Elon Musk ‘could arguably be the entrepreneur of our generation’ says billionaire investor Reid Hoffman

Billionaire venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman joins Yahoo Finance Editor-at-Large Brian Sozzi to talk about Elon Musk and Twitter.

Video transcript

REID HOFFMAN: Elon could arguably be the entrepreneur of our generation.

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Right, I mean, amazing. And amazing across multiple fronts. A, deep persistent kind of North Star understanding of how technology can change the game, how you build technology to do that, a willingness to tackle hard problems, skill sets of recruiting amazing people. Like, all of that kind of thing is the kind of thing that Elon brings to bear on a problem.

BRIAN SOZZI: When he says he wants to change Twitter, what do you think he could do? And have you talked about with him what he might do?

REID HOFFMAN: So there's something that I've talked about, which I can't say on camera.

BRIAN SOZZI: Fair enough.

REID HOFFMAN: Right. One of the things he already is tweeted about, and Twitter being a good means for doing this, is bringing more validation of human identity onto the platform. And I think that is actually a good thing. I actually think-- it doesn't say you have to be careful about, like, well, people who could be at threat by having their identity-- you know, like if I'm a protester in a totalitarian country, or if I'm a disadvantaged minority in some place where I could take advantage of.

We have to be sensitive to those kinds of things. So those are important aspects of ongoing social and global change. On the other hand, it's also very good for us to have kind of-- there's reasons why we have robust identity systems, why in order to come into the studio, I show them my driver's license and say, yes, I'm really Reid Hoffman. And yes, please let me in the door.

BRIAN SOZZI: Just pull up my LinkedIn profile. I swear it's me.

REID HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly. And that's actually important for how our society works. And I think that vision as part of what he's thinking about Twitter is clearly a very good idea.

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