LinkedIn mastermind, Reid Hoffman molds Web’s social fate

Reid Hoffman is a big man in Silicon Valley, and his stature just keeps growing.

It all began in the bleak aftermath of the dot-com bust, when despondent entrepreneurs and investors were throwing in the towel. Hoffman, never one to shrink from a challenge, rolled up his sleeves.

The PayPal Inc. veteran took some of the $10 million he made in 2002, when eBay Inc. bought the online payment service, and started financing some of the biggest success stories of today’s consumer Internet industry: social network Facebook Inc., user-submitted news site Digg Inc., photo-sharing service Flickr and blogging-tools powerhouse Six Apart Ltd., to name a few. Companies in which he made early investments have sold for a collective $1.4 billion, and he has many more in the pipeline.

By Jessica Guynn
Los Angeles Times

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