March 28, 2024

Corner Office | Jeff Weiner: Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, on the ‘Next Play’ Philosophy

Q. Leadership is one of those words that everybody has a slightly different take on. How do you define it?

A. Simply put, it’s the ability to inspire others to achieve shared objectives, and I think the most important word there by far is “inspire.” I think that’s the difference between leading and managing. Managers will tell people what to do, whereas leaders will inspire them to do it, and there are a few things that go into the ability to inspire. It starts with vision, and the clarity of vision that the leader has, and the ability to think about where they ultimately want to take the business, take the company, take the team, take a particular product.

It’s also very important to have the courage of your convictions, because things are going to get challenging. There are going to be doubters, because if the vision truly is unique, there are going to be a lot of people who will say it can’t be done. In order to inspire people, that’s going to have to come from somewhere deep inside of you. The last component is the ability to communicate that vision and the ability to communicate that conviction in an effective way.

Q. What do you consider some of the most important leadership lessons you’ve learned?

A. There have been a lot, really too many to count. But one in particular occurred while I was with Yahoo, and Jerry Yang was installed as the C.E.O. Jerry got a lot of calls from the Silicon Valley community asking if there was anything they could do to help. Everyone was rooting for Jerry and rooting for Yahoo, and one of those people was Steve Jobs. He came and addressed several hundred of the leaders of Yahoo, and I’ll never forget it. He said after he had left Apple, and then came back, there was too much going on — too many products, too many lines — and he said he started to focus the team on prioritization.

Prioritization sounds like such a simple thing, but true prioritization starts with a very difficult question to answer, especially at a company with a portfolio approach: If you could only do one thing, what would it be? And you can’t rationalize the answer, and you can’t attach the one thing to some other things. It’s just the one thing. And I was struck by the clarity and the courage of his conviction. He felt it so deeply, and there wasn’t a person in the audience that day who did not take that with them as a lasting memory.

Q. What about mentors who had a big effect on the way you lead and manage today?

A. One is Ray Chambers. He essentially created the modern-day leveraged buyout, and he was on top of Wall Street with his firm, Wesray, and did that for several years and then basically gave it all up because he wanted to make a positive, lasting impact on the world and pursue a life of philanthropic activities.

Among many things that Ray has taught me are five rules for happiness. So the first one is living in the moment. The second is that it’s better to be loving than to be right, and if you’re in a relationship, you know how challenging that can be. The third one is to be a spectator to your own thoughts, especially when you become emotional, which is almost impossible to do. The fourth is to be grateful for at least one thing every day, and the last is to help others every chance you get. So I’m incredibly fortunate to have people in my life like that.

Q. What about the influences of your parents?

A. My mother is unusually and highly intuitive, to the point where it gets a little freaky from time to time. She’ll meet someone, and she’ll size them up after about 30 seconds, and she’ll say a few things to the person. Then the person will say, “How in the world did you know that?” But it’s not some sixth sense. A lot of it is pattern recognition, and I think pattern recognition can be an incredibly valuable asset, especially for leaders. What she’s learned to do is see certain patterns, listen to people a certain way, their voice inflection, their body language, and recognize and pattern-match certain kinds of behavior. From my father, I’ve learned about trusting instincts and the importance of values.

Q. Did you aspire early on to be a C.E.O.?

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/business/jeff-weiner-of-linkedin-on-the-next-play-philosophy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

In Tech We Trust: Small Group Rode LinkedIn to Big Payday

With the hours ticking down to his company’s stock market debut, Mr. Hoffman dialed into a conference call from San Francisco’s Ritz-Carlton hotel as his chief executive, Jeff Weiner, and a team of bankers raced up from Silicon Valley in a black S.U.V. to meet with potential investors.

Demand for shares was intense, and they decided to raise the offering price by $10, to around $45.

When trading began on May 19, LinkedIn did not open at $45. Or $55. Or $65. Instead, the first shares were snapped up for $83 each and soon soared past $100, showering a string of players with riches and signaling a gold rush that has not been seen since the giddy days of the tech frenzy a decade ago.

Now there are signs that a new technology bubble is inflating, this time centered on the narrow niche of social networking. Other tech offerings, like that of the Internet radio service Pandora last week, have struggled, and analysts have warned that overly optimistic investors could once again suffer huge losses.

That enthusiasm was on full display in the blockbuster debut of LinkedIn, which provides a window into how a small group — bankers and lawyers, employees who get in on the ground floor, early investors — is taking a hefty cut at each twist in the road from Silicon Valley start-up to Wall Street success story.

“The LinkedIn I.P.O. will be used very powerfully over the next year as these companies go public and bankers deal with Silicon Valley,” said Peter Thiel, the president of Clarium Capital in San Francisco and an early investor in PayPal, LinkedIn and Facebook. “It sets things up for the other big deals.”

The sharp run-up after the initial public offering set off a fierce debate among observers about whether the bankers had mispriced it and left billions on the table for their clients to pocket. But the pent-up demand for what was perceived as a hot technology stock set the stage for easy money to be made almost regardless of the offering price.

Naturally, Wall Street is enjoying a windfall. Technology I.P.O.’s have generated nearly $330 million this year in fees for the biggest banks and brokerages, nearly 10 times the haul for the same period last year, and the most since 2000.

Besides the $28.4 million in fees for LinkedIn’s underwriting team, which was led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, there were also a few slices reserved for specialists like lawyers and accountants. Wilson Sonsini, the most powerful law firm in Silicon Valley, collected $1.5 million, while the accounting firm Deloitte Touche earned $1.35 million.

Mr. Hoffman founded LinkedIn in March 2003 after making a fortune as an executive at PayPal, the online payments service, but even as LinkedIn grew and other employees and private backers got stakes, Mr. Hoffman retained 21.2 percent, giving him more than 19 million shares when it went public. He has kept nearly of all them, so for now his $858 million fortune — it was $667 million before the last-minute price hike — remains mostly on paper.

Mr. Weiner arrived more recently, in late 2008, after working at Yahoo and as an adviser to venture capital firms, but his welcome package included the right to buy 3.5 million shares at just $2.32. And they are not the only big winners who secured shares at levels far below the I.P.O. price.

For example, when LinkedIn raised cash in mid-2008, venture capital firms including Bessemer Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital, scooped up 6.6 million shares at $11.47 each in return for early financing. They have held on to the stock, but Goldman Sachs, which got 871,840 shares at $11.47, sold all of it for a one-day gain of nearly $30 million.

Scores of fortunate individuals also managed to profit.

Stephen Beitzel, a software engineer, worked at LinkedIn from its founding until March 2004, but kept his stock when he left. His shares are now worth $17 million, and he sold $1.3 million worth in the offering.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5a05ee2530c375b42f99fea6c67ff85c