During the interview with Peter Thiel, Glenn and Pat confronted him for allegedly investing in the most annoying social media service on the planet — LinkedIn. What’s their problem with it?
Below is a transcript of the segment:
PAT: What was your -- what was your involvement with LinkedIn? Did you start LinkedIn?
PETER: No, I was just -- I was just an early investor.
PAT: Distance yourself.
PETER: I was an early investor.
GLENN: How could you do that? You're a guy that doesn't take business cards from people. Someone hands you a card, you don't like that.
PETER: I take them. You always get overwhelmed with people pitching you proposals.
GLENN: So you take them, but they end up in a circular file.
PETER: They end up somewhere.
GLENN: So how could you have been a guy who helped with LinkedIn. It's the bane of our existence.
PETER: How is that?
PAT: We get a million requests on LinkedIn and we don't know how to stop it.
GLENN: I swear I never signed up for the damn system.
PETER: You don't have to engage. You can always just not do anything.
GLENN: Yet it just keeps coming.
PAT: It's relentless. It's the most relentless --
GLENN: His wife asked me to sign up.
PAT: Accidentally pushed a wrong button and asked every human on earth to join.
GLENN: Jackie wants to know why you haven't done this. Jackie wants to know are you a bad human being Jackie wants to know are you Amish or something why won't you sign up with LinkedIn?
PETER: Let's focus on the positive here.
GLENN: Okay.
PETER: We are in an economy that's a networked economy, which means the relationships you build with people are unbelievably important over time.
GLENN: That sounds like a guy who is still making money from that damn LinkedIn.
PETER: Well, I'm not even invested in it anymore.
PAT: It's done good? Is that what you're saying?
PETER: It's done more good than evil.
GLENN: We're not accusing it of evil. It's just obnoxious.
PAT: It's done a lot of obnoxious --
GLENN: Just leave me alone. I don't want to be LinkedIn.
PAT: Can you unsign or unsubscribe or get off somewhere?
GLENN: This may be below his pay grade.
PAT: It might be.
PETER: You just don't have to do anything.
GLENN: Well, that's the opposite advice you gave about the future. You said, if we don't do anything, the future arrives. If we do nothing, we'll be sucked into the LinkedIn nightmare.
PETER: Don't do anything in general. Don't do anything in particular in certain areas.