According to his linked in profileHoffman was Regional Sales Director at CNET Networks prior to working at Paypal. Before that, he held various sales roles at several Silicon Valley tech companies.

As San Francisco based richrelevance begins to grow, they are "...attracting top talent from leading Internet and e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com, CleverSet, Microsoft" and others. Just last summer, Venture Beat asked if companies like RichRelevance would "survive the 'recommendation engine' consolidation". I guess so.