “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.”  Each week, we post a short video clip of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics.

This week, we present (i) Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and a brilliant entrepreneur and investor; and (ii) Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, a partner at Greylock and another brilliant guy.

In this interesting, five-minute clip Peter and Reid share some words of wisdom for entrepreneurs, including the following solid quotes:

• “Assembling a crew of people who are very smart, very fast learners [is] kind of the key to a success in a startup.” –Reid Hoffman (at 2:11)
• “In theory, experience is a plus; in practice, it is often a bit of a minus because people are less open to learning new things or they are more set in doing a particular job…” –Peter Thiel (at 2:45)
• “There’s maybe 20 or 30 percent where you follow certain rules…, but 70 to 80 percent of it is about doing something that’s never been done – and if it’s been done before, you’re not really an entrepreneur…” –Peter Thiel (at 3:21)
• “The ability to succeed in each new wave requires that mental agility and flexibility to [ask] ‘what are the rules now?’.” –Reid Hoffman (at 5:28)

I hope you enjoy it (and special thanks to Thomas Korte of AngelPad for sharing this video).  Cheers, Scott

Tags: Greylock, helping entrepreneurs, investors, LinkIn, PayPal, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman