LinkedIn is proving it pays to network. The company has filled its S-1 papers with the Security and Exchanges Comission for an initial public offering.
2010 was the year of IPOs, or at least guessing which Internet giants would hit Wallstreet first. Facebook, Demand Media and Skype were the biggest names tossed around the business networking site LinkedIn is starting 2011 as a publicly traded company.
But who owns what of LinkedIn? Previously unreleased details were revealed in its SEC filing as the company prepares to go public.
Via TechCrunch
TechCrunch sifted through LinkedIn’s S-1′s papers and discovered founder/chairman Reid Hoffman along with his wife Michelle Yee own 19,066,032 shares or a 21.4% share of the company. Other notable shareholders include investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners which own 18.9, 15.8 and 5.1 percent of shares respectively. Until the share prices are announced, we won’t know exactly how big the impact of say, 19 million shares is but in the mean time we can guesstimate.
Nicholas Carson at Business Insider did some math and came to this conclusion:
But we do know the company has ~$200 million annual revenues. That’s up 200% from a year ago, so a healthy 10X valuation is entirely called for. So figure it’s a $2 billion company, pre-IPO.
That would mean LinkedIn Reid Hoffman’s 21.4% stake is worth $430 million. CEO Jeff Weiner’s is worth $80 million. Sequoia’s stake – bought for $4.7 million – is worth $380 million, Greylock’s $320 million, Bessemer’s, $100 million.
Not bad for a company that makes networking with business professionals easier. If this is LinkedIn’s IPO, what will Facebook’s monstrous IPO look like?
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I was pleased recently to receive an email this weekend from the founder of Linkedin advising that I was among the first million users or registrants of Linkedin. Having qualified to be included in this special club of early adopters I would like to raise a proposal for consideration and comment.
Linkedin is a very useful and I believe business oriented website and I genuinely feel it has great potential for business longevity far beyond that of Facebook. This is simply because it contains useful business content that is continually updated by it members and can be indexed and located by industry category. As membership grows this usefulness will grow exponentially in addition to those obvious benefits to those in the recruitment field.
As Linkedin is the “platform” and essentially its members are the “content” which they provide grati,s I want to raise the question of whether the founders might consider including the first one million members as participants in its intended IPO
As all social networking sites would acknowledge it is the first critical mass of members which takes it into the realm of a serious business model which then attracts the external investors. When Linkedin reached 1,000,000 members it achieved a critical mass which then attracted further members and perhaps this was impliedly acknowleged by the founder in sending an email recognition to those members who had that special distinction,myself included.
What could be possibly more democratic in a free market economy than a participation in the IPO by those who were among the early adopters that helped Linkedin achieve its milestone of a million members and set it on its path to a viable and hopefully profitable business going forward. Not to mention, the beneficial publicity which would ensue for Linkedin in granting this privilege to that class of members and therefore setting it apart from its competitors.
I look forward to receiving others view or comments on the above.
Richard Kimber
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It is my opinion that LinkedIn has bar none, the absolute worse communications system and as a corporation, blatently goes out of its way to completely deter any viable means for a customer to be able to contact anyone directly. Recounted by so many people, only an email option is available for consumers to communicate, however must assume that a “crash dummy” may be closest that any real person gets to even having their email read by a true LinkedIn employee. There is no telling when people reach that point of snapping and people start airing their concerns whether or not supposed net networked members are truly real people or not.
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Linkedin is nothing more than a platform of the rich. They monitor what is said as to keep a pulse on what is actually being talked about by us commoners . If they like what you say you reap benefits if you dont say what they like they trash your reputation pull the plug and leave no way to recourse sounds like our vfederal government is not telling us the whole truth
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I’m trying to figure out where LinkedIn gets the business cards that it has people transcribe for 2 cents apiece at Amazon Mechanical Turk. LinkedIn goes by the name Oscar Smith on Mechanical Turk, and has access to a bunch of people who do the work real cheap, about 50 cents an hour. Plus, doesn’t have to pay any benefits, doesn’t have to pay in social security and unemployment funds.
I want to hire a couple people to work in our office transcribing business cards for our databases, but we need to find a source for the business cards.
Anyone know of a supplier who collects business cards, say, at conventions, or just by going door to door, from office to office?
Anyone know where LinkedIn/Oscar Smith is buying the cards? Someone said he gets the cards when people use LikedIn’s CardMunch application for iPhone.
Is that true? If so, I’m not sure building our business card database by hiring people to work in our office is the best way to go, when we could just build an app to get the business card data and then have people at Mechanical Turk transcribe them cheap. LinkedIn only pays them about 50 cents an hour to transcribe the cards they collect, and I figure we could pay about the same.
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I mean, the only downside seems to be that LinkedIn pays so litte to the people who transcribe the cards that people take pictures of with CardMunch. Also, I’m wondering how many people know that when they use LinkedIn’s CardMunch application to take pictures of business cards, that LinkedIn pays the people who transcribe the cards just 2 pennies a card. Word is that the people who work for LinkedIn at Mechanical Turk only make about 50 cents an hour. I mean, that just doesn’t seem like something we want to be involved with, paying people that much less than what the labor law requires. Results would be disastrous if we did that and were sued, like that CrowdSource company is. We read about a class-action lawsuit because they don’t pay the minimum wage or overtime to their workers at Amazon Mechanical Turk. I don’t know, it just seems like the companies that are making a killing by paying people pennies an hour to work for them are going to regret it in the long run. I doubt we go that route of paying less than the law requires. We’ll do it the legal way, pay them fair wages, benefits, even if we decide to have them work form their own computers wherever they may be in the USA, instead of at our office.
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This shows how little LinkedIn pays its workers at Amazon Mechanical Turk:
https://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=20NENHMVHVKC0VCBIPY4P79MX3724J
LinkedIn uses pseudonym Oscar Smith at Amazon Mechanical Turk.
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See, what I could do is give the workers a job like that but pay them fairly.