![]() ![]() Although not a household name, he is one of Silicon Valley’s foremost “thought leaders” - he has coined startup terms and aphorisms, launched one of its most popular podcasts, and intentionally cultivated an image as one of tech’s resident ethicists. Hoffman is not just any founder-cum-investor. The political awakening of Silicon Valley in the Trump era can be explained through the political awakening of Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman has made himself one of the biggest fundraisers in the Democratic Party Because whether they love Hoffman or hate him, Democrats are scared to cross him - and lose access to his wallet. And the people who spoke to Recode largely did so on condition of anonymity to offer their candid, complicated assessments of one of the party’s biggest donors. Hoffman declined interview requests for this story. But if Biden loses, it’s not hard to imagine a world in which Hoffman becomes the political poster child for Silicon Valley disruption gone awry, a billionaire who ticked off too many and accomplished too little. If Biden wins, Hoffman is poised to emerge as one of the sages of Silicon Valley’s new political moment. And so the election this fall will offer one answer. Hoffman has grown to symbolize a bigger debate over whether this Silicon Valley disruptive style has any place in politics. So he and the donors in his orbit began pushing the envelope and funding risky and unorthodox projects, making mistakes and enemies along the way. The source of this tension: Hoffman’s team thought the Democratic Party was fundamentally broken and in need of well-financed disruption. Instead, Hoffman has emerged as a polarizing figure in the party - as popular in San Francisco as he is despised in parts of Washington - according to four dozen interviews with friends, Democratic donors, operatives, and officials who have worked or spoken with him and his team. But Hoffman is also the hub of a new Silicon Valley big-money network: His aides privately boast that he has raised hundreds of millions more to oust Trump by guiding the donations of a class of newly politicized donors who are now bankrolling the left.īased on that, you’d think the Democratic Party would embrace him. To win this fall, Hoffman is personally spending as much as $100 million, which is as much as almost any other individual American. These sessions, which started after Trump’s election and haven’t previously been reported on, are just the tip of the spear of Hoffman’s fundraising machine. But his invitations to this “donor table” have given him extraordinary agenda-setting power and made him one of the most influential Democratic donors of the Trump era. Hoffman and the other principals are not always there. They share notes, hear from people seeking big checks, such as Joe Biden’s campaign manager, and debate each other’s strategies to beat Donald Trump. Soon after, advisers to dozens of the party’s megadonors pile into rooms in Washington, DC, or Palo Alto, California - or, these days, on Zoom - for closed-door, Chatham House Rule sessions for some of the party’s most powerful fundraisers. He’d like to add you to his political network. Every few months, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman sends an invitation to some of the other billionaires who make up the Democratic Party’s big-money machine: ![]()
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