#linkedin ipo

[davidamerland]

LinkedIn's success was no accident as an analysis of their business model readily shows. 

[theresourcefulceo]

More on IPOs

I've written before about IPOs and venture capital. So that the majority of you who do not have tech companies do not feel left out, I am sharing with you an excerpt from an article I read on CFO.com. It talks about the continued rise of the IPO market. (Hah! The majority of the investment bankers agree with me.) It also discusses how the majority of the IPOs and the funds raised are for more mature, stable companies (i.e., not technology wunderkinds). Many of these are backed by private equity firms looking to cash out. Notice the theme here? Private equity firms like to cash out and recoup their investments just liike venture capitalists do. When the stock market is strong, which leads to a stronger IPO market, private equity firms have the additional option of using a standard IPO as a means of cashing out. The more options for selling their stakes they have, the sooner they can realize their investment, the sooner they can raise a larger fund and invest even more money into growing companies.

Here is the excerpt from CFO.com's IPO Market to Stay Strong, Say Bankers:

-----------------------While new-media companies such as LinkedIn and Pandora have received most of the hype, many of the larger IPOs have in fact been those of well-established firms that were backed by private-equity investors. One company in that category, hospital chain HCA Holdings, raised $3.79 billion; another, energy-pipeline firm Kinder Morgan, raised $2.9 billion. By contrast, LinkedIn raised $352 million in its debut. Bankers were most likely to cite the continued presence of such PE-backed firms as a reason they expect deal size to go up. Several, including Toys "R" Us and Dunkin Brands, have already filed to go public.

"These are not necessarily new start-up companies," says Wendy Hambleton, a partner in the capital markets practice of BDO USA. "Investors are looking for more stability and profitability."----------------------------------------------

[bhanotm-blog]

LinkedIn IPO - Features I would pay for on LinkedIn

A friend recently asked me if I paid for LinkedIn (I don't as of this writing) and what features I would pay for. Well, since LinkedIn just sent me a free, one month trial for one of its paid account types, I decided to sign up and see what I got. 

(If you have a LinkedIn account, you should be able to see a comparison of the features for some account types here: http://www.linkedin.com/subscriptionv2?displayProducts=&commpare_acct=&family=general)

Here are some of the Paid features that I got under the "Job Seeker" level that came free with the 1-month trial. I don't think they reflect the innovation that could happen in this space. 

 "Paid? Really?" Dept

 1) Badges - Weak attempt at best. While this applies to folks who are currently unemployed, most people I know who already have a job and are looking to switch do NOT want to advertise it. Badges should be a free feature AND should be off by default.

 2) OpenLink - Really? Make it free.

 3) InMail - OK, but again should have some minimum number free.

 4) Number of profiles that show up when you search - Again, really?

 5) Premium Search Filters - This is a feature that I couldn't believe wasn't free. Shouldn't LinkedIn make it EASIER to find more people and jobs and get "linked in"? I would have thought that making this free would increase the number of people connecting to each other, make discovery easier, and make the platform more sticky.

6) Profile Organizer - Again, a feature I would expect to have for free.

Features I would pay for

Private, password protected, permanent link - I think it is pretty much self-explanatory, but just between friends... I would like to see a feature where I could upload a resume, have LinkedIn create a private, password protected short URL (perhaps under lnkd.in) that I could use to share with folks I was sending my resume to. Under that URL, I would automatically see who had checked out that particular version of the resume and be able to reset the URL (obviously with a nicely thought out message showing up if someone used the old URL - i.e. something like "Whoops, looks like X has had to change the password for this resume. Please contact X again if you need to get access to their resume"), 

Private Connections - I would pay for the ability to split my connections into groups and have one or more group be private (i.e. visible only to me). One could see this as a freemium feature where connection groups could be completely free, a list of up to X (say 5) people could be private for free, but anything more than that would require a paid account. This would be useful to hide, among other things, recruiters you are talking to while at your current job.

Working on the back of 2., I would like the ability to always mark my own profile as private and have it NOT appear in connection lists of certain folks I am connected with. One can argue that you can always remove your connection with these folks, but I'd personally rather have this feature that I could control without having to "unfriend" someone.

Out of this list, even (1) by itself would be worth about 10 to 15 bucks/month to me.

That being said, pl note that the thoughts above are not based on any market research except my own experiences using LinkedIn.

What features would you pay for?

