You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and prominent Silicon Valley investor, has used this metaphor in talks and interviews to describe the lived reality of entrepreneurship and hypergrowth startups. The image captures how founders often must commit to a bold course of action—shipping a product, entering a market, scaling a team—before all the pieces are fully designed, tested, or resourced. Hoffman’s broader body of commentary (including his writing and public speaking on blitzscaling) emphasizes speed, learning, and adaptation under uncertainty, especially in competitive markets where waiting for perfect information can mean losing the opportunity altogether.

The quote frames startup-building as a high-stakes commitment made under uncertainty: you act first, then solve the engineering and organizational problems in real time. “Jumping off a cliff” signals irreversible commitment and risk; “assembling an airplane” suggests improvisation, rapid iteration, and learning while moving. The point is not recklessness for its own sake, but the recognition that novel ventures rarely allow complete planning upfront. Success depends on the capacity to build capabilities mid-flight—recruiting talent, refining product-market fit, and creating processes—before the consequences of the initial leap catch up.