Reid Hoffman argues your network is your most valuable asset because it brings diverse perspectives and collaboration. Treat your life as an entrepreneurial venture in permanent beta, always learning and planning the next move, since skills that matter today become obsolete tomorrow.
Chapters
In the Tour of Duty universe, what are the fundamentals for investing every year after each other? And it's a great question. It's definitely your network because ultimately part of what makes you better is the people that you talk to, the people that you work with, the people that share perspective on what's going on in industries. Some skills kind of come and go like you might like for example I haven't written a product plan in years, right? I wrote a lot early but not now, but that was important to do at that stage of the career. And by the way, even that helps me talking and working with product managers because I know what competence looks like, right, having done that. I also think that the— part of the whole point of kind of advancing the thesis that we should all be entrepreneurs of our own lives is to keep us adaptive. And that being in what we describe as impermanent beta, as never thinking the game is over and always thinking about what's the next play in terms of what I have to learn, all of the skill set that goes into that learning and that ongoing adaptation is I think absolutely critical. And one of the mistakes that people make is they say, well, I've learned the game, I know what it is now. And that's why you see a lot of people who you go, okay, you were really good at what you were doing, even 5 years ago, right? And now it's no longer as relevant, right, in terms of how you play. And so for example, I worry about this with me and so one of the things when I'm working— one of the things I love about working with a group of entrepreneurs is part of what I'm constantly doing is paying a lot of attention to what do I need to be learning now. I don't just go, oh yeah, yeah, I understood virality, I understood all this stuff and from 2002 until 2005, 2006 I knew how to play that game. I'm constantly relearning that game. And so all the things that go into— that's part of the reason why the network was a key thing. The things that go into constantly learning and adapting are the things that until you're done, you always need to be playing.
