Graduation 2009
On June 7, 2009, 65 Putney seniors became alumni. Ben and Bronwyn, chosen as student speakers by their classmates, delivered heartfelt, humorous reflections on their time at Putney. Reid Hoffman '85, founder and CEO of LinkedIn, addressed the group as the keynote speaker. His speech follows. We offer our congratulations to the Class of 2009, and thank Reid for sharing his wisdom with all of us.
Reid Hoffman '85 - Graduation Speech Text
In 1985, 24 years ago, I remember sitting where you are now, listening to the Putney commencement speech then. Wallace Shawn – also a Putney graduate, a playwright and actor – gave a wonderful commencement speech. He stressed the moral importance of your individual life. That even when you feel that you’re only one individual lost in this huge world – and when terrible events such as genocide, disease, and war seem beyond your personal abilities and responsibilities – you still have both power and responsibility. If all good people decided that these serious problems were beyond them or someone else’s problem, then the world becomes a worse place. So, if you think of yourself as a person who cares about the world and cares about these serious problems, ask yourself what you’re doing about them – even when they seem so huge and so remote as to be impossible. Reflecting upon Wally’s talk over the years lead me to one of my moral principles – which is every year, make sure you do something that’s not for you. Choose what you can manage – whether it’s volunteering at a soup kitchen for an hour or spending years combating malaria. And choose what’s in your passion and abilities.
Personally, for the last few years, I have followed this principle by serving on a few non-profit boards. I get engaged personally by using the skills where I have expertise and by projects that can achieve significant scale – how do we improve the lives of millions of people.
So, as an application of the “do some good not for you principal” I serve on the Kiva.org board, which builds a marketplace where individuals in the first world provide capital to entrepreneurs in the emerging world. The goal is simple: combat poverty through creating sustainable new businesses owned and run by the local entrepreneurs.
So, this is part of what my commencement at Putney meant for me.
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Ben '09 |
Reid Hoffman '85 |
Bronwyn '09 |
Graduations and commencement speeches are part of our shared history, and Wally Shawn started his own speech to my class of 1985 referring to the commencement speech of his own 1961 graduation. As Shawn graduated in 1961 and talked with the class of 1985, and I as graduated in 1985 and am talking with you here in 2009, I expect that one of you in 24 years will likely be standing here on this lawn and talking with the class of 2033 and their parents.
Scary thought, isn’t it? I had the same scary thought when I agreed to come here and talk to you, because I worried that this commencement speech might be another riff by old people (that would be me, standing here) talking to young people (that would be you.)
These “old folks talking to the young” speeches have a few basic themes. Here are two examples. First: never give up on following your dreams and passions, remain true to yourself. Or, second: The next generation of the world’s problems belong to you – so you’d better not drop the ball.
These are important themes, and we should value them. However, here at Putney, these themes are familiar to you. You already chose to attend a strong progressive school – you know that the world has problems, and you want to do something about them. You already have had some breadth of experience – everything from project weeks, exposure to travel and art, and somewhat independent life here on this beautiful hill on a farm here in Vermont.
So, here’s the thought that I want to share with you.
Be the entrepreneur of your own life. Looking back at Putney, and my own life as a silicon valley internet entrepreneur, you might find the two parts in conflict. Consider: on one hand, a progressive, art and work-focused New England school and, on the other hand, a Silicon Valley internet entrepreneur focused on technology, business, and finance. You might feel that they are entirely two different things. But, they’re not.
They actually share an important foundation: approaching your own life as entrepreneur. This might seem paradoxical: entrepreneurs are discoverers and inventors of new businesses. But, in fact, as you move from this grassy field, this is exactly what you’re doing. You are becoming your own independent person, charting your path through the world. You are creating yourself as a new economic entity. Through a set of choices you make – college, jobs, and so on – you’re going to do something that earns money through a set of choices about how you provide for yourself. Also, you also become a civic entity – responsible for your vote and presence within society.
And, what are important to remember as you discover and invent your life are the same principles of entrepreneurship.
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Gordon '09 |
Nakia '09 |
I am going to cover four principles, since I hope that they may be helpful to you over the (say) next 24 years before you come back here to share your own experiences.
The first principle of entrepreneurship: do not take the world as you find it. Figure out how you want the world to be, and then figure out if you can do something to make it so. Entrepreneurs do exactly that; by inventing a product or service that they feel needs to exist.
For me, I realized that I wanted to create internet services that helped people navigate their lives better. So, I first learned the basic skills that I needed through working at Apple and Fujitsu, and then started a company as soon as I could. So, I made myself into the person who could start internet companies.
