LinkedIn pitch deck (2004)
LinkedIn's 2004 pitch deck is the Series B deck Reid Hoffman used to raise $10M from Greylock in August 2004. He later published it with his own notes. Founders study the LinkedIn pitch deck because it explains a network business before anyone called it social media, and it shows how to sell a free product with a clear path to revenue.
- Company
- Year
- 2004
- Round
- Series B
- Raised
- $10M
- Slides
- 37
Deck © LinkedIn. Shared for learning, credited to reidhoffman.org.
What's in the LinkedIn pitch deck
All 37 slides, in order.
Slide 1 · Cover
The LinkedIn logo with the words Series B, August 2004.
Slide 2 · What LinkedIn Is
LinkedIn calls itself Professional People Search 2.0 and names three paid services, which are targeted ads, job listings and subscriptions.
Slide 3 · Problem
There is no trusted way for professionals to find and deal with each other online, because yellow pages, resume databases and directories all fail.
Slide 4 · Networks vs Directories
Internet 1.0 meant searching flat directories, and Internet 2.0 means searching through networks.
Slide 5 · eBay Analogy
Newspaper classifieds judged each seller alone, while eBay judges sellers by the network of transactions between users.
Slide 6 · PayPal Analogy
Citibank checked each person for fraud in isolation, while PayPal checks the network of transactions.
Slide 7 · Google Analogy
Altavista ranked each page alone, while Google ranks pages by the links between them.
Slide 8 · LinkedIn Analogy
Monster and LexisNexis judge each person by their own claims, while LinkedIn judges people by their network of relationships.
Slide 9 · Network First
The network is the key asset, the first mover wins revenue, and PayPal waited until 4 million users before it started charging.
Slide 10 · Series A Plan
A chart of the user growth projection LinkedIn made at its Series A, climbing to about 400,000 users.
Slide 11 · Growth vs Plan
Actual users pass 900,000, more than double the projection, with a Forbes quote calling LinkedIn the largest online business network.
Slide 12 · Market Share Feb 2004
LinkedIn holds 54% of 0.3 million registered users of professional network tools.
Slide 13 · Market Share Aug 2004
LinkedIn's share has grown to 73% of 1.2 million users in six months.
Slide 14 · Competitor Map
A two by two map of social versus professional and web service versus enterprise software, with LinkedIn at 900,000+ users growing 29,000+ a week.
Slide 15 · Groups
MBA programs, conferences and professional groups use LinkedIn, with 50+ groups live and 15 to 20 new ones added each month.
Slide 16 · Results So Far
930K+ users, 22% of them senior executives, 20% of older users logging in each month, all on less than $4 million spent.
Slide 17 · Partnerships
Deals with DirectEmployers for job listings and American Express OPEN, which exposes LinkedIn to 2 million small business cardholders.
Slide 18 · Barriers to Entry
Viral product design, a reputation system that builds trust, and two patents in social networking.
Slide 19 · Network Enables Revenue
eBay, PayPal and Google all built a free network asset and then charged on top of it.
Slide 20 · LinkedIn Revenue Model
Three revenue lines named InLeads, Opportunities and Network Plus, while the core service stays free.
Slide 21 · Free Plus Paid
A diagram of paid services sitting on top of the free universal service.
Slide 22 · Market Size
Comparable markets in 2004 are $2.8B for search ads, $0.8B for job sites and $0.6B for personals sites.
Slide 23 · InLeads
Search ads that do for professionals what AdWords does for products, with 35K+ daily searches and a customer quote about $100K in closed business.
Slide 24 · Search Ads Market
A chart of the growing online ad market, pitching better targeting than Google because LinkedIn knows who is searching.
Slide 25 · Opportunities
Job postings filtered through a user's network plus backdoor reference checks on candidates.
Slide 26 · Customer Quotes
Three users say LinkedIn helped them hire, two of them saving $20,000 and $30,000 in search costs.
Slide 27 · Jobs Market
Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs make $827M together, and LinkedIn already sees 20K+ contact requests a month.
Slide 28 · Network Plus
A paid plan that lets users see four degrees of their network instead of three, with three user quotes.
Slide 29 · Subscription Market
Online personals spending data used as a pricing comparison, plus 33K+ beta subscribers.
Slide 30 · Pricing and Launch
Job listings at $79 launching 11/04, subscriptions at $5.95 a month launching 1/05, and search ads by auction.
Slide 31 · Business Model
High revenue and high margins come from free user acquisition and digital goods with zero extra cost.
Slide 32 · Model Assumptions
Monthly user growth of 3% to 13%, listings at $79 and a 0.5% to 3% subscription rate, all set below current levels.
Slide 33 · 5-Year Financials
A projection table from 2003 to 2007 showing a path to operating profit in 2005.
Slide 34 · Team
Reid Hoffman and the team, several of them from PayPal, with an engineering team from companies like Apple and Cisco.
Slide 35 · Board and Investors
Sequoia led the $4.7M Series A in November 2003, and angels include Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.
Slide 36 · Summary
A high margin billion dollar opportunity, a clear leader, and strong execution on less than $4M spent.
Slide 37 · Closing Line
Find and contact the people you need through the people you already trust.
What the LinkedIn deck does well
- Slides 5 to 8 explain a new idea with three companies investors already understood, eBay, PayPal and Google, and then put LinkedIn in the same pattern.
- Slides 10 and 11 show the Series A growth projection first and then the actual line blowing past it, which proves the team beats its own plan.
- Slide 30 gives exact prices and launch dates for each revenue line, so the question of how a free product makes money gets a concrete answer.
What founders can learn from it
- If your business model is new, compare it to companies investors already know and show the same pattern.
- Show the plan you pitched last round next to what actually happened, because beating your own forecast builds trust fast.
- If your product is free today, name each future revenue line with a price and a launch date.
Questions about the LinkedIn pitch deck
- How many slides are in the LinkedIn pitch deck?
- The LinkedIn Series B pitch deck has 37 slides.
- What's in the LinkedIn pitch deck?
- It opens with the problem of finding trusted professionals online, compares LinkedIn to eBay, PayPal and Google, and then shows user growth and market share. After that it covers the three revenue lines, market sizes, pricing, a five year financial plan, the team and the investors.
- How much did LinkedIn raise with this deck?
- LinkedIn raised $10M in its Series B with this deck in 2004, led by Greylock.
- How many users did LinkedIn have when it raised its Series B?
- The deck shows more than 930,000 registered users in August 2004, growing by about 29,000 a week, with 73% of the professional networking market.
- Can I download the LinkedIn pitch deck?
- Yes. The full LinkedIn pitch deck is available as a free PDF on this page.
Get your deck reviewed the same way.
Comments on every slide, the words to change highlighted, and the 3 fixes that matter.
More pitch decks
- AirbnbAirbnb pitch deck2008 · Seed · $600K
- UberUber pitch deck2008 · Seed
- CoinbaseCoinbase pitch deck2012 · Seed · $600K
- NotionNotion pitch deck2013 · Seed