[readyplayr18]

hoffman: 

there will be a ongoing massive transformation. people will be discovering that the Internet helps their career. one of my theses is that every individual is now a small business; how you manage your own personal career is the exact way you manage a small business. your brand matters. that is how LinkedIn operates.

see also: how reid hoffman build linkedin & linkedin IPO gives reid hoffman his moment on stage

[zoesands]

LinkedIn IPO - Second Dot Com Bubble Coming

Yesterday saw LinkedIn float on the stock market - to much surprise the stock rallyed up to US$122.70 at it's highest and closing at US$94 on its first day of trading. On looking at the stock prices one would need to question; is LinkedIn really worth this amount? At a stock price of US$94 that would make the company is worth US$8.9 billion with a profit of US$15.4 million - some how these figures don't make sense. I think it might be over valued, but only time will tell - watch out for the quarter earnings over the next 6 months, we might see a second dot com bubble coming when the market realises LinkedIn's profit performance. Financial stock experts are recommending selling the stock short side.

Sources: Yahoo Finance - LNKD

[readyplayr18]

according to data from the financial research firm Trefis, the underlying fundamentals do not justify LinkedIn’s rocketing valuation. based on their analysis of its primary revenue streams — recruiting services, display advertising and subscriptions — the site is worth about $3.2 billion:

trefis:

KEY TRENDS

Increasing proportion of revenues from Hiring Solutions

Revenues from Hiring Solutions (Recruitment Services and Job Listings) business as % of Total Revenues has steadily increased in the last few years from 22% in 2008 to 42% in 2010. Meanwhile, revenue proportion from Premium Subscriptions business has declined from 45% to 25% during the same period.

Innovative recruitment products to boost revenues

LinkedIn has launched advanced recruitment solutions such as LinkedIn Recruiter, LinkedIn company profiles, and LinkedIn organizer. These products have adaptive features that help hiring managers target users based on profile information, including experience, industry and location. Such products will help LinkedIn increase the number of client companies and the revenues charged per client company. Similarly, Monster is ramping up its efforts to improve resume search by incorporating intelligent search technology, Semantic 6Sense, into its next generation of products for both employers and job seekers. The search technology is designed to be smarter than traditional keyword search by incorporating more weighting factors for searches.

Display of white papers as banner ads will be a potential revenue generator

LinkedIn allows researchers and companies to advertise white papers as banner advertisements on LinkedIn pages. After clicking on these ads and filling up forms related to industry, profession and other data, users can access white papers free of cost. LinkedIn charges these companies based on the number of users who sign up for the white papers. Trefis estimates that white papers ads will increase LinkedIn's advertising revenues.

Growth in the number of registered users to push up administrative expenses

The amount of data transmitted is expected to grow driven by more LinkedIn applications and an increasing number of photos / videos per user.

*via nytimes

[shortformblog]

LinkedIn's massive IPO: One of the largest tech IPOs since Google's

$45 LinkedIn's price per share when it launched its IPO this morning

$83 the company's price per share now — that's right, it nearly doubled in price

$352M the amount the company has earned from its IPO today source

» A really impressive start for social media: LinkedIn, the first social media company on the stock market, sets the stage for what could be an impressive transition from startup to stock for many social sites. Facebook's far larger than LinkedIn, meaning that this may be the floor level for what the ubiquitous social site could expect when Mark Zuckerberg finally decides to go IPO.

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[theresourcefulceo]

LinkedIn IPO

I'm not a personal finance expert but I found this article interesting because LinkedIn is very much a small and medium business tool. It's an interesting read. Check it out.  -Tiffany C. Wright

Will LinkedIn's IPO Start a Frenzy?

Posted by Max Chafkin @chafkin  at 12:32 PM

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Remember all the talk about how there's no money in social networks? Well, it now seems strangely academic. LinkedIn has priced its IPO, which it announced in January, and the numbers are big. TechCrunch has the details:

The company expects proceeds from the sale of the shares of stock in the offering will be approximately $146.6 million (in total the company will be raising $274 million but some of this money goes to fees etc.)...LinkedIn’s IPO should debut on the NYSE fairly soon and it will be interesting to see how the Street reacts to the offering. One factor to consider is that LinkedIn is growing revenue—the company just reported that Q1 revenue in 2011 was up 110 percent to $93.9 million. Net income increased to $2.08 million, from $1.81 million in Q1 2010. The increase in sales came from the company’s hiring solutions, a paid offering which helps recruiters search for professionals and list jobs on the site.

Go to Inc.com to finish reading the article.