How Jeff Hoffman Built Priceline Into a Multi-Billion Dollar Company: Lessons on Branding, Team Building, and Entrepreneurial Success

Jan 11

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About Jeff Hoffman

Jeff Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and humanitarian whose career spans technology, entertainment, and global economic development. His accomplishments include:

Co-Founder of Priceline.com and uBid.com: Built Priceline from startup to a company now valued in the tens of billions of dollars
Chairman of Global Entrepreneurship Network: Leading entrepreneurship education and support across 200 countries worldwide
Award-Winning Entertainment Producer: Producer of Grammy Award-winning jazz album and Emmy Award-winning television show
Bestselling Author: Co-author of "SCALE: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back"
Founder of World Youth Horizons: A 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing food, shelter, education, and healthcare to children globally

The Global Entrepreneurship Network: Empowering 200 Countries

The episode opens at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Indiana, where Jeff serves as chairman. The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) operates with a remarkably simple yet powerful mission: to help anybody, anywhere start and scale a business.

What began as an initiative focused on developing nations—teaching people in areas with limited job opportunities how to help themselves—has grown into a worldwide movement. Today, GEN operates on the ground in 200 countries, building entire entrepreneurial ecosystems and teaching people how to turn their ideas into businesses that can feed families, transform communities, and shape the future of nations.

The annual Global Entrepreneurship Congress brings together entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and ecosystem builders from across all 200 countries for a week of education and networking. As Jeff explains, "Entrepreneurship is not a job. It's a mindset of solving problems and making things better. And it's a toolset of how to turn an idea into reality."

Building Priceline: The Birth of "Name Your Own Price"

The Origin Story

The inspiration for Priceline came from inventor Jay Walker in Connecticut, who held a patent for a revolutionary concept: the reverse auction. Walker recognized that hotels had empty rooms they couldn't sell—inventory that was essentially wasted. His insight was simple but powerful: why not auction off those empty rooms?

Walker assembled a small but exceptional team to turn this idea into reality, which is where Jeff joined the founding group. Their mission was ambitious: disrupt the entire travel booking industry by taking it out of the hands of travel agents and hotel employees and putting it directly into consumers' hands through technology.

Three Critical Success Factors

When asked about the key factors that contributed to Priceline's success, Jeff highlighted three essential elements:

1. Building a Great Team, Not a Big Team

"We don't need a big team, we need a great team," Jeff emphasizes. Rather than hiring extensively, the founding team focused on finding the best and brightest minds to tackle the challenge of transforming travel booking. When you're disrupting an industry with millions of travel agents and fundamentally changing how consumers interact with travel services, you need exceptionally smart people who can solve complex problems.

2. True Disruption

Priceline wasn't just entering the travel industry—it was disrupting it. The company was displacing an established system and saying, "Technology can empower you to book your own travel." This wasn't incremental improvement; it was fundamental transformation of an entire industry.

3. A Distinguishing Factor That Creates Demand

The "Name Your Own Price" concept, based on Jay Walker's reverse auction patent, became Priceline's most powerful differentiator. This unique approach made people stop and say, "Wait, what's that? I've never heard of something like that." It wasn't just a feature—it was the reason people sought out Priceline specifically.

The Difference Between Marketing and Brand Building

One of the most valuable insights Jeff shares in this episode is the critical distinction between marketing and brand building—a concept many CEOs and founders struggle to understand.

Marketing is Linear

As Jeff explains, marketing operates on a linear model with measurable inputs and outputs. "If I double my marketing spend on Google ads or Facebook ads, I drive more traffic to my site and I get more sales." This direct relationship is predictable but limited in its growth potential. You're essentially buying customers through outbound marketing—they're only purchasing because you spent money reaching them.

Brand Building is Exponential

Brand building, in contrast, creates exponential growth through inbound demand. This is where the "hockey stick acceleration" happens—when sales start coming from people actively seeking you out rather than from your marketing pushing messages to them.

The difference is transformative: outbound marketing means you're spending money to reach customers, while a strong brand means customers are looking for you, even when you haven't spent money marketing to them directly.

The FedEx Principle: Creating Inbound Demand

Jeff learned one of his most valuable branding lessons from Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx. The FedEx brand message—"When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight"—perfectly illustrates how powerful brand building works.

How the FedEx Brand Creates Demand

Picture this scenario: You're at lunch, stressed about getting a critical contract delivered overnight. You mention your problem to a colleague. They respond, "Wait, delivered overnight? I think that's what FedEx does."

That's inbound marketing powered by brand building. FedEx didn't spend money directly marketing to you, but their brand message was so clear and memorable that when someone hears the problem, they immediately think of the solution.

The Key Question for Your Brand

Jeff's framework for brand building centers on one critical question: "When you're building a business, you want to put yourself in the person's shoes who has a problem and ask yourself, what is the question that they're asking themselves?"

For FedEx, customers were asking: "Who is the person who can get this document there overnight?" FedEx's brand answered that exact question with their tagline, making them the obvious choice for reliable overnight delivery.

The "Bunch of People That Do a Bunch of Stuff" Problem

Jeff shares a telling story about reviewing a company's marketing materials. After looking through their materials, he told them: "If I understand your marketing right, you're a group of people that does a bunch of stuff."

The company was shocked, but Jeff's point was clear: "I really have no idea, actually, even after your marketing, what you do or why I would call you."

Too often, companies try to communicate everything they offer, resulting in a message that says nothing memorable. The solution? Narrow your focus to your most distinguishing trait—the one thing that's most memorable and most powerful about what you do.

