How LinkedIn's founder is working to blunt Donald Trump

Reid Hoffman has made a half-dozen or so investments to counteract the influence of Trump

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has made a half-dozen or so investments in recent months with a specific aim: to counteract the influence of President Trump.

The venture-style investments include starting a new group, Win the Future, whose self-described goal is to make the Democratic Party relevant again. He also invested $1 million in Cortico, a start-up that encourages online discourse between people with opposing political views. And he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into Vote.org, which has a goal of getting all eligible Americans to vote; Higher Ground Labs, a start-up for progressive politicians; and the Center on Rural Innovation, which is working for economic improvements in rural areas.

“My approach to political investing is the Silicon Valley approach,” Hoffman, 50, said in an interview. “Find and back powerful entrepreneurs.”
 

Hoffman has emerged as Silicon Valley’s prime behind-the-scenes political influencer. A Democrat with a net worth of more than $3 billion, he has spread his cash this year by financing groups that want to restore dialogue and inclusion to politics. The moves put him at the vanguard of a political awakening of technology leaders, who are emerging as a potential West Coast power center that could help invigorate Trump’s opponents.
 

But how effective a Silicon Valley approach to political change can be is a question — and Hoffman has experienced stumbling blocks before.
 

In 2014, he invested personally in Change.org, an online petition start-up. Last fall, the company laid off more than a third of its employees after burning through more than $40 million in venture capital. Years of mismanagement, Hoffman said, had “essentially atrophied” the start-up and it was always running a deficit.

In the spring, Hoffman pumped almost $30 million in new financing into Change.org and installed new board members, to try again.

“I’m optimistic about where we can get to,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean it’s not a bumpy road.”

Debra Cleaver, a former Change.org employee who now runs Vote.org, said it was important to pursue innovative ways for achieving change. But, she added, politically driven investments can be more successful when they are “treated with the same level of accountability” as traditional venture capital investments.

Hoffman is motivated by a sense that people are morally obliged to participate in civic society, said Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor and a founder of the digital payments company PayPal. Thiel, a supporter of Trump, has known Hoffman since both attended Stanford University in the 1980s.

“I would describe Reid as left of center, with a very strong sense of empathy for those who are less fortunate,” Thiel wrote in an email. “It’s more of a character trait than an ideological position.”

Unlike many of his tech peers, who are only now becoming more politicised, Hoffman has long been interested in government. A native of Palo Alto, Calif., he attended boarding school in Vermont and graduated from Stanford, where he was an ultraliberal member of the Student Senate alongside his conservative classmate Thiel. He later attended Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship.

In 2000, he joined Thiel as an executive at PayPal, a stint that made Hoffman a millionaire. He founded LinkedIn, the career-oriented social network, in 2003, spurred by trying to connect people and the openness of online communities.

While continuing to lead LinkedIn as chairman, he joined the venture capital firm Greylock Partners in 2009 to invest in start-ups. LinkedIn went public two years later, making Hoffman a billionaire. He added to his fortune last year when Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

By then, he had become involved in policy. During President Barack Obama’s administration, Hoffman nurtured ties with the White House and Democratic politicians like Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. “Reid was among the top leaders in Silicon Valley to whom we looked for good counsel” on issues like immigration, said Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to Obama.

Last year, Hoffman joined the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, a group helping to modernise the military. He offered ideas about the impact that artificial intelligence would have on combat, and suggested ways to improve the military’s personnel retention, according to a person who works with the board.

He also was involved with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and spoke out against Trump. At one point, he offered to donate up to $5 million to veterans groups if Trump would release a copy of his tax returns.

Clinton’s defeat forced Hoffman to recalibrate in various ways — especially in his view of social media. Reddit, Facebook and Twitter had given Trump and his supporters vast platforms, and tech companies like Facebook had given mass distribution to misinformation campaigns.

©2017 The New York Times News Service