Eric Ly, one of the founders of LinkedIn, the world's largest workplace social platform, why did he switch to blockchain when he was nearly 50?

For the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector, the most exciting news is about people from traditional industries entering this field, such as Tesla CEO Musk, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Morgan Creek founder Anthony Pompliano, famous Wall Street investor Paul Tudor Jones, etc., and less well-known is LinkedIn co-founder Eric Ly.

Eric Ly, a veteran who experienced the Internet bubble era, chose to devote himself to the blockchain industry at the age of "knowing the destiny". Eric Ly has many labels: Vietnamese Chinese refugee, serial entrepreneur, Stanford University academic master, entrepreneurial partner of Silicon Valley "network king" Reid Hoffman, etc., but the most well-known one should be the co-founder and first CTO of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the world's largest business-oriented social networking service website. It was founded in December 2002, listed on the New York Stock Exchange on May 20, 2011, and acquired by Microsoft on June 13, 2016.

It can be said that Eric became famous because of LinkedIn, and also entered the blockchain field because of LinkedIn. In the more than ten years since the birth of LinkedIn, countless people have achieved effective communication through LinkedIn. However, as the number of LinkedIn users increases, problems such as resume fraud and academic fraud are common on LinkedIn. Eric believes that before the emergence of blockchain, it is difficult to establish trust. Blockchain can be used to benefit social networks, such as LinkedIn.

Stanford scholar, serial entrepreneur

Eric was born in Vietnam in 1969. When he was six years old, he came to the United States with his parents as refugees.

In 1987, hardworking Eric Ly studied for his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in the United States. Professor Erry Winograd always believed that "computers can eventually be used as a communication tool for people". Influenced by Professor Winograd, Eric developed a great interest in human-computer interaction.

After graduating from college, he went to MIT Media Lab to study intelligent agents and voice user interfaces in 1993. After that, Eric returned to Stanford University to pursue a doctorate.

Prior to joining LinkedIn, Eric founded two companies, one of which was successfully acquired by a public company. Eric has worked at IBM, Sun Microsystems and General Magic. In 1995, Eric founded the e-commerce communication platform Netmosphere, a website designed to build customer relationships for Fortune 500 companies. In 1999, Netmosphere was sold to the Internet company Critical Path.

Four months later, Eric founded Tresidder Networks, a human-computer interaction platform company that provides customers with personalized content and wireless services.

Why is Eric so trusted by Hoffman? Before founding LinkedIn, Hoffman was the executive vice president of PayPal, a global payment giant. Eric and Hoffman were classmates in the same major. During college, the two had a close personal relationship and often discussed future technology trends in their spare time. Even after graduation, they did not lose contact. Over time, Eric became one of Hoffman's most trusted entrepreneurial partners, both in terms of academics and character.

"Created" LinkedIn, later acquired by Microsoft

Before LinkedIn was founded, Facebook and Twitter were not yet popular, and in the United States, if you change jobs too frequently, you may lose contact with your former colleagues. Some of the original job search and contact methods have begun to become ineffective. Hoffman realized this and later LinkedIn was created.

In 2002, Eric co-founded LinkedIn with Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke and Jean-Luc Vaillant as one of the founders of LinkedIn. These five people naturally became the earliest users of LinkedIn. At that time, all five people were assigned the task of finding 100 users each.

Eric served as LinkedIn's chief technology officer, helping to create and develop product features that enabled the company to be profitable and grow its user base rapidly. Eric spent six months on development, and the entire team completed the construction of the website. On May 5, 2003, the LinkedIn website was officially launched.

Compared with traditional social networks, what is the difference between LinkedIn and other social networks? Guericke said: "We founded LinkedIn to do a business, not something cool. MySpace and Facebook are doing very well and can make money from them (perhaps by adding more e-commerce elements). But in my opinion, the opportunities and potential of professional social networking are greater."

The result was indeed. In November 2003, Sequoia decided to invest $4.7 million in LinkedIn. In October 2004, venture capitalists invested another $10 million in LinkedIn. In 2004, the number of LinkedIn users reached 500,000. In January 2011, LinkedIn had more than 90 million registered users. By January 2012, LinkedIn had more than 150 million registered users. In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion.

In fact, Eric left LinkedIn in 2006, when it was growing rapidly. Eric said: "LinkedIn products can help people communicate with each other, but can we also achieve the purpose of communication by managing people's daily activities? I want to try."

In 2006, Eric founded Presdo, an online conferencing system that helps people search and manage surrounding activities, with the goal of enhancing people's meeting interactivity and connectivity.

Founding Hub to create blockchain application scenarios

Perhaps you are curious about why Eric entered the blockchain field? For him, this was a difficult leap and a denial of the past, because the decentralized blockchain is incompatible with the traditional centralized Internet.

When talking about his resolute entry into the blockchain field, Eric said: "In the 1990s, I witnessed the development of the Internet field. In the past 25 years, we have seen many excellent Internet solutions, and even the world we live in is driven by the Internet. I just feel that the new concept brought by blockchain can provide an opportunity. In the next 20 years, we will witness the emergence of this opportunity. What happened 25 years ago is very similar to what blockchain can bring us today." Perhaps it was based on the cognition and intuition of a technology geek that blockchain technology gave Eric the motivation to start a business again.

Eric later often said: "When we were at LinkedIn, we often said that we were building cars and driving them at the same time, which was very risky." This may be another reason why Eric turned to the blockchain field. Blockchain can bring more possibilities to these challenges.

In 2017, Eric founded Hub, a blockchain technology company. Hub is committed to solving trust and credibility issues, hoping to create a new economic value for the Internet and the people who use it. Eric emphasized in an interview: "Hub wants to create a blockchain technology application scenario, not a better blockchain."

Eric has always wanted to tell everyone that blockchain is not just about various tokens, its technology can benefit all of humanity. For Eric, a serial entrepreneur who has been working in the traditional Internet industry for more than 20 years, blockchain is not only an opportunity, but also a challenge. Hub embodies Eric's vision - to establish a trust mechanism between strangers and create better blockchain applications. More than three years after its founding, has the original intention of the Hub project and team changed? What substantial progress has been made? What blockchain application problems have been solved? Let's wait and see!