. he has been called the most influential investor in silicon valley. reid hoffman, creator of linkedin, joins us. and becky worley and mark pincus. i'm scott mcgrew. if you worked here long enough, you know a surprisingly small number of people are behind nearly everything. reid hoffman is one of those people. if you could examine just about any silicon valley start up with a microscope, you would find

hoffman's fingerprints. hoffman made millions when e-bay bought paypal. then linkedin and made millions more as he took that company public. he reinvested his wealth in facebook and game maker zinga. he is giving millions to kiva, allowing the users to an entrepreneur in the developing world. if facebook's mark zuckerberg conquered this, reid hoffman embodies his soul. joining us is becky worley of yahoo news and abc's "good

morning america." it is your millions, but i get to decide where a little portion of that goes. >> we wanted to with kiva, we wanted to make sure people knew that this is the way you can empower entrepreneurs around the world. i will provide a large amount of money so people can discover and get a loan for the emerging world. >> a sample. a sample at costco. give us a shot. >> if you like it. >> that's fantastic. this is almost exhausted by the time people see this. other people will come in as well? >> yes. one of the ideas is to show this is a great model of charity. for the loan, i can help many around the world and i can help other people learn this. other people have contacted kiva and they wanted to do the same program. that was part of the idea.

>> kiva is not just internation international. it is domestic. this service can allocate where you want that money to go. >> you get the money back most of the time. it is a small loan. >> it is about a 2% rate. >> that is astounding. >> this is money instead of giving to a charity, you are making it available to eventually take back, if you so choose, but making it available to others. >> the classic line is teach to fish rather than give fish. that becomes self sustaining. you are saying to somebody who wants to start up a taxi or delivery service, here is a sum of money to create that business and that business can support you and your family.

they make profits and it is an ongoing business. >> perhaps in america, the amounts of money have to be that bit larger than the developing world because it takes more to basically build a business. what is the difference in size? >> i don't know the exact from just an anecdotal looking at the site. i'm sure the site could provide. they have analytics on it. >> from the board? >> yes. i help with key strategies. we had a long discussion about whether to launch in the u.s. we decided it was so important to do everywhere that we launched in the u.s. a year ago. >> zinga, you are a big investor, is giving a second either offering. this is an opportunity for you to sell zinga. >> i did sell some to a secondary. i'm on the board.

>> i understand. we will talk about this. this may be a reoccurring team. we understand when you are not permitted to say things due to federal law. >> we still want to know. >> the public record that i am selling a little bit in the secondary. i can confirm that. >> you sold some facebook early as well? >> yes. mostly financial diversification. the majority of my conditions are in a number of companies. >> does your economic picture matter anymore? at what point does it not become fun anymore? do you care what you just bought and sold? >> yes. for example, i sold little of linkedin because i still work there. that is where my energy is going. >> i better way of phrasing the

question is you keep linkedin because you love the stock and you live there. there are reasons other than financial that you don't sell linkedin. an employee at linkedin may sell to go to college. >> of course. >> when does the buying and selling of your own companies -- there is almost no financial -- you are not going to buy a boat. >> certainly not buy a boat. one of the "wall street" coverage is he is buying this to purchase a yacht. that would be his. >> that is a difference of buying a boat. >> just call paul allen. >> actually, liquidity matters.

setting up a catalyst fund. these are liquidity things that you can go and do actions in the world. >> is this a game to you? is this you love the work so the result doesn't matter except in keeping score? >> i don't keep score. it is what i can achieve in the world. i would not say funny money. it is real. you are doing things. it is the outcome of what you are achieving. one of the things is i can sit on the kiva board and say i have an idea for a program. if we do this, we can get a lot of people to understand the gem of what kiva is. i actually have the money to do that. that matters. it is not a way of keeping score as much as how do you have the world be a much better place because you're in it. >> scott mentioned you invested

in a wide range of media. it is like the seven deadly sins. you have greed in a way with linkedin because you are building your career. you've got sloth with zinga and i guess you have vanity, i guess, with facebook, because it is about me. what about the four others? i particularly want to know lust. >> i think facebook is in there. >> lust. it could well be. >> are there others? >> there are other seven deadly sins. those are the primary ones when you invest in the internet. the ones you mentioned are the ones that tend to be triggered. i use that line to get people to sit up and look at this as a dry mechanical game. the things you are investing are things that matter to people. the reason they are seven deadly sins is the deep psychological

infrastructure. what can work for hundreds of millions of people? it is a wake up. you also, of course, in the as peration. how do you stay connected with your friends? it is not just the seven deadly sins. when you invest, you are creating things. it is not just a p & l or a balance sheet. what are you helping to create? >> we will take a break for a quick commercial. press:here will be back in a minute.

