Episode 14: LinkedIn

Ben and David cover the 3-day-old acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft for $26.2 billion. They cover LinkedIn’s founding story by Reid Hoffman, break down their core businesses, analyze recent stock behavior, and speculate on the future of the company inside Microsoft. The big question - were they worth the price tag?

Sponsors:

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• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
• Vanta: https://vanta.com/acquired

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Items Mentioned On The Show:

• Adweek: Snapchat Launches a Colossal Expansion of Its Advertising, Ushering in a New Era for the App
• The Facebook Effect - David Kirkpatrick
• LinkedIn’s Series B pitch deck
• LinkedIn’s S-1
• Microsoft and Apple Double Down - Stratechery
• NYT Dealbook on stock based compensation at LinkedIn
• Josh Elman - When people get confused about “BS metrics”
• Fred Wilson: The Dentist Office Software Story

The Carve Out:

• Jeff Bezos at Code 2016
• Elon Musk at Code 2016