Background
Some serious money is going around with LinkedIn’s initial public offering happening at the New York Stock Exchange on 19 May 2011. The co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman and the three main financial backers jointly own a stake valued at up to $6.69 billion. The recent IPO comes with a culmination of an eight-year wait.
Major Players
Over $100 million has been spent by venture capitalists since 2003. Today the major players in this venture capitalist game are Sequoia Capital with $2.07 billion, Greylock Partners with $1.72 billion, and the LinkedIn chairman, Hoffman who holds $2.34 billion. Bessemer Venture Partners has a stake valued at $561.8 million.
During the first day of trading, LinkedIn shot up to $122.70. There was a doubling of the shares to $61.41 and the market value of the company was put at $11.6 billion. In 2003, LinkedIn had been valued at $15 million.
Economic Health of Social Networking Sites
Nyppex is the agency which tracks the value of various social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter reports that the values of these companies surged forward by 51% in the first quarter of this year as compared with the last quarter of 2010.
LinkedIn’s symbol for the stock exchange ticker is “LNKD”. LinkedIn is selling about 62% of its shares. It says that it will use the funds to finance existing operations and business expansion.
