Hoffman: LinkedIn invented its Series A revenue model in one evening
Reid Hoffman · OpenAI's Sam Altman: Customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale · Jul 19, 2023 · at 11:37
Reid Hoffman contrasts traditional VC demands for early revenue spreadsheets with the early-stage building approach championed by Y Combinator.
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“At the time, potential Series A investors wanted to see a business model that showed how LinkedIn would get to profitability. I told potential investors that we weren't going to generate any revenue until after the next round of financing, and that therefore it shouldn't matter to them. They insisted anyway, so the team and I generated a financial model that included revenue sources. I don't even remember what we put in it. Rather than wasting weeks on it, we simply set aside a single evening, drank a couple glasses of wine, and put together the model.”
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