Reid Hoffman: Start Local, Scale Global

One of the things that I think is kind of most interesting and the challenges is how do you both build something really strong with kind of a local focus, and then also how do you participate on the global stage? Now, I have done that with kind of two very easy things, which I kind of say, okay, well, I focus on the consumer Internet, so you can have your servers there, and then that can very quickly scale globally. So, for example, we launched LinkedIn with 13 countries in the list, and I think it got to the full country list within about four months, because as each person complained that their country wasn't in the list, we added it in as a way of doing it. And then the second is because one of the benefits that we have, starting with kind of a local market in Silicon Valley and going out to the US Is the US Gives you a very strong basis for doing that Aperture. But I think that's a skill that everyone needs to learn in terms of how you play out on the global stage. And I think the sharings of information through these networks of entrepreneurs between Silicon Valley and other places in the US and other places in the world, and other places in the world and other places in the world, I think the skill set's going to be evolving at a very fast rate, and that's part of the reason we do things like this.