i want to thank our founder and chairman reid hoffman along with the co--founders of the company who had the idea of combining the value of the off line networks that they could transform the way the world

works. eight years later, that is what we are doing. >> reid hoffman winning the entrepreneur of the year. going on to win the national award. you are headed off to morocco in june? >> monaco. >> i knew it started with an "m." this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. it is not the money. it is the entrepreneurship that excites you. >> it is a metaphor that i use. you jump off a cliff and assemble a plane on the way down. you have mortal risk starting it because you are rushing to the ground. you have to solve all kinds of problems.

one of the things i love about it is it is the way create the future. this company was once started as a function entrepreneurially. it is more important now than ever. if you look at the globe and the way industries are transforming at a faster pace, the invention clock is more important than it has ever been. >> i have known you for a long time. you are far too polite to mention your book. i will do it for you. you have a book about entrepreneurship, reid. one of the keys is if you don't start a business, you, yourself are an entrepreneur of yourself? >> yes. the key thing is if you -- my co-author ben and i saw a billboard that said 1 million people in the world can do your job. what makes you so special? how do you have a competitive

edge? we think a pattern is the same pattern by the way individuals should live their lives. the same concept of getting a competitive edge. >> martin is nodding. >> there was a passage where you talk about a magazine. anyone who has been in their job a long time, you are stuck. what you should be is freelancing and networking. i am in real trouble, i assume. do you believe that people like me should actually be quitting our jobs and bouncing around because that will make us fitter for the future? >> not necessarily that you have to quit your job, but you should be taking risks in terms of experimenting with things in the lay of the land. what sorts of new skills you need each particular year. the way is that new

opportunities can open up through the globalization. that could mean -- it doesn't have to be quitting, but writing on the side or publishing a book or maybe a blog. book is outmoded. >> a book as well. >> that is fun for him. >> the point being is train yourself. don't wait for a company to train you. go learn the technology. go learn something quickly before all your competitors in your company do. >> yes. by doing that, you can make yourself more valuable to your company. the question is how does the company adapt? people look at the world around them and people say i think we should do this and learn this and try this. this is how, for example, the media landscape is going to

change. >> what should you do with linkedin? >> we work for big companies. we see people say let's try this. well, you have a form to fill out and talk to a board. >> you transition from being a zodiac to being a titanic. how do you do that with linkedin? >> i think you always have to be paranoid and terrified that is where you are heading and you need to correct for it. one is you are done now and we can coast is one way. we have a company group by way everyone can talk about. here is what i am learning and here is what we should be doing and paying attention to. i get employees coming to me and say remember this phrase? can you start a discussion about that in the group so we can talk about that and stay nibble?

one things i tell people is in the early stages, if you are not embarrassed by your product release, you are wasting time. one employee came to me and i'll start this discussion within the linkedin group. could you reinforce that? i feel we are getting ahead of ourselves. we need to be quicker. that internal conversation with ideas and input from what you see happening in the industry and competitors and happening with other professionals that you know to how do we adapt. >> i have seen some arguments that is a companies after ipos become less innovative. there is something about cashing out that takes the entrepreneurial dynamite out and you are responsible for more people and financial there for the markets. >> i buy there is pressure

there. the pressure from public market is quarterly earnings. if you take a risk and you stumble in public, there is egg on the face. you have to steer this. we have a chapter in the book about taking risks. the same thing is true as companies. if you are not taking risks, you are not innovating. >> do you think google's decision to focus solely on social and take as much of the emphasis off innovation is a good step or bad step? >> i don't think she focused solely on innovation. look at android. >> right. some high-priority resource that is given to say social is where we need to be. >> i think they are doing what a smart large company would do when you say this is a major trend that effects the internet.

