About the Author

REID HOFFMAN is an entrepreneur and investor. In 1998, Reid Hoffman was a founding Board member and executive vice president of PayPal. In 2003, he co-founded LinkedIn, the world's largest professional networking service. He was an angel investor in Facebook and Zynga, and in 2009, he became a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. He currently serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Gixo, Microsoft, Nauto, and Xapo, as well as not-for-profits Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub and Do Something. He hosts Masters of Scale, an original podcast series. He is also the co-author of two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-Up of You and The Alliance. He is an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and a graduate of Stanford University. BEN CASNOCHA is an award-winning entrepreneur and author. He has written for Newsweek and appeared on CNN, the CBS Early Show, and Fox News. BusinessWeek named him one of America's best young entrepreneurs." He has spoken to more than ten thousand students and businesspeople in countries around the world.

Reviews

Being an entrepreneur isn't really about starting a business. It's a way of looking at the world: seeing opportunity where others see obstacles, taking risks when others take refuge. Whatever career you're in or want to be in The Start-Up of You holds lessons for success.
-Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg, L.P. and Mayor, New York City Everyone, women and men alike, needs to think big to succeed. This is a practical book that shows you how to take control and build a career that will enable you to have real impact.
-Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook Forging a fulfilling career is one of the most important--and often, most difficult--challenges in building a happy life. The Start-Up of You is crammed with insights and strategies to help each of us create the work life we want.
-Gretchen Rubin, author of the #1 bestseller, The Happiness Project

The Startup of You describes how to take the Silicon Valley approach to building a life: start with an idea, and work over your entire career to turn it something remarkable. In the world today, I think that the startup approach to life is necessary. This book distills the key techniques needed to succeed.
-Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, co-founder of Square This great book shows that entrepreneurship is really about taking control of your life, and you don't need a big startup to be an entrepreneur - you need personal responsibility and intellectual exploration.
- Penelope Trunk, author, Brazen Careerist "Silicon Valley revolutionizes entire industries through the way we work. It is now time to export our playbook to the rest of the world. The Startup of You is that key playbook: it will help you revolutionize yourself and achieve your own career breakout."
-Marc Andreessen, co-founder Netscape; director at HP, Facebook, and eBay A profound book about self-determination and self-realization. By capturing and universalizing the wisdom of successful start-up businesses, the authors provide an exciting blueprint for building a fulfilling career. Invaluable for any person who wants to be a successful entrepreneur not in a particular company but in the most important enterprise of all: one's own life.
-Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark The Internet has fundamentally changed the architecture of business and society. This terrific book shows you how to live, learn, and thrive in a networked world.
-Joi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab "Hoffman and Casnocha make a number of astute observations about shifts in the world of work.... As well as explaining network intelligence, or why your contacts' contacts may be the best source of leads about potential jobs...the book also gives numerous tips--including ones gleaned from the world of online dating--about how best to broker effective relationships.
-The Economist

"If you are starting a career, it is an excellent book for thinking through the practical issues you will face in branding yourself in what is becoming a more volatile and very different labor market"
-Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution.

The same extraordinary vision and timing that enabled Reid to found LinkedIn is once again on display with his book the start-up of YOU. His central thesis, that every individual can benefit from acting as the entrepreneur of their own life and career, has never been more important than it is in today's increasingly globalized, competitive, and networked world.
-Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn "LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has pulled off something extraordinary in his book-writing debut. He has challenged a well-worn idea....and replaced it with something better."
- Fortune