LinkedIn marks progress to IPO, hires ex-Tivo CFO
Armed with a bevy of new managers from top Silicon Valley firms and explosively growing revenues, business networking site LinkedIn Corp. is gearing up to become one of the first big post-dotcom Internet IPOs.
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2007, LinkedIn Corp. is positioning itself as one of the first large Internet companies to test public markets since the dotcom collapse, with the company confirming both explosively growing revenues and an explicit push toward an offering. The Reuters report frames the move as a milestone for a generation of web firms that came of age after the bust.
The operational tell is personnel: the confirmed hire of a former TiVo CFO, alongside what the company describes as a wave of managers recruited from top Silicon Valley firms, is the classic governance-and-controls buildout companies assemble before filing. For LinkedIn specifically, it converts a networking site into a company structured for public-company disclosure.
First-order effects
- LinkedIn gains the financial-reporting and controls leadership an offering requires, with an ex-TiVo CFO installed while revenues are expanding quickly enough to support a debut listing.
Second-order effects
- A successful large post-dotcom web IPO would set the pricing template and reopen the window for other private Internet companies that have been waiting out the market since 2000.
Third-order effects
- If LinkedIn's path holds, the 'hire a public-company CFO, then file' sequence becomes the standard readiness playbook for consumer-web firms, and professional networking emerges as its own publicly traded category rather than a feature of portals or recruiting incumbents.
The trend: Post-dotcom Internet companies are moving from venture-backed growth toward public markets, with executive hires signaling IPO readiness before any S-1 lands.