LinkedIn, like Facebook, is letting employees sell some stock early - www.venturebeat.com - August 4, 2008

LinkedIn
is letting employees sell up to twenty percent of their vested stock
options at a $500 million valuation, I’ve learned from a source.
Another source tells me that the plan was announced at a recent company
meeting, but they didn’t give me the details.

Incidentally, Facebook is letting its employees sell off a portion of their vested stock, we heard earlier today.


This moves comes at a time when private companies are finding it more
difficult to go public or be acquired. With the stock market woes in
recent months, previously prospective acquirers — publicly-traded tech
companies — are feeling less wealthy, because their own market values
have fallen and they need to watch costs.

Also, bankers are telling companies like LinkedIn and Facebook that
they’ll need more revenue than previously in order to go public. More
on the order of $200 million than $100 million, from our understanding.

Mountain View, Calif.-based LinkedIn says it’s making $100 million in annual revenue (Facebook is reportedly projecting three times that much for this year). Like Facebook, LinkedIn plans to go public at some undetermined point in the future. The business networking site has meanwhile been growing fast in the US and around the world this past year.

But employees at LinkedIn and Facebook have been hard at work for
years, and some are most certainly getting antsy, hoping to trade in
their stock for cash. Both companies are competing with smaller and
larger tech companies that can offer competitive packages using cash
rather than stock options as employment incentive.

LinkedIn, like Facebook, isn’t commenting about its employee stock option plans.