LinkedIn gets its billion-dollar valuation

Business-networking site LinkedIn announced on Tuesday evening that it had netted $53 million in a Series D funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures and with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and Bessemer Ventures. CEO Dan Nye wrote in a blog post that this values the company at a smidgen more than $1 billion.

Rumors floated this spring that the company was aiming for a billion-dollar valuation on a new funding round, rather than seeking a buyer. Previously, the company had raised $27 million. Chairman and co-founder Reid Hoffman has said that it'll likely go public unless an ideal buyer pops up.

Why so much money? Well, LinkedIn is more profitable than most of the social-networking fray. The site currently has 23 million members, small compared with Facebook or MySpace. But its white-collar focus--billionaire Bill Gates is proud of his profile--means that the people using the site likely aren't going to be college students scrounging for pizza money. That lets LinkedIn rake in premium advertisers and charge quite a bit for them--reportedly $75 per thousand impressions.

And it's growing fast, according to Web metrics firms. LinkedIn has also continued to launch new features in the past year, like customized news and developer platform widgets.

[T-Guy]

$1B+ sounds a tad rich for the site, even if it is a decent revenue generator. I'd love to see the assumptions and calculations on that valuation.

I also think LinkedIn is a good reflection of where the value lies in social networking sites. It's not the social part of it, it's the application of the site. LinkedIn is unique in that it facilitates an activity that professionals already derive value from - networking in a business setting, even if it is an online setting.

[Kduffey]

With that much infusion I hope they invest in Reliability and availability of their site.

7:48a PDT and their site is non-responsive. This happens at least once a week... Also, I continue to be amazed at thir scheduling for updates and maint. So many times I see they are down from 6p-9p PDT - core hours for those coming off work and then logging in for personal networking and updating their info.
Wouldn't it make more sense to do this work at 10-11p PST - after all they are not a major European force yet - or better yet get into clustering and server farms so you can service the customer and update in unison.
A minor git as well - the "who has viewed your profile" count is unreliable and for some reason they dont list much of the traffic. If you are going to tell me 20 ppl have viewed my profile, then report the 20, instead I rarely get more than a listing of 10.

[TOKiBiz]

Based on revenues of $100 million (with zero costs) LinkedIn is valued (according to Bizak Calculator) at $399,999,984 - 40% lower than their recent valuation of $1 billion.
Using the Bizak Calculator with 20 million subscribers you get earnings of $0.42 per subscriber. Computing EPV for the 5.6 million active visitors then LinkedIn earns $1.49 per visitor.

As we know Facebook was recently valued at $15 billion. The Facebook valuation may be a bit extreme but they?re a premium brand that will be a force for years to come. LinkedIn on the other hand is not a premium brand, however I assume that LinkedIn will be easier to monetize than Facebook. The main reason being LinkedIn knows my entire work history whereas Facebook only knows who my friends are. With my work history Bain likely has a iron clad plan to convert my connections into a cash cow for LinkedIn. However, even with this profitability I don?t think LinkedIn will ever become a premium internet brand, but they?re probable a safer bet for investors.

[billybob75]

I'm happy for them but not sure if that's a long term valuation. There are other professional networking sites like Xing.com and Schmoozii.com and little barrier to entry. What's stopping Google from laying down a billion dollars to duplicate Linkedin. Probably planning on quick sale and let someone else worry about getting revenues to sustain a $1 billion valuation.