we should be playing with it, too. we are willing to take risks. we are going to keep going until we get something. >> from focusing on the inn novati novation. >> google is constantly is beta. >> the phrase we use is you are never a finished product. as a journalist, what am i doing in the next year or two? we borrowed that because g-mail which was a launched product was in the label beta for eight years. hey, it is not a finished product yet. >> minimize expectatioexpectati. >> mark zuckerberg says launch. >> apple generally launches when the thing is perfect and gorgeous. >> i think it depends on which industry you are in. hardware, you have long lead cycles and if it is broken, you

have massive recalls. the product can be better polished. >> apple is perhaps the strongest company on the planet or in history of doing that. they are still learning things about the internet. their an abil ability to the ins able to do that. >> i think their perfection model fits the hardware, but not the software side. they have a dual strategy. >> we will take a quick break and take a commercial. back with reid hoffman in a minute.

welcome back to "press:here." we are here with reid hoffman and becky worley. >> i reached out to my followers

on twitter and linkedin. a question i got from crystal tingle. i bet that is not her real name. she asked, who do you wish you were connected to that you're not? >> that's a great question. >> besides crystal tingle. >> i'm not sure crystal tingle would be at the top of the list. no disrespect. >> he or she is lovely. >> i don't get asked that question very often. when i was asked that question years ago, it was ray chambers. he was a special ambassador to the u.n. on solving various global problems. a week later, i was on the phone with him. i wonder if this will have the same effect. i guess, you know, because of the board of the star of

america, i have met president obama several times talking about entrepreneurship for the country. that would have been on the high list, except that already happened. wow! i should have an answer to this question. >> you are seriously connected. you are a man. >> you have been friends with mark pinkus for a good long time. he is a hard fellow to get to know. together, the two of you have invested zinga. >> he created it. i invested in it. >> you own a patent. you own the social networking patent. >> it is the six degrees patent. >> that is big these days. >> i've heard.

we bought it in 2003 primarily because it was coming up at auction. we were worried that the industry might get shutdown if a patent or a large company wanted to dominate the space and take it over. it was a lot of money. mark and i said let's split it and buy it together. >> it is like buying the patent for electricity. >> that is a common theme here. you have yahoo suing facebook for instant messaging. this is a damaging trend. everybody spends money on lawyers instead of stopping it. >> the patent needs a lot of refo reform. we should focus on how we build great industries and not how do we become patent trolls. obviously the hole of the industry is to create the turn

for investing. i think in the software industry, it has gotten off course. >> should we scrap patent processing? >> it should go somewhere. it should be different than where it is today. on the other hand, this is a problem with the regulation. the default inertia of what it is, there is no strong political impetus. my friends would say would you create something for the design so we know what to get behind? >> if you own the patent, you haven't used it against someone? >> no. >> that is the model. you are an investor on facebook.

you have not been that patent troll. >> both mark and i are positive on creation and entrepreneurship. we bought this in 2003. it was not an economic investment to buy this at this price. >> mark was with tribe? >> we were protecting our product and everything else as well. it is not that we would never use it. there is frequently defensive use. if we were being sued, there is a reply. the strategy is to let the industries get constructive and not shut them down. >> you know, i think the big question that i had about mark pi pinkcus is you created allies. he has a disruptive personality.

he has some maligning press. my question is when you talk about building allies and networking, how do you manage the disruptive personalities and bold things that are happening as people make hard decisions. >> so, i'll answer two questions. mark is a hard-driving person that people go side ways with and that's not always mark's fault. he is very hard driving. it is part of the reason to succeed. he has a number of really good friends. i don't want to have -- >> you like mark. >> right. i just wanted to be very clear on that part. the next part is part of when you decide someone is an ally or friend, you back them. when and if mark has challenges with me or vice versa, we talk

about it and get to the right place. part of the thing is you choose your alliance around out or the people that you are going through the world with. so, it is partially your responsibility when you think that they need to do something better or different. you go to them. you have that conversation and fix that. part of the thing is if you choose the folks that you want to go accomplish something with. mark created a good company, but he is an extremely general person to the people in the company. you can see the housing crisis in the area about to rise. >> reid hoffman, thank you very much. we have to go to break.

that's our show for this week. thanks to reid. if you missed the show, you can

watch it at pressheretv.com. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.