A king of the output port is the coach Guy
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California
They come for their money. They come for advice. Are - duh - by their connections.
But most of them come with all the momentum of Dorothy on her way to Oz, for a chance at some point face with G. Reid Hoffman, the man who whispered to the implementation of Silicon Valley.
Mr. Hoffman made his name and fortune as the co-founder of LinkedIn, the social network that went public five months ago. But it has also become something more - - as the man to whom the Internet calling business, when the dream of becoming the next, and Reid Hoffman.
Do you want to brainstorm about new technologies? Building a business? Raising a million dollars - or billions? Mr. Hoffman is a man to see. If you must, you probably know someone who can. He is, as expected, related serious man.
On this particular day in July, a businessman named Brian Chesky has been drawing increasing. Mr. Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, an online service that matches people looking for holiday rentals with those with rooms to rent, you want some ideas on expansion in China.
Mr. Hoffman, 44, leans back in his chair. Then he lets fly: Airbnb have a team in China, a solid platform in Chinese language Internet filters to keep Beijing happy, he says. You may also need a joint venture partner. He recites a few names.
It's noon, and this is the third of the nine meetings that Mr. Hoffman is scheduled for today. He is trying not to look at your smartphone - or, rather, their smartphones four. The rise in the fields of 400 emails a day, not counting all that flows in through Facebook, Twitter and, of course, LinkedIn, where he had connections in 2536 at last count.
These days, Mr. Hoffman is found, somewhat to his surprise, in the center of the universe of social media. He has a second full time job as a partner of Greylock, venture capital firm. He serves on the boards of eight companies, including Zynga, the company best game on the web, and Mozilla Firefox fame. He is also involved in three nonprofit organizations.
Oh, and we have little company called LinkedIn, which, as of Friday, was worth $ 7.9 billion in the stock market. In the midst of all meetings and messages, and tweets, Mr. Hoffman, the chief executive must convince Wall Street that LinkedIn will prosper and that the high valuation is not just a demonstration of the Internet craze.
For now, Mr. Hoffman seems to give off a golden aura, at least for many in Silicon Valley. Everyone wants a piece of it.
"It's the first stop for each operation in hot," said David Siminoff, a technology investor.
Gina Bianchini, the founder of Internet start-ups and Mightybell Ning, says: "He's like an early warning system for something big in Silicon Valley."
Cyriac Roeding, the founder of Shopkick, a mobile shopping application has been funded by Greylock, adds: "I have never taken an important step decision without consulting him."
Hearing Mr. Hoffman wax philosophical about technology, it is easy to understand why so many here seem to see it as a kind of Yoda. When he speaks of "scale" - on the Internet that people speak enough of a network using the network to really useful - often invoked to Archimedes, the great mathematician and inventor of ancient Greece.
According to tradition, Archimedes created a device shaped blade rotary screw water pump against gravity, the Archimedes screw. Mr. Hoffman urged his followers to find their own levers and devices to encourage people to adopt their technologies. Employers, he says, often spend time creating products and very little to find ways to get people to use them.
Archimedes is credited with having said that, given a big enough lever and a fulcrum, he could move the world.
"Actually it's not entirely true, once you understand Newtonian physics, but it is a precise metaphor," says Mr. Hoffman. "Building a compact piece of work with the right lever, and can solve a big problem."
Long before LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman was just another child in California obsessed with games. He grew up in Berkeley, bright and early, even though B and C in middle school. His father, William Hoffman, a real estate lawyer, said that his son has always shown remarkable focus.
When Reid was 5, for example, his father read "The Lord of the Rings" before bedtime.
"Apparently, I was not reading fast enough," recalls William Hoffman. "Every time I picked up the book, the marker is moved further and further."
A king of the output port is the coach Guy
