When people ask Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman how he learned strategy, his answer is not that he studied in business school and earned an MBA, or that he read (and re-read) Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. His answer is this: “I played a lot of games.” The best games, Hoffman says, not only require skill and tactics, but they also incorporate uncertainty and randomness, which teaches you to be strategic in ways that match the way the world works. In conversation with Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh, Hoffman describes how games have been so integral to his development as a business strategist, and to the theories he's developed and deployed.

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