The curious origin of the professional social network and its founder

In May 2003, today’s largest professional network was put online. We are talking about LinkedIn, which was born from the hands of several co-founders, among whom the most famous is the face of Reid Hoffman, who came from participating in PayPal with Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.

With the money from the sale from PayPal to eBayHoffman began working on a next project, from which the social network would be born, chronologically before Facebook, which has grown to the more than 930 million global users it now has, of which 17 million are in Spain and will be acquired by Microsoft in 2016.

Today LinkedIn’s history is a success story, but its founder took many turns before hitting PayPal first and the social network later.

Founder, philosopher, who created the first social network

A few years ago, Hoffman contemplation On how he progressed in his career, and recalled that after graduating in symbolic systems and cognitive sciences and being one step away from registering to study a master’s degree in philosophy, he realized that he wanted to change sectors radically. He began looking for a job in technology companies, convinced that the future lay with them.

During the 1990s he worked for Apple or Fujitsu and trained in business management. “What is the minimum amount of time I can work in companies before I start on my own? I had a checklist: I needed experience in design, product management, product shipment, and team building. I wanted to make sure I learned everything you needed,” he explained.

At Apple, he worked on a social network prototype called eWorld, which was acquired by AOL. After that, he started his first company: SocialNet, a website born with the goal of uniting close people with similar interests to share hobbies. For many it is the first social network. Peter Thiel, his later PayPal partner, said SocialNet was “really an idea ahead of its time. It was a social network 7 or 8 years before it really caught on.”

“What are the ways people can live a good life? Well, people have certain kinds of relationships. I’m looking for a date, I’m looking for a roommate, tennis partners. The idea was that they put you electronically close to the people you care about, for example Example, playing golf. They might be in the building next door, but you’d never know,” Hoffman explained.

PayPal made him clearly see the potential for Internet business

“In July 1997 I quit my job at Fujitsu, started looking for financing, and by November I was determined to find people who wanted to set up the company with me.”

However, SocialNet did not start. Hoffman then spoke with Thiel who suggested joining PayPal., where he became part of its board of directors. At Payments Inc., I recognize that the Internet has great potential to accelerate the ability to do business.

This was the Linkedin plant:

I’ve been very interested in this whole idea of ​​each of us as individual internet professionals and how that changes the way we do business, our careers, and our brand identity.

You have to think of yourself as an organism that competes with other organisms in an ecosystem. It’s about how you fit into the world around you. The modern world moves fast and you should move that fast. This is true even for a restaurant owner. How do you get an influx of customers? How do other restaurants compete? How do you run your restaurant? The world is accelerating not only for Microsoft and Google. It’s accelerating for people and their professions, and in that acceleration, how do you adapt quickly?

With the money from the sale of PayPal Hoffman, some acquaintances and other colleagues in the company started the LinkedIn project. It was 2002 and the dot-com bubble had just burst.. Since he funded the project, he was able to push it forward through rough starts in which many doubted that projects like this on the Internet could have a future.