When I was sitting where you are sitting today, I knew what the word entrepreneur meant but had no idea that it would apply to me – I arrived at this path by wanting to create particular new things that I think can help change the world.
The second principle of entrepreneurship: take intelligent risk. There’s a useful aphorism – “nothing risked, nothing gained.” By living, you take risks. So, take them proactively. You can only achieve something of note if you take a risk.
Here’s what I learned as an entrepreneur: distinguish between “mortal” and “painful” risks. Mortal risks are those, when you lose the roll of the dice, you cannot play again. Avoid taking those risks except when you absolutely need to. “Painful” risks are risks where when you lose the roll of the dice, it is painful to correct. Taking intelligent risk is not avoiding risk, but choosing the right painful risks for achieving what you want.
Life is full of making taking the right painful risks to achieve wonderful results. It ranges from asking an interesting person out on a date, to the decision in which college, what to major in, or what work to experiment with. Learn to relish these jumps and transitions that are part of life; the jumps of risk are how you get somewhere interesting. For me, I learned this principle by stepping out of the sequence of moving from high school at Putney to college at Stanford to graduate school Oxford by finishing Oxford with no exact plans. At the time, it felt like that all of my friends were moving on with their lives – law school, entering the workforce, and all with concrete plans. I felt that I was moving too slowly and my friends were leaving me behind. It took that transition, that risk of spending a while without any concrete plans, to realize that I should start trying to do things that I wanted to do rather than the academic path in front of me. (The world as I want it to be, rather than as I find it.)
This leads to the third principle of entrepreneurship: take the road less traveled.
Normally, when people quote this Robert Frost poem to you, they mean self-discovery. And, self-discovery is good. But, here, I mean how you accomplish something interesting with your life. When you take the road more traveled, you simply wear the path down that many other people have walked. When you take the side paths, or make your own path, you have a much greater likelihood of discovering or making something very interesting.
Entrepreneurs do this by jumping into the abyss and trying to create a new product or service, where they leave the security of a job with a steady paycheck for creating something new. My own application of this principle was to step off the career path, first by leaving Oxford without any immediate plans and second by venturing into creation of new companies. Many of my most interesting experiences in life have been the direct result of these choices.
Fourth principle of entrepreneurship: plan for luck – both good and bad. It may seem paradoxical. How can you plan for the unknown? But, actually, it’s rather simple. In terms of planning for good luck, stay alert to opportunities that you find in your travels – and jump on them. And, by the way, you are far more likely to find lucky opportunities on the road less traveled – which is an important part of the reason to choose the side or new path.
When a friend of mine approached me about working with him on the company that became PayPal, I took a risk and jumped at the opportunity. I took a risk – a “painful” rather than “mortal” risk – by giving up part of my weekends to work on what was initially a bad idea to see if this side road would end up somewhere interesting. And, it did spectacularly.
In terms of planning for bad luck, it means keeping in mind the distinctions between mortal and painful risks – and having rough contingency plans. When I made the decision to join PayPal full time the company was still more likely to go out of business rather than create something huge. So, as part of joining the company, I made sure that I had a contingency plan to leverage my skills and experiences to do another company after PayPal. And, even though PayPal was very successful, I then ended up choosing later to use those contingency plans to create LinkedIn.
When I reflected upon my life of the last 24 years, Putney helped prepare me for the first and third principles and the second and fourth you just need to learn.
On the first principle of choosing the world as you want to make it, rather than accepting the world as you find it: I learned at Putney to create my own projects – everything from project week to evening activities to the long weekends out in the wild. Think about generalizing project week to what paths you choose going forward.
On the second principle of taking intelligent risk: as high school students, the environment is set up to eliminate mortal risks and even to constrain painful risks. These risks will be more your responsibility going forward; and I would just remind you that without risk, there is very limited reward. Remember to distinguish between mortal and painful risks, and seek out the right painful risks to innovate.
On the third principle of leaving the beaten path: Putney itself is and was part of this choice.
On the fourth principle – as you move past high school to the wider world, there are now many more opportunities for good and bad luck. By following the side roads and making new roads, you should discover interesting opportunities; and, as you follow the road less traveled, make contingency plans for those painful risks that don’t work out in cases of bad luck.
So, as with me, hopefully Putney has helped prepare you for living entrepreneurially as well. You will need to, since the modern world changes at incredible speed.
And, the value of being the entrepreneur of your own life is that you will discover exactly how much of a difference an individual can make in this world. So, it’s important to remember the moral principal of doing something not for yourself as you go forward from this grassy field.
I hope that each of you discovers your own path that you create by living entrepreneurially. Be the entrepreneur of your own life.
Thank you, congratulations, and good luck.
See the Graduation 2009 Photo Gallery
