Designed to Spread

Making Your Product Impossible to Ignore

In 1996, Reid Hoffman set out to connect the world—or at least parts of it. SocialNet was his first big idea, an early social media platform designed to bring people with shared interests together. It wasn’t just a dating site or a niche forum. It was an ambitious attempt to turn the internet into a place where people didn’t just consume information—they found each other.

It failed.

Now, let’s pause here. Failure is a well-worn story for new ideas. We love to point fingers at the usual suspects: the market wasn’t ready, the timing was off, the user experience wasn’t smooth enough. And all of those things might be true. But Reid Hoffman eventually realized something much bigger—and much simpler.

He didn’t fail because his product wasn’t good enough. He failed because he built it as though it existed in a vacuum.

Hoffman spent a year building SocialNet, pouring every ounce of his energy into making the product the best it could be. Then, when it was finally time to launch, he turned his att…