Private equity & VCs compete to buy into LinkedIn ahead of IPO
Posted by: admin in Investments and Raising MoneyFiled under: Raising money, Bain Capital, Venture capital industry, Private equity industry, Investments, Public or private?
LinkedIn is the social networking operator that just about each business person has received an invite to join from at least one person they know.
The company issued a press release this morning noting that it has secured $53 million in additional funding in a capital raise. This was its fourth and largest round of funding and is said to value the company north of $1 billion. What’s perhaps more interesting than anything is that the finding was from a private equity-led group rather than from venture capital. Bain Capital Ventures, the VC unit of Bain, led the financing with additional reinvestment from the company’s existing investors:
- Sequoia Capital,
- Greylock Partners,
- and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Over 23 million professionals use LinkedIn to keep in touch with old contacts, to reach new contacts, to problem-solve, and more.
To top matters off, CNBC hosted the head of the company, Dan Nye, earlier this morning and the hint of going public was much more than a hint. It seems like you can probably anticipate an S-1 filing with the SEC in the relatively near future if things continue, even though that timing could be later in 2008 or into 2009 or even never. But the ‘we are going for valuations much higher than this’ line was a hard one not to notice. Personally, I’ll go ahead and ‘bet the over’ that we see an IPO filing in the coming months as long as market conditions don’t go further awry.
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