He peppers these conversations with lively references to literature or film. While debriefing LinkedIn's new chief scientist, DJ Patil, after his first few days on the job, Hoffman invited him over to watch "Equus," the film adaptation of the play, to more deeply explore how people define their identities.
How people define their professional identity in a virtual world was the question that inspired Hoffman to start LinkedIn. He wanted to help workers gain more control over their careers and destinies. His solution: Turn everyone into the CEO of their own business -- themselves.
"Reid has a belief that every person is his or her own brand," said Cohler, the former LinkedIn and Facebook executive. "He means that in a good way, not a cheesy way. He believes that we are all our own organizations in the world today, and that the things that power and drive goodness in the world are relationships and trust."
It's that humanist quality that sets Hoffman apart in Silicon Valley. He sees technology as a tool for social betterment. He feels the same way about money.
"Many people in Silicon Valley are motivated by one of two things: Either they love technology or they want to be rich, important and powerful, or they are both," Hoffman said. "I am probably a little strange in that I am substantially neither."
Hoffman is a Democrat in an industry filled with free-market evangelists (he calls himself a "free-market socialist"). He was politically isolated at PayPal, a libertarian stronghold, but was widely respected for his intellectual sparring, said PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Hoffman's genuine compassion toward others, particularly those less fortunate, impressed Levchin.
"I make fun of it now," he said, "but I hope to become more like him at some point."
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Hoffman became self-reliant at an early age, persuading his father to send him to boarding school in Vermont, where, in addition to classwork, he learned how to blacksmith, drive oxen and farm maple syrup.
At Stanford University, he studied symbolic systems and was fascinated by the scientific examination of human and artificial intelligence. A Marshall Scholarship took him to Oxford, where he studied philosophy. But he decided that academia didn't touch enough people's lives.
"I lose interest when things don't have scale," he said.
