He recently published two books on how to be successful in business, and is finishing a third, whose working title is "Blitzscaling."

Hoffman ticked off a few items: An upper-level undergraduate computer-science class he's teaching at Stanford called "Technology-Enabled Blitzscaling."

And the initial inspiration for the project came from the connection he sees between hip hop and startup culture: he compares the frenetic speed at which hip hop artists produce and promote music to Silicon Valley-style "blitzscaling."