Building Rock Star Teams Over Big Teams

Throughout the episode, Jeff consistently returns to a fundamental principle that guided both Priceline's success and his ventures in entertainment: you need a smaller team of exceptional people, not a large team of average performers.

Quality Over Quantity

"We don't need a big team, we need a great team. Let's just get the smartest people we can find and put them all on this problem," Jeff explains. This philosophy proved critical when tackling the massive challenge of disrupting the travel industry. When you're trying to transform how an entire industry operates, having the right people isn't just helpful—it's essential.

Focusing on Strengths and Narrow Casting

Jeff emphasizes the importance of "narrow casting instead of broadcasting your message to the right audience." His counterintuitive insight: "It's better to talk to 200 people and have 150 of them say yes, than to talk to 10,000 people and only 100 of them are interested."

This principle of refined messaging applies not just to marketing but to team building. Find people who are perfectly suited to the specific challenges you're facing, rather than trying to build a large organization of generalists.

From Tech to Hollywood: Learning the Art of Marketing

Jeff's entry into the entertainment industry—producing films, television shows, and Grammy-winning jazz albums—was entirely intentional and strategic. As an engineer by training working in transaction businesses, he recognized he was operating primarily in left-brain territory. But there was something specific he wanted to learn from Hollywood.

The Movie That Sucked

The catalyst came from a revealing experience. Jeff and his friends spent two weeks talking about a new movie release, then waited in line on opening night and spent money on snacks—only to realize 10 minutes in that the movie was terrible.

His question: "How did they get us to talk about it for two weeks and wait outside in a line to see this?"

The answer was clear: the marketing machine of the entertainment industry is phenomenal. Jeff wanted to understand what creative people were doing that tech companies weren't—and how Hollywood's marketing prowess could be applied to building technology companies.

Applying Business Fundamentals to Entertainment

While many in the entertainment industry told Jeff, "You don't understand, it's the music business," his response was simple: "When they would say music business, I would say it's still a business."

Success came from combining the artistic talent from film, television, and music industries with solid business fundamentals—what Jeff calls "blocking and tackling of entrepreneurship." The key was respecting each other's space: letting artists focus on creating while the business team applied proven principles of focus, strategy, and execution.

As Jeff puts it, many were "starving artists" who would say, "You don't understand the music business." His (unspoken) response: "Maybe you don't understand the business part of the music business."

Advice for College Entrepreneurs: Try Stuff

In closing the conversation, Ryan asks Jeff for advice for college founders just getting started. Jeff's answer is refreshingly simple and actionable.

Don't Think, Do

"Instead of sitting in wondering about what you like, about what you don't, about what's going to work and what's not going to work, just pick up a shovel and start digging," Jeff advises. "Thinking about it will never be the answer. Trying it is the answer."

Jeff emphasizes that he had many hustles during his college years—some worked, some didn't. But the only way to find out was to try them.

Deselection is Just as Important as Selection

Jeff shares a powerful story about a friend who spent three years in law school, only to discover after graduation that he didn't enjoy practicing law at all. When the friend felt trapped by his investment in law school, Jeff's advice was direct: "Now you know you don't like it, so go do something else with your life."

His friend is now a professor—and couldn't be happier. The lesson? "There's no way you would know if you were going to like it until you became a lawyer." You have to try things to know if they're right for you, and it's equally important to walk away from things you discover aren't a good fit.

The Midnight Bagels Story

Jeff illustrates his point with a perfect example from his own college experience. Late at night on campus, everything would be closed—even the convenience store and fast food restaurants. Students were hungry with nowhere to go.

The solution? Midnight Bagels.

Jeff and his team found a local bakery making fresh bagels for the next day and worked out a deal to buy batches late at night. They'd return to campus at midnight asking, "Who's hungry?" and sell every bag of fresh-baked bagels.

"Find some problem and just solve it," Jeff advises, "or explore an industry that you think you're interested in. If you're not, move on, but at least you know. Take chances, do experiments."

Memorable Quotes from the Episode

On Entrepreneurship:

"Entrepreneurship is not a job. It's a mindset of solving problems and making things better. And it's a toolset of how to turn an idea into reality."

On Team Building:

"We don't need a big team, we need a great team. Let's just get the smartest people we can find and put them all on this problem."

On Brand Building:

"Explosive growth, that hockey stick acceleration, tends to happen when your sales start becoming inbound, not outbound."

On the FedEx Principle:

"The brand is, I didn't directly market you, but you were at lunch and you said to somebody, 'Man, I'm stressed out, I don't know how to get this contract delivered overnight.' And someone said, 'Wait, delivered overnight? I think that's what FedEx does.' That's the inbound."

On Focused Messaging:

"It's better to talk to 200 people and have 150 of them say yes, than to talk to 10,000 people and only 100 of them are interested."

On Taking Action:

"Thinking about it will never be the answer. Trying it is the answer."

On Learning by Doing:

"You couldn't guess, right? You have to go try and do things. So if you're a college kid, if you're still a college student, try stuff. Look for problems on campus that you can fix."

Links You May Find Valuable

Global Entrepreneurship Network: Learn more about GEN's work in 200 countries at genglobal.org
Jeff Hoffman's Official Website: jeffhoffman.com
World Youth Horizons: Support Jeff's nonprofit providing food, shelter, and education to children globally at worldyouthhorizons.com
SCALE Book: Read Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel's bestselling guide on growing your business without sacrificing your life
Priceline.com: The company that revolutionized travel booking with "Name Your Own Price"
The Unreasonable Group: Portfolio companies that have raised $6.6 billion and impacted over 720 million lives

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