LinkedIn, the Mountain View, Calif. business contact networking site, has reshuffled its entire top management in recent months, as it readies itself to go public.
In part, it is feasting off the continued exodus from Yahoo. LinkedIn first brought in a former Advent Software executive Dan Nye as chief executive. And yesterday it said Steve Sordello, who resigned from TiVo last week, will be chief financial officer, And it scored two Yahoo execs: Patrick Crane will lead marketing (at Yahoo, he marketed Yahoo Answers), and Anil Khatri will be vice president of engineering (he held the same spot at Yahoo.)
The company’s co-founders Reid Hoffman and Konstantin Guericke have both stepped down from their leadership roles. Last month, Keith Rabois, head of corporate development, departed to Slide, where he is now VP of strategy and business development.
Yesterday, LinkedIn did a big publicity push (see Reuters story), telling news outlets it has doubled membership to nearly 12 million users over the past nine months, and that it projects revenue will be around $100 million — coincidentally the number used by investment bankers as a rule of thumb for when a company is ready to go public. In other reports, Nye made a big deal about how all the execs are earning lower salaries than they were at their former companies — and instead taking equity. LinkedIn makes money from three sources: subscriptions for premium accounts, advertising, and fees from job recruiters.
In other words, this company might even file to go public sometime this fall, after the slow summer, but while the IPO window is still open — even if it won’t comment on exact dates. Reuters says it could be as “early as next year,” but who knows.
The company has raised $30 million from Sequoia Capital, Greylock and Bessemer.
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