LinkedIn Series B Pitch Deck (Greylock)
Reid Hoffman · 2004
"Pitch the investment thesis, not the product: LinkedIn raised a $10 million Series B in 2004 with no revenue by steering straight into investors' biggest objection and arguing by analogy that networks — eBay, PayPal, Google — beat directories."
In the summer of 2004 LinkedIn had no revenue, no revenue-capable product, modest organic growth, and was routinely dismissed as 'Friendster for business' while Friendster and MySpace had millions of users. Reid Hoffman still raised a $10 million Series B from Greylock — and in 2013, on LinkedIn's tenth anniversary, he published the full deck with slide-by-slide commentary. Its first move is the tell: instead of showing the product, the deck goes straight to revenue — ads, listings, subscriptions — because the loudest question from investors still nursing dot-com wounds was whether a consumer internet company could make money at all.
The structure is an argument, not a tour. Hoffman frames LinkedIn as 'professional people search 2.0' and argues that the 1.0 tools — yellow pages, résumé databases, directories — all fail from adverse selection: the people worth finding don't participate, and those who do misrepresent themselves. A network with identity and reputation fixes the incentive. Then he pitches by analogy: classifieds became valuable as eBay once a network was added; bank transfers became PayPal; AltaVista's keyword matching lost to Google's PageRank, itself a network signal. Each analogy monetizes around the network rather than charging for membership — you pay for the eBay transaction, not the reputation system. He also flags his own mistakes: listing three revenue streams reads as lack of focus (LinkedIn turned out to be the exception), and a customer-logo slide belongs in enterprise pitches, not consumer ones. Greylock's actual thesis was narrower than the vision — a great recruiting business with an option on more — and that is roughly what happened: recruiting, not networking, became the principal market, and subscriptions became the largest line faster than expected.
Why did LinkedIn's 2004 Series B deck open with revenue models instead of the product?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock (Reid Hoffman, 2004)Reid Hoffman
Facebook (thefacebook) Media Kit / Early Pitch
"A college social network with dense engagement and a captive, targetable young audience for advertisers."