David Hahn was 25 years old when he joined a relatively obscure startup called LinkedIn in 2005 that had only recently begun generating revenue. He had come to the job after a disillusioning stint in Washington, D.C. as a Senate aide and a six-month run at a now-defunct startup.
Today, Hahn is the 31-year-old vice president of product management responsible for LinkedIn's marketing solutions products, hiring solutions products and subscriptions products, which accounted for almost 100% of the company's $243 million in 2010 revenue. When Hahn started at LinkedIn, the company had 2 million members; today it has 100 million.
Hahn graduated with a degree in political science and economics from the University of California, Davis, and worked as in Senator Dianne Feinstein's office for a year and a half before moving to Silicon Valley.
During a brief stint at Epoch Innovations, he met Keith Rabois, then an Epoch executive. Rabois became a mentor and integral part of Hahn's ascent. The two would go on to join LinkedIn together. Rabois, no longer there, is now the chief operating officer at Square, the mobile-device payment company.
FINS spoke with Hahn about the dual virtues of patience and urgency, how to break into a competitive field without a network, and what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Senator Dianne Feinstein taught him about advancing his career.
Joseph Walker: You started in politics, but ended up in technology. How did that happen?
David Hahn: I always had two loves: start-up technologies and politics. In college, I was studying political science and economics, but also spending a lot of time trying to start a company called Labinfo. It was an informatics company which strived to bring medical information and medical records to the consumer. I think I was a little ahead of my time.
Out of college, I threw my hat in the ring on the first love, which was politics. I went to the Carter Center [former President Jimmy Carter's non-profit philanthropic organization] for a relatively short fellowship and then went to Washington for a couple of years on the Hill, before making the transition back to my second love which was the Silicon Valley start-up space.
I went to Washington with an idealistic belief around the individual capability to have an impact. I had two hypotheses. One was that in elected office, and by extension being a staffer, you could have a significant impact. And number two, that you could have an impact by building a company in Silicon Valley.
The legislative process is a complicated one. The experience in Washington is mostly centered on the elected official.
In Silicon Valley, especially in product, things move very, very quickly. We can launch a product and get instant feedback and that happens almost in real time. That's very fulfilling for me. In Washington it's a very different pace, especially in the legislative body.
JW: How did you get a job with Senator Feinstein?
DH: When I got my first job on the Hill, I was entering what was a very networked world without a network. It was a lot of cold calls, a lot of cold emails, and a lot of rejection.
At the time I was living in Atlanta working at the Carter Center. I made a couple of trips to Washington, and would stay a couple of days and blanket the Hill. I was working off a spreadsheet I'd created of 10 offices I wanted to work in.
I identified the office I wanted to work in, and then identified the key staffers in those offices who controlled the hires in that office. LinkedIn would've been very useful in those days for figuring out who the chief of staff was. It was a lot of, "I'll be down on the Hill on Thursday,' until I caught a couple of breaks. When that finally worked out, it felt good.
JW: Who were your mentors along the way?
DH: Reid Hoffman and Keith Rabois have been the most influential mentors to me.
One key lesson [they taught me] is really around taking a long term view of the world, especially in business. The long term view from a relationship perspective is understanding that most of the people we're working with today, it's not a one-time transaction, it's one point in a series that's going to last 20 years. Learning that at a young age is really important.
I had a certain amount of impatience n my early twenties. That same mentor with the message of taking a long term view of the world, taught me that things can take a certain amount of time to bake. You can really miss a lot of good opportunities if you're not patient.
Reid especially has been an example of someone who operates with a view of the long term horizon.
Senator Dianne Feinstein also was a pretty incredible role model. She must have been 70 years old when I worked for her and one of my most significant memories is we would leave the office late and leave her with 50-page briefing booklets. Somehow she'd beat us into the office the next morning, having read and written up these briefing booklets. Given that she surrounded her self with young overachievers, that was pretty amazing to see.
JW: What role has risk played in your career?
DH: A key lesson I learned is to take risks and take them when you're young, in your early twenties.
In the grand scheme of things, I wasn't taking that much risk. While the prospects of LinkedIn were uncertain, I didn't have a family or a mortgage.
The right time to take risks in your career and follow your passion is in your early years. I'm not sure that's obvious. I was in the same boat in terms of leaving college and wanting to make a little bit of money. But that period of time is about investment in long-term opportunity and the arc of your career.
JW: How much does luck have to with becoming successful?
DH: It's certainly part of it, for sure. But people forget that people who have luck have taken a certain amount of risk. Success doesn't just show up on your door, you have to go out there and create opportunities to get lucky. People who veer off of traditional paths, who take calculated risk, find themselves with a certain amount of luck.
JW: What advice would you give to young professionals who are looking to follow a similar career path?
DH: Find companies in Silicon Valley that are starting to get a little bit of traction but are still willing to take a young generalist on and give them out-sized responsibility. That last part is the key.
Don't wait for a job post. A lot of young people think a job post has to be up before they can start a conversation with a company. That's limiting.
My recommended approach and how I approached things in Washington many years ago, is to put together a list of companies you really want to work with and find out who works there that you can talk to.
People will sit down with ambitious young people and have a 30-minute conversation and that's how opportunities are created.
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