Reid Hoffman: “It’ll take somewhere between three and five companies to be successful”

Reid Hoffman’s first startup, SocialNet, failed before he went on to help build PayPal and found LinkedIn.

In the clip below, he explains what he told his dad before starting SocialNet:

“It’ll take somewhere between three and five companies to be successful. If you look at the statistics of it, the huge majority of these companies fail. Going into it, you may say ‘I bat better than average’, but even if you do, you cannot bat 800 or 1,000.”

He continues:

“I think [this framing] is really critical to do because when you’re playing that game, you’re thinking about ‘I’m playing really hard. I’m all in. I really want to win this. But I’m also thinking what the next game looks like.’”

What’s your relationship with investors? What’s your relationship with your co-founders? What’s your relationship with the team that you hire? What’s your relationship with partners and customers? What are you learning?

Taking a long-term view, maintaining your reputation and relationships, and constantly learning will set you up well for your next at bat.

You should also realize that it’s not necessarily a reflection on you or the end of the world if you do fail—even the best entrepreneurs will fail sometimes. Reid is a good example.

Full video: This Week in Startups “Reid Hoffman on best strategies, valuable lessons, the PayPal mafia & creating early social networks” (Nov 2014)