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Reid Hoffman, born in Palo Alto in 1967, studied at Stanford and Oxford, co-founded LinkedIn and later became a partner at the venture firm Greylock and a board member at Microsoft. He has spent decades studying how startups grow, and he returns often to one image. In a keynote at the Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit, he described entrepreneurship this way: “you jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.” He explained why he likes the metaphor: it focuses the mind, because the ground is coming.
The picture is vivid, and each part carries a lesson. The cliff stands for the decision to start before anything is certain. The airplane stands for the product, the team and the business model, none of which exist in finished form when the founder leaps. The falling stands for time pressure. Every day without revenue or customers, the ground gets closer.
“You Jump Off a Cliff and You Assemble an Airplane on the Way Down” – Reid Hoffman
Hoffman’s explanation of the metaphor goes further than the image. He argued that raising money does not mean a startup has succeeded. Financing, he said, works like a thermal draft: it gives the plane some lift and pushes the ground a little further away, but it does not change the basic problem. The founder still has to get the plane working. If the plane does work, it may climb and veer off to the right, which is a good result.
That last detail matters. The plane that flies may not be the one the founder designed. Many companies succeed by moving in a direction they did not plan, because customers showed them where the value lay. Building under uncertainty means accepting that the destination may change while you are in the air.
Consider a founder who wants to launch an online service for small restaurants. She does not know yet which feature customers will pay for. Waiting until every detail is settled would take a year and cost her the market. Instead, she launches a basic version in three weeks, talks to ten restaurant owners and learns that nobody cares about her planned menu tool, while everyone asks for a better way to manage deliveries. She rebuilds around that need in the next month. She assembled the plane while falling, and the plane turned out different from the first sketch.
Start before you feel ready
The first lesson is that preparation has limits. Careful planning helps, but certain facts appear only when real customers use a real product. A founder who waits for complete information will often wait too long. Hoffman’s metaphor supports a simple habit: set a date to release something small, then use the feedback to decide what to build next.
Time pressure can sharpen decisions
Hoffman likes the metaphor because the approaching ground forces focus. Teams with unlimited time tend to add features, debate options and polish details that customers never asked for. A clear deadline, such as a cash runway or a launch date, makes people choose what matters most. Founders can use this deliberately by setting short cycles and asking at the end of each one what they learned.
Funding buys time, not proof
His comment about financing offers a warning that applies far beyond startups. A funding round, a large contract or a strong quarter can create a feeling of safety. Hoffman reminds founders that money only lengthens the fall. The real test is whether the product works and customers return. Teams that treat funding as breathing room, not as a finish line, tend to use it to run more experiments.
Learn while you execute
The core of the quote is the pairing of two activities that people usually keep separate: acting and learning. Traditional planning asks people to learn first and act later. Hoffman describes a different order, where the learning happens during the action. Each customer conversation, failed test and small win improves the next version. The skill is staying calm and methodical while the situation changes.
A practical way to do this is to keep a short weekly log with three entries: what you tried, what happened and what you will change. Over a few months, the log shows which assumptions held and which did not, and it makes the building more deliberate.
A fair caution
The metaphor can mislead if taken too literally. Hoffman does not suggest ignoring risk or leaping without any idea of how to build the plane. Successful founders usually reduce risk where they can, by testing ideas cheaply, keeping costs low and choosing a problem they understand. The cliff is real, but most founders prepare their tools before they jump.
Why this advice still holds true today
Markets now change quickly, and new technologies can alter an industry within a year. In that setting, waiting for certainty often means missing the opening. Hoffman’s picture gives founders a way to think about the work: you will start without full information, you will learn as you build, and the process will feel faster than you would like. The founders who succeed tend to accept that condition and work within it. They build, test and adjust while the ground approaches, which is exactly what the quote describes.
