LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman says a Kamala Harris presidency is best for business

LinkedIn co-founder, tech investor and major political donor Reid Hoffman has thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, after staunchly backing Biden. This has plunged him into headlines, in opposition to Elon Musk and other prominent tech leaders. Reid joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to take us inside Silicon Valley’s reaction to Harris’s presidential bid, why some business leaders are embracing Trump, and what the Democratic Party is telling major donors like himself. Plus, Reid shares blitzscaling advice for the Harris campaign and explains why the number one factor guiding his vote in November is rule of law.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

We have seen an extraordinary series of events this week. You were among the voices publicly supportive of Joe Biden after the debate, and then you came out quite quickly in support of Kamala Harris. I personally was looking forward to a more open process, however messy that might be, that it might add energy to the campaign. You didn’t feel that way?

Well, actually I would have been, and I am open to an open process in a variety of various ways. But there were two or three things going on: One is that I think Kamala is an excellent candidate, in an additive way to which Biden was a good candidate.

Part of what Biden set off against Trump was a combination of decency and unity—more bipartisan legislation than any president in decades. Now, what Harris brings to the table is you have a prosecutor against a felon. And the important thing about the rule of law is one of the things I think that the central election’s about. It’s about saying that to overturn an election with an insurrection on January 6th is bad. Actually following the laws of the nation is actually key. And I think that’s one of the things that Kamala brings to the picture.

There’s been a lot of back and forth about how different parts of Silicon Valley align with the presidential candidates? Elon Musk has been vocal in support of Donald Trump and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz also rallied to Trump. There are others like you who are vocal in support of the Democratic Party. How divisive have things become in Silicon Valley?

Silicon Valley has rarely been unified to one candidate in part because relatively few candidates are as strongly technology building the future. And so, generally speaking, there is always actually some debate within.

Now, this debate is a little strange because of Trump. Classically Republicans are the party of business. And so they argue it’s a business thing. Well, here’s a business person who’s arguing tariffs, and other kinds of things which are anti-business. So it’s kind of strange. Donald Trump himself is perhaps one of the very few human beings on the planet who can lose money running a casino. So he’s also bad on business credentials.

People say, “well, are you just so resolutely anti-Trump?” Well, actually, in fact, I thought one of the things that he did well in his presidency is like, you want a new regulation, remove an old one. I mean, I think that the regulatory stuff is good now.

What I think people don’t realize is that stability, unity, and rule of law is the most important thing for business. It isn’t a question of like corporate taxes going up or down by a percentage or an additional regulation or two. Those are important things for business. But the thing that’s actually in fact most important is a notion of: do you want a stable society? It’s what you can invest in. It’s what you can hire people in. And that’s why I think Joe Biden has been a great president and I think Kamala Harris can be a great president because of business as well as general, because of that specific.

When you think about your own role in politics personally, like I’m not sure we’ve had a period before where the endorsement of a business leader would get quite as much attention as your statements have sometimes gotten. Like, is that strange for you?

It’s very strange. I mean, I’m much more of a technology innovator, business builder, investor—that kind of thing that is the more natural use of my talents. But on the other hand, part of what’s important, like if this was, Republican/Democrat, there’s a number of Republicans I’ve supported over the years. I tend to think it’s just a great leader, you know—a leader who’s a Democrat, a leader who’s Republican, a leader who’s committed to society. But when it gets down to kind of, rule of law, kind of the baseline of the system, then I kind of feel like I have to put a lot more energy than I put in previously, and, you know, kind of a riff on a Vinod Khosla line: I think there’s Democrats, Republicans and felons.

Here’s a business way of putting it: Trump would be disallowed from running any public company with his record, right? Like, the rules wouldn’t allow him to run a public company and many of these business people who support him wouldn’t do business with him. And it’s like, “OK, this is the person that you’re supporting as the so called business candidate for president?” It’s kind of surprising.

How business leaders should talk about politics

As an investor, you’re not personally leading a big group of people. When you talk to CEOs in your portfolio companies and otherwise what do you talk about is the appropriate role for an organizational leader? Can you express how you feel as a CEO?

I don’t think that It makes sense to say Team X or team Y because of not just employees, but customers, investors. Like if you just kind of say, “Hey, I’m oppositional to your team picking Yankees vs. Red Sox,” or kind of equivalent. That is alienating in a way that business is supposed to be unifying. As a leader of the organization, to use the platform is different.

Are there CEOs who talk to you and encourage you to be vocal about the political situation because they can’t be?

Very much. I’d say that the majority of CEOs I talk to are deeply concerned with the chaos and division and kind of anti-stability and anti-rule of law that Trump and his supporters represent for the country, right? Many of them are traditionally deeply Republican. They’re the business of American business. The, you know, “government should get out of the way of businesses creating jobs and industry…” And they are still deeply concerned about the way that Trump and his folks run their elections.

We’re about 100 days from Election Day. CEOs know that their first 100 days are often incredibly important in some ways. You know, Harris is now sort of starting her job, in the campaign. Are there models of refounding that the Harris campaign can borrow from? Are there start-up principles or blitzscaling principles that could be applied to this campaign at this moment?

Use the fact that you only have 100 days as a feature, not a bug. It’s kind of a classic entrepreneurship thing. You don’t have the structural advantages that an existing business with all of its customers and capital and everything else has. You have to use your advantages in the field. That means Kamala Harris can now kind of articulate which things she would bring as new things, as different things, that even while being proud the lowest crime rate in 50 years, lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, and other kinds of things she can say. And this now is the new thing that we are, that we’re building towards. And so I think she can use all of that.

So where do we go from here? Are there other plans Bs that are still bubbling? Or is the VP pick the only thing that’s left?

There’s a lot of stuff that’s still game on. Obviously the vice president pick is a very important one. It was top of a lot of people’s minds. Mine too. But Kamala Harris has this ability to articulate now where she will be new, what she will be bringing to the renovation and the rebuilding of DC that a lot of American people want to see, and what kinds of things she can do. So there’s a ton of stuff that plays out there and classic start-up land—she’s going to have to do this in a quick and good versus long, deliberative, and perfect.