我们当年为什么敢投资LinkedIn

    我认为提供当时从我们的角度得出的一些观点也会非常有趣。所以我翻出了在雷德的演示之前，我给合伙人传阅的投资备忘录，以完善和总结我撰写的审查评估。以下便是支持格雷洛克和我对LinkedIn投资观点的论据节选。

    • 使命。“LinkedIn的使命是构建领先的、主打职业社交的网站，让用户‘通过他们已经信任的联系人，找到和联系他们未来需要的人脉。’”

    • 业务。“这实际上是一项有着强大传播性和网络效应的业务……整个网站服务于职业社交的目的，因此收费服务很自然地成为网站的一部分，这不会让用户分流——任何时候都有大量用户在找工作，在寻找雇员、服务、承包商，或者在建立用于销售和业务发展的关系网络。”

    • 发展途径。“发展分为三个阶段：（1）发展用户基础，扩大网络影响力，扩大用户规模和数据库容量；（2）通过（a）不断改善用户界面和易用性，（b）依托于数据库开发增值应用和实用程序，以发掘用户使用网络的价值，着重增加网站的使用价值和再次使用率，培养用户的使用习惯；（3）通过（a）‘机遇’服务：……（b）‘InLeads’服务：……（c）‘Network Plus’服务：……，将用户群和网络资产转化为利润。”

    • 盈利。“如果这个网站保持强劲势头，创造了价值，同时培养了用户的使用习惯，它将成功瓜分目前以招聘网站Monster.com为主的求职市场，形成巨大的盈利潜力，而这只是该网站众多盈利点中的一个。”

    • 挑战。“我的观点（也是他们的观点）认为他们还需要花大功夫精简用户界面，在他们的数据库中增加相关的应用和软件，从而能够在用户浏览网页，试图从系统中获取所需时，展现出具有相当价值的精简结果。我重点要确保他们在向用户大面积收费之前先把这项事情做好。如果在摇钱树还是树苗的时候就把它砍掉，要冒很大的风险。”

    • 规模。“这种业务最难、也是最具风险的一点是，以合理的代价建立大规模、高质量的用户群体，从而进行扩张——这一点他们几乎已经完全具备了。”

    • 人。“我相信他们和我们是同一类人。头脑灵活、天资聪颖、积极进取、不畏竞争、善于分析、精益求精、努力勤勉、坦率诚恳，并且勇于冒险。”

    • 竞争。在当时，LinkedIn是一大批职业社交初创公司中的一员，同类公司包括Plaxo、Spoke、Ryze、Zero Degrees等。这些公司规模相对而言都很小，尽管它们许多都比LinkedIn大。

    • 总结。“我对这个机会充满兴趣。我相信他们走处在正轨上，有机会在人际网络领域谋得自己的一席之地，他们也有潜力依托用户群创造更具吸引力的用户体验，以用户相对可以接受的方式收费。他们有很大的收入和利润潜力。此外，我还认为雷德在这类业务中会是世界顶尖的领袖，与他共事让我感到激动。” 

    I thought it would also be interesting to provide some perspective from our vantage at the time, so I dug out the investment memorandum that I circulated to the partnership prior to Reid's presentation to complement and summarize my compiled due diligence. What follows are excerpts of the arguments I gave to support Greylock's and my investment thesis in LinkedIn.

    • Mission. "LinkedIn's mission is to create the leading, business-focused network site for people where they can "find and contact the people they need, through the people they already trust."

    • Business. "This is inherently a business with strong viral distribution and network effects… And because the whole context of the site is business networking, monetization areas are natural additions to the site, not diversions for users — many of whom at any given time are either looking for jobs, considering looking for jobs, looking to hire people/services/contractors, looking to do sales/BD oriented networking."

    • Path Forward. "Development in three phases: (1) grow the userbase and establish breakaway network effects and scale of user-base/database … ; (2) focus on improving user value, repeat usage, and habit building through (a) better improvements in UI and ease of use, and (b) by building value-added applications and wizards on the database to improve user-mining of value from the network; (3) monetization of the user/network asset through (a) "Opportunities": …, (b) "InLeads": …, and (c) "Network Plus": …

    • Monetization. "If the network remains robust, and they succeed in building value and habit, their monetization potential could be a significant portion of the existing Monster.com market as just a first monetization opportunity."

    • Challenge. "My belief (and theirs) is that they have much work to do cleaning up the UI, and packaging relevant applications and wizards on top of their database to surface high-value, simple results matched to the networking processes that people are trying to mine out of the system. I am focused on making sure they get this right before driving too much into mining the user base for money. There is a significant risk in 'killing the golden goose' before it's fully hatched."

    • Scale. "One of the hardest/riskiest parts of this type of business is getting scale on building a large, high-quality user base at reasonable cost — and this is almost fully behind them already."

    • People. "I believe these are our kind of people. Bright, talented, aggressive/competitive, analytical, committed to excellence, hard-working, intellectually honest, and risk-taking."

    • Competition. In those days, Linkedin was one of a bunch of early business-networking startups such as Plaxo, Spoke, Ryze, Zero Degrees, etc. All of these companies were relatively small, though a number were larger than Linkedin.

    • Summary. "I am very enthusiastic about this opportunity. I think they are well on the way to being impossible to catch in their space from network development, and they have the potential to build a much more addictive experience on top of that userbase, and to monetize it in ways that are relatively non-jarring to their users, and with large revenues and margin potential. I also think Reid is world-class in this type of business and am excited to work with him."