DISQUS

Albert · 1 year ago

Wow now this is interesting news. I was waiting for the business social network giant to finally get an offer out there.

I never realized that they were making up to $100MM annually also. That's quite amazing off ad revenue. Is that their only stream of income? I look forward to the updated news on LinkedIn, considering that I am an avid user of it.

Good post Eldon - are you the replacement now in LA instead of MG? See you at the events.

-Albert

dave mcclure · 1 year ago

fyi, past tense on developer platform not quite accurate -- it has yet to be rolled out publicly in full production, altho likely coming sometime soon.

also if they're getting acquired then Reid is going to be getting a VERY big check... LinkedIn is profitable & growing.

aside from News, not that many players who can pull the trigger on that one. (Goggle, Yahoo, Microsoft are obvious options).

Joel Cheesman · 1 year ago

I spoke at a recruiting event last week and asked how many attendees were on LinkedIn. All hands went up vs. much fewer who were on Facebook and MySpace. No doubt there is value there.

Andrew · 1 year ago

It's comical to see LinkedIn, Ning, RockYou, Slide, Meebo, and Facebook raise money at insane valuations. The fact that none of these companies is able to find an acquiror at a reasonable price nor are they able to go public highlights the fact that raising these new rounds of financing only adds to that initial problem they were trying to overcome.

It's somewhat hilarious that with that much revenue, LinkedIn can't turn a profit.

Each time they take on new investment, they set a higher bar for a potential exit making it more and more difficult to attain that exit. The latest round of investors won't sell if they aren't in the money and they will have the first right at a liquidation to take their preference.

This basically means that all these companies are like an ugly, fat, unintelligent girl who has a really inflated opinion of her looks. A somewhat nice guy asks her out and she says no thinking she's above him. Her ego grows by turning him down and then she turns down an even nicer guy. She just goes through life inflating her ego and remaining single.

That my friends is what will happen to all of the aforementioned start-ups. They will go unacquired with little liquidity for anyone but the founder who got to take a few mil of the table in the latest insane round but the founder would have been better off in the end by not taking it.

Stay single you fat, ugly, dumb girl.

LGgeek · 1 year ago

Albert,
I only read that they had 100M in revenue not that had made that much. Didn't see anything on how much they actually made.

Eric Eldon · 1 year ago

@LGgeek You're right. I was referencing another article where LinkedIn said it is projecting that it will make between $75M and $100M this year.

Varangy · 1 year ago

What are their major expenses that make up roughly $75m-$100m?

Bandwidth?

dave mcclure · 1 year ago

@andrew: um, i think you're the fat, ugly, dumb girl at this party my friend -- or at least the dumb one.

>>... hilarious that with that much revenue, LinkedIn can’t turn a profit...

yo doofus: just cuz they're raising money doesn't mean they're losing money. fact is they've been profitable for over a year. they're raising money because they can, and probably so that Reid & a few of their venture investors can liquidate a handsome return on some of their equity.

that said, you can be certain they're not selling that much equity, since the company could very likely go public in next 12 months... and will probably be worth quite a bit more than $1B at that point.

PayPal Mafia conspiracy theorists -- anyone wanna bet they go public at > $1.6B? (the magic # for all PayPal Alumni these days... altho Reid doesn't probably care as much as the rest of the clan).

@andrew: i don't know about you, but maybe you should listen to more harry belafonte, & "make an ugly woman your wife" ;)

chrisgrayson · 1 year ago

@ dave mcclure
Zing! Ha.

Nice article.

FYI:
David J. Hinson told me of this article by posting the link to his Facebook network.

Andrew · 1 year ago

@ Dave McClure and other Web 2.0 sycophants/schmucks

Lookie here, we have Dave McClure, the internet's version of Sideshow Bob showing up to call me a doofus. Please learn to spell please Dave. You don't have the slightest clue about business either since you've never ran one for yourself.

Raising more money because you can only makes sense if it's worth giving up the equity. If you're a founder taking money off the table, you're only doing so because you're not very certain about the future prospects of the business. Reid is sending a terrible message to the rest of his team too as there isn't likely to be a tag along provision for employees.

You also fail to address the issue of the return hurdles. The higher the valuation you raise money at, the higher the required return hurdle to actually have a successful exit.

Please learn business, math, finance, and common sense before you pollute the world with your awful writing, grammar, and logic.

Private Equity · 1 year ago

Given Allen & Co. were recently able to get $850 mil for Bebo, I can see how they're confident with Linkedin at a $1 billion.

Manski · 1 year ago

Eric/all

Not sure if you saw that NewsCorp dropped there bid for Newsday. That acquisition would have been the only barrier to a LinkedIn acquisition.

This is very interesting, and will be interested to see your reporting on it...

Mikey · 1 year ago

Nice article

Jeff Conners · 1 year ago

You mentioned in your story "In recent months, the company has rolled out a developer platform for integration with third-party applications and web site" and then you link to a story written six months earlier. There is no developer API that I can see. You have to email developer@linkedin.com and then maybe if you're lucky, you'll get access to their API. They have only come out with a few widgets whereas Facebook has thousands of add-ons with no limit to what you can do. I think it is BS and irresponsible of both you and Linkedin to propogate this story of an open developer API when none exisits or if it does exist, it is very much a closed API and only open to those deemed worthy of working with Linkedin. I.e., $$$.