????上上周，LinkedIn上市了。作為一名股東以及創(chuàng)始人團(tuán)隊(duì)的一員，我自然很高興看到公司受到投資者熱烈追捧。對(duì)于這家我們?cè)诮?年前創(chuàng)立的企業(yè)而言，這是一個(gè)非常重要的里程碑。

????許多人詢問我2003年LinkedIn獲得首輪風(fēng)投時(shí)的情況。鑒于近年來公司取得的成功以及創(chuàng)始人雷德?霍夫曼目前如日中天的聲望，很多人都覺得當(dāng)年融資應(yīng)該不是難事。事實(shí)上，我們的首輪風(fēng)險(xiǎn)融資雖然最終結(jié)果不錯(cuò)，但著實(shí)花了一番功夫：過程中我們受到了種種質(zhì)疑。現(xiàn)在我覺得可以在此回顧，以饗讀者：

????首先，必須要回溯到2003年初：當(dāng)時(shí)，谷歌（Google）仍是一家非上市公司（其IPO是在2004年8月）；雅虎（Yahoo）是行業(yè)領(lǐng)先的消費(fèi)者互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司，時(shí)任首席執(zhí)行官為特里?塞梅爾；當(dāng)時(shí)，硅谷仍在努力走出科技泡沫以及2000年底到2002年的行業(yè)大滑坡；網(wǎng)絡(luò)廣告、以及電子商務(wù)和網(wǎng)絡(luò)增值服務(wù)的市場(chǎng)規(guī)模只有如今的1/10和1/3。（2002年全美網(wǎng)絡(luò)廣告市場(chǎng)的規(guī)模是60億美元，遠(yuǎn)低于2010年的250多億美元，而且呈現(xiàn)同比下降。）

????當(dāng)時(shí)，Salesforce.com還只是一家注冊(cè)用戶僅76,000人的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)（現(xiàn)注冊(cè)用戶數(shù)已超過210萬）；蘋果公司（Apple）正準(zhǔn)備推出一款革命性的iPod產(chǎn)品，用感應(yīng)式轉(zhuǎn)輪取代原先的機(jī)械轉(zhuǎn)輪，而斯蒂夫?喬布斯進(jìn)軍手機(jī)領(lǐng)域的想法在當(dāng)時(shí)看來也有些荒誕不經(jīng)。

????即便是在當(dāng)時(shí)的硅谷，社交網(wǎng)站也只是一個(gè)有待推廣的概念：Friendster仍在進(jìn)行非公開的Beta版測(cè)試（此后2003年10月才收到谷歌收購(gòu)要約，F(xiàn)riendster拒絕了谷歌的要約，接受了Kleiner/Benchmark的風(fēng)投資金）。馬克?扎克伯格此時(shí)還只是哈佛大學(xué)的一年級(jí)新生；Facebook即便是作為封閉的校園社交網(wǎng)站也尚未出現(xiàn)。業(yè)界沒有可依托的社交平臺(tái)……如果人際關(guān)系圖對(duì)于你來說很重要，那你最好從零開始自己制作。將近兩年后Web 2.0的概念才由蒂姆?奧萊利推廣開來并流行（首屆Web 2.0會(huì)議于2004年底舉行）。

????我還和雷德?霍夫曼開玩笑說，這些都是他成為大名鼎鼎的“雷德”之前的日子。

????是的，雖然當(dāng)時(shí)他已經(jīng)是一位很成功的PayPal管理層成員，但這次卻是他首次擔(dān)任首席執(zhí)行官。雖然他早已投資了Friendster和其他一兩家公司，相當(dāng)長(zhǎng)時(shí)間以后他才憑借對(duì)Facebook和Zynga等公司的投資，成為一位傳奇的天使投資人。假如今天雷德要?jiǎng)?chuàng)辦一家公司，他很可能會(huì)獲得美國(guó)所有風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資人的支持；但在2002年底，我們?cè)谄涿⑼⒕S尤公寓創(chuàng)辦LinkedIn時(shí)，情況卻并非如此。

爭(zhēng)取Sand Hill Road的支持

????好了，現(xiàn)在你對(duì)2003年初的情況已有了大概了解。雷德組建了創(chuàng)始人團(tuán)隊(duì)，大部分來自其之前的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)，另外有些人是他認(rèn)識(shí)多年的老朋友。雷德為我們提供了網(wǎng)站啟動(dòng)資金，2003年5月5日網(wǎng)站發(fā)布上線。此后不久，我們開始與風(fēng)投初步洽談首輪融資事宜。

????接下來的幾個(gè)月里，雷德和我踏遍了Sand Hill Road。我們洽談過的公司很多你可能都知道，但有些你可能并不知道，有幾家如今已不在這個(gè)行業(yè)里了。有些公司對(duì)PayPal的故事相當(dāng)熟悉，有些則只是隨便看看。

????總的來說，我想我們至少洽談了25家類型各異的公司。雖然我的記憶可能有遺漏，我們和其中至少六家公司洽談了全面合作關(guān)系。風(fēng)投公司的反應(yīng)不一。有幾家風(fēng)投很快理解了我們追尋的機(jī)會(huì)，并看好我們的團(tuán)隊(duì)和理念。其中有一家的合作顯然很有分歧，少數(shù)直言不諱的普通合伙人認(rèn)為，投資消費(fèi)者互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司是浪費(fèi)時(shí)間和金錢。另一宗合作則導(dǎo)致了我們對(duì)未來5年走向的一場(chǎng)辯論（模型是我建的，所以我回答了大部分問題），顯然他們并不是最合適的首輪融資方（該公司現(xiàn)已退出早期風(fēng)投領(lǐng)域）。而第三家公司對(duì)雷德進(jìn)行了“壓力測(cè)試”（即反復(fù)盤問），看他在Paypal取得一定成功后是否仍有創(chuàng)業(yè)熱情。洽談結(jié)果不甚理想。

????我當(dāng)然不是希望那些沒有投資我們的公司陷入倒霉的結(jié)局。如今我作為種子期風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資人，能夠理解在企業(yè)初期進(jìn)行投資評(píng)估的難度。當(dāng)時(shí)很多風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資人都在泡沫中損失慘重，能對(duì)消費(fèi)者互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司感興趣已屬不易，而LinkedIn網(wǎng)站推出僅幾個(gè)月，我們只有幾萬的注冊(cè)用戶，接下來一年多內(nèi)可能也不會(huì)有收入產(chǎn)生。但我同樣感謝在首輪風(fēng)投融資過程中表示出投資興趣的少數(shù)公司和他們身上的那種激情。正如我常常說的，初創(chuàng)企業(yè)融資不是要說服懷疑者，而是要找到真正的篤信者。

????在首輪融資的末尾，即2003年秋天，我們收到了兩家公司的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資協(xié)議，還有第三家表示有興趣參與（但不愿意領(lǐng)投）。兩份風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資協(xié)議的條款和估值差不多，我們感到兩家公司都會(huì)成為很好的合作伙伴。

????出于種種原因，我們最終選擇了Sequoia Capital的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資協(xié)議。有點(diǎn)諷刺意味的是，Sequoia很晚才首次表示出興趣 （但幸好他們動(dòng)作很快），這輪470萬美元的融資于2003年11月才結(jié)束，融資前估值為1,000萬美元至1,500萬美元。因此，從開始到結(jié)束，我們的融資大概花了4、5個(gè)月的時(shí)間。

????接下來正如他們所說，一切已成為歷史。或者更準(zhǔn)確地說，是許多優(yōu)秀人才的多年努力和創(chuàng)新的歷程。

????Lee Hower （@leehower）是LinkedIn創(chuàng)始人團(tuán)隊(duì)的一員，從LinkedIn創(chuàng)立之初至發(fā)展初期擔(dān)任企業(yè)發(fā)展總監(jiān)。現(xiàn)在，他是波士頓投資公司NextView Ventures的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)世人和普通合伙人，專注于投資種子期的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司。他的博客見AgileVC.

????LinkedIn went public last week. As a shareholder and part of the founding team, I'm obviously pleased with the investor reception it has received. It's a great milestone for the company we started nearly 9 years ago.

????A lot of people ask me what it was like raising the Series A venture capital round for LinkedIn (LNKD) back in 2003. Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success the company has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder Reid Hoffman. We ultimately had a good outcome with our Series A, but I assure you it required some hard work and we faced plenty of skