Reid Hoffmann and Joby Aviation’s executive chair Paul Sciarra to discuss company’s future on LinkedIn News

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoff­man, whose blank cheque com­pa­ny Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners recent­ly merged with Joby Avi­a­tion in a joint SPAC deal, will dis­cuss the com­pa­ny’s excit­ing future on LinkedIn News Live tomor­row (Wednes­day).

In a post on the web­site, Hoff­man briefly talks about the back­ground to the merg­er, his focus on autonomous vehi­cles and human mobil­i­ty star­tups and the vision for Joby in the years to come. He will be talk­ing with Paul Scia­r­ra, Joby’s exec­u­tive chair, at 10.30am East­ern Time.

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, and his team have been work­ing on its eVTOL air­craft since 2009, which can com­plete a 150-mile trip in less than an hour. This video shows how qui­et the air­craft is, with Bevirt not even hav­ing to raise his voice when talk­ing about his com­pa­ny’s merg­er.

In his post, Hoff­man said: “But Joby’s quest includes even more than the amaz­ing hard­ware it’s devel­op­ing. Indeed, what Joby ulti­mate­ly envi­sions is a new human mobil­i­ty net­work that takes short-hop tran­sit from 2D to 3D. Pic­ture your­self leap-frog­ging miles of rush-hour grid­lock, for the price of a taxi. Even­tu­al­ly, JoeBen’s dream is to elim­i­nate one bil­lion hours of com­mute time a day.

“That’s why I think of Joby as ‘Tes­la meets Uber in the air.’ And that’s why I’m so excit­ed that Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners (RTP), the SPAC I co-found­ed with Mark Pin­cus and Michael Thomp­son, has pro­posed a merg­er with Joby. It’s a chance to turn sci­ence fic­tion into sci­ence fact, in a way that I believe will have mas­sive ben­e­fits for human pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and urban qual­i­ty of life.

“As Joby’s lat­est prospec­tive key part­ner, we at RTP believe a SPAC merg­er serves Joby’s goals and growth in a num­ber of ways. Our mod­el here at RTP is to deliv­er ‘ven­ture cap­i­tal at scale’. 

“That means we’re both a source of patient cap­i­tal to the com­pa­nies we merge with and also func­tion as long-term hands-on advi­sors, draw­ing on our own deep net­works to help meet the ongo­ing needs for tal­ent, part­ners, and addi­tion­al invest­ment that a com­pa­ny in major scale-up mode requires.”

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