I love this podcast and have a not-so-secret professional crush on podcast host Reid Hoffman. There’s a reason Hoffman is often referred to as “The Oracle of Silicon Valley” for his ability to predict trends and startup successes. And he knows everyone - evidenced by his ability to secure time and advice from the best business minds in the world. 

I like how each episode is built around a theme, as it allows Hoffman to dig deep on a particular subject with his interviewee, and the listener walks away with more actionable advice. I have listened to some episodes multiple times with standouts including “Learn from every ‘no’” with Tristan Walker of Bevel Razor and a two-parter with Barry Diller on infinite learning. Diller’s life is truly fascinating with a trajectory from “The Simpsons” to Tinder.

Being a venture capitalist, Hoffman has a strong bias towards the VC mindset and it being the best way to build a business. Even when he does an episode on bootstrapping with Mailchimp’s Founder Ben Chestnut he cuts in on post-production at various intervals stating where he believed Mailchimp would have benefited from VC money in its growth journey. Beyond that, I don’t really have any other criticism. He does a good job of bringing on diverse guests and the production value is top-of-the-line. Highly recommend!

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About Reid Hoffman

Reid is talented in all aspects of consumer internet and software. His focus is on product development, innovation, business strategy, and finance, but includes general management, operations, business operations, business development, talent management, and marketing. And he has strong experience in both seed-stage companies (paypal, linkedin, facebook, zynga, last.fm, flickr) and growth companies (mozilla, linkedin, zynga, paypal).