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(LinkedIn- Reid Hoffman)
Hoffman was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1957, and grew up in Berkeley. His parents were both lawyers and leftist activists. Hoffman at the age of 10 had a babysitter who opens his eyes to a new passion. His babysitter introduced him to Dungeons and Dragons, kicking off a new love of strategy and role-playing games. At the age of 12, he was approached by a game maker who hired him for a one-time consulting role on a new game after he pointed out their last game's flaws. Hoffman had an obsessed game playing habit and said that "I spent literally days and days and days and days just doing that and that led me to a sense of strategy which was then, of course, very helpful when I later got to my entrepreneurial and business life."
Hoffman described himself as an “avid tabletop roleplaying gamer” as a child. His first paid job (at age 12) was as an editor at the game company Chaosium, then based in Oakland near his home. Although he was only 14 years old at the time, Hoffman's name was featured on the box of Chaosium's RuneQuest role-playing game release Borderlands (1982), receiving equal billing with game designers Steve Perrin, Sandy Petersen, and Greg Stafford.
“There's nothing obsessive like a kid," Hoffman said, referring to his game-playing habit. "I spent literally days and days and days and days just doing that and that led me to a sense of strategy which was then, of course, very helpful when I later got to my entrepreneurial and business life."
In Highschool, Hoffman had an early desire to be independent and managed to convince his parents to send him to the progressive boarding school Putney, in Vermont. Hoffman learned many useful skills at his Highschool. Although Hoffman was into the so called “nerdy” things he learned skills such as blacksmithing, woodworking, and farming techniques in addition to his academic studies.
He said there was "a very pragmatic kind of 'work on solving the problem' versus 'being an expert within a discipline,'" at the school, and that he is grateful for learning that you could take "this kind of entrepreneurial focus on a personal life," instead of associating his future self with a single title like "product manager," "artist," or "lawyer."
Before knowing that he wanted to be a tech entrepreneur Hoffman had his sights set on becoming a Philosopher, he even got a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. Once starting his studies in Philosophy he decided to change majors and head back to the United States. Although Philosophy did not work out for Hoffman in the end it still played a very important role in his career and still is a great interest of him today.
He headed back to California after high school to study at Stanford, where he found more people like himself, including his future fellow billionaire investor, Peter Thiel. Hoffman met Theil when they were sophomores. This friendship would go on to be one of the most impactful friendship’s in their future. Hoffman graduated Stanford in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in Symbolic Systems, which essentially combines computer science and applied philosophy.