LinkedIn Joins the Billionaires' Club

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com that includes a tool that lets users find LinkedIn connections at companies mentioned in BusinessWeek articles). The site is also letting other software companies develop applications that run on LinkedIn. Mark Kvamme, a partner a Sequoia Capital, says the new funding will help the company expand overseas, hire more rapidly to produce features for the site, and acquire small technical teams. "We wanted to give ourselves the flexibility to make significant investments should opportunities arise," says Kvamme, a LinkedIn board member.

Competing with Facebook

The expansion and new features may come in handy as LinkedIn vies to hold the attention of users who are trying out other sites, such as Facebook, to handle tasks they might otherwise tackle on LinkedIn. A portion of Facebook's 80 million members network with peers, set up conferences, and conduct other professional activities (BusinessWeek, 6/06/07) on the site.

LinkedIn's $1 billion valuation comes amid a venture-capital funding environment that's pushing the paper value of a handful of successful Web startups sky-high. Slide, a maker of add-on "widget" software for social networks Facebook and MySpace (NWS), in January took $50 million in funding from Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price (TROW) that values the company at more than $500 million (BusinessWeek, 1/18/08). Slide is also planning a 2009 public offering. On June 9 widget software maker RockYou announced it had taken a $35 million round of funding, its third, led by Sand Hill Road venture capital firm DCM.

VCs who want to cash out of the latest Internet boom have their sights fixed on initial public offerings by Facebook, Slide, and LinkedIn. Institutional investors weren't able to buy into stars like MySpace or YouTube before they were sold to News Corp. and Google. So LinkedIn could be among the first wave of companies to deliver broad returns from the new, consumer-oriented Web.

Ricadela is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in Silicon Valley.