Almost nobody rode the “Web 2.0” wave better than Reid Hoffman. He was the most prolific early investor backing nearly every major hit that would go on to become public except Twitter, and he created the second largest company to come out of the social media wave, LinkedIn.

It all came from one insight: The consumer Internet wasn’t over after the dot com crash. And Hoffman is the only person I’m aware of who never stopped believing it. Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and a lot of the early Web 2.0 investors have all admitted there was at least a time they went bearish… but not Hoffman.

He was planning on taking a vacation after PayPal sold to eBay, when he noticed everyone else had moved on to cleantech and other areas. You spend your life as ...