Today, LinkedIn has over 575 million users, with more than 260 million monthly active users. However, this “disaster” didn’t prevent LinkedIn from getting acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, which was the largest Microsoft acquisition at the time. What happened?Īpparently, investors were not impressed by LinkedIn’s 2016 forecast (the company made a prediction that the Q1 revenue would be $820 million instead of the expected $867 million that the analysts were forecasting) and decided to jump ship. LinkedIn continued to grow at a fast pace, but in 2016 it experienced a bit of a hiccup when their shares dropped by 43.6% in a single day, causing them to lose $11 billion in market capitalization. LinkedIn grew explosively between 20, going from around 500 full-time employees to around 2,100 full-time employees, and it had an IPO in 2011. That same year it was ranked No.10 on Silicon Valley Insider’s Top 100 list of most valuable startups. In 2010, it was valued at around $2 billion, though by the end of the year its value dropped to around $1.5 billion. In 2008, after several venture capital companies purchased a 5% stake in LinkedIn for $53 million, the company was valued at $1 billion (post-money valuation). In 2004, the company reached 1 million users, in 2006 it had its first profitable month, and in 2007 it hit 10 million users. In 2003, LinkedIn raised a series A Investment round which was led by Sequoia Capital, a venture capital company known for their investment in numerous “unicorns” such as Google, Apple, PayPal, YouTube, WhatsApp, and more.Īnd the LinkedIn team did not disappoint.

This is an important detail of LinkedIn history because the all-star founding team and their Silicon Valley connections undoubtedly played a huge role in the company’s success. In fact, six of them, including Reid Hoffman, became billionaires. But there are quite a few other former PayPal employees who have done very well for themselves. Probably the most famous PayPal alum is Elon Musk, known as being the crazy genius behind Tesla and SpaceX.

What is Paypal Mafia? It’s a group of former PayPal employees who went on to start their own successful companies: The PayPal Mafia LinkedIn was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and ten other co-founders, several of whom belong to the so-called “PayPal Mafia” as does Hoffman.

LinkedIn: The Largest Professional Network in the World

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