Meet the world’s newest billionaire: 10 things you never knew about LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman

Wealth has been a long time coming for LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman, who last night became the world’s newest billionaire, thanks to the company’s long-anticipated float on the American stock exchange.

But while Hoffman’s name will be unknown to many in Australia, he is known as a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley after spending years investing in smaller companies – using some interesting management principles.

A love for board games, scheduling regular time with his wife to relax and a degree in philosophy are just some of the tools in his little-known arsenal.

Here are some entrepreneurial facts about Hoffman you may have never heard before.

He loves the entrepreneurs’ board game

What entrepreneur doesn’t enjoy some downtime? Hoffman chooses to relax by playing the 1995 modern classic Settlers of Catan – but not for the reasons you might think. Instead, he says it’s because the game teaches you how to run a business.

“I’m really good at teaching people the game… the reason is that I think it’s a game that most approximates entrepreneurship,” he told the BBC.

The game itself is played by two or more people who use trade and resources to grow a civilisation. Players need to carefully construct roads, infrastructure and entire economies in order to help them win – planning qualities needed in any business.

Rumour has it his love for the game has taken over Silicon Valley – now executives at Zynga, Google and various venture capital firms all play together.

Hoffman’s love for games doesn’t stop there. LinkedIn has an entire room at its San Francisco headquarters dedicated to the popular music video game, Guitar Hero.

Hoffman got the Facebook ball rolling

It’s well-known that Hoffman invested half a million in Facebook, but did you know that he likely set up the first interview between Mark Zuckerberg and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, which led to the site’s first round of funding?

Hoffman originally served on the board at PayPal, and later joined as a full-time worker. According to David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect, Hoffman is the one who introduced Thiel to Zuckerberg and started the company’s journey.

He studied at Oxford

Before he began his stint in entrepreneurship, Hoffman considered becoming an academic. He studied at Stanford and won a scholarship to Oxford, where he studied philosophy – but he abandoned that path saying building businesses would allow him to achieve more.

“I realised academics write books that 50 or 60 people read and I wanted more impact.”

He’s a serial investor

Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific investors, and has stakes in dozens of companies including Facebook, social gaming site Zynga, Flickr, Digg, Last.fm and ShopKick. Venture capitalise David Sze is quoted in TechCrunch as saying Hoffman is “arguably the most successful angel investor in the past decade”.

He remains a start-up supporter

This love of start-ups led Hoffman to join Greylock Partners last year. He is in charge of the $US20 million Discovery Fund, which pumps anywhere between $US25,000 to $US500,000 into early stage start-ups.

Hoffman also likely made some money though Greylock as part of the LinkedIn float, as the firm owns about 15% of the company.

He’s rubbed shoulders with Steve Jobs

Before Hoffman started his own company, he finished university and embarked in roles at both Apple and Fujitsu in product management, later joining PayPal as an executive vice president. No doubt he would have picked up some tricks of the trade on his way.

He makes executives write their own obituary

While Hoffman isn’t renowned for firing people – he is quoted in various publications as saying it’s a hard process for him – he definitely has his own tactics when hiring them. According to an interview he had with Charlie Rose two years ago, Hoffman makes potential executives write their own obituaries.

Just as Hoffman said he abandoned academia in order to have a bigger impact on the world, this tactic likely stems from the same motivations – he wants executives to have a focus on what they can achieve over a lifetime, not just in their tenure at a particular company.

“One of the questions that I ask executives when I’m interviewing them is you write your obituary,” he said. “It’s a question of what do you want to be known for?”

“And you know, he or she who dies with the biggest bank balance isn’t a terribly interesting life.”

He uses really large monitors

Like any executive in Silicon Valley, Hoffman is a tech geek. But he swears it isn’t for show, and actually says using larger monitors for both Macs and PCs can improve his productivity.

“I’ve always been a fan of using very big monitors, because I write an outline and then I write the thing next to it, and I write really quickly. And when you need a monitor for that kind of processing or interacting with information, that’s really critical.

“And you know, however good your phone in your pocket becomes, you know, a screen like [that] is only so much.”

His first company was an online dating service

Hoffman left Apple and Fujitsu to start his own companies, but they weren’t crafty product-driven companies – he started an online dating service.

Called SocialNet.com, the site was a type of social network for its day but never got far. Hoffman then left to join PayPal.

He schedules his down time

It’s hard for some executives, especially in major global companies liked LinkedIn, to get some time away from work. Hoffman says he schedules time at nights and on weekends in order to relax, read books and recharge.

Hoffman told the Daily Mail that he attempts to use “mental floss” and either read a book or watch a movie every night, and added that he schedules regular “date nights” with his wife.

“Saturday night is our date night and we try to do something on Sunday afternoons if we can make it work,” he said.