It's all about the network...

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So, I couldn't helping noticing that the activity on LinkedIn amongst GSB students was getting pretty high off late. Now LinkedIn has been steadily increasing in popularity, so maybe that's just part of it, but I couldn't help wondering if another part of that was as second-years see their MBA experience coming to an end, they're looking for a tangible way to "build their network", as they were told they were supposed to do.

In an interesting co-incidence, I ended up catching Reid Hoffman's podcast on the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar. His track record of investments/involvements with consumer Internet startups is pretty impressive:LinkedIn, Paypal, Facebook, Six Apart, Kiva, Mozilla, Flickr, Friendster....yikes! Fun podcast, too.

Interesting tit-bit: They have a 2-person team working on ensuring a person's LinkedIn profile shows up on the first page of a Google search for that person. Works for me, here's mine.

Best/worst line to take-away: "Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to do something contrarian. There's something about the profile of the typical MBA that goes to McKinsey that suggests that may not be possible." Bet he thinks the same applies to MBAs that go to Google...:)

Oh, another post coming up on the Big M, and one of the ideas that Mr. Hoffman touched on in his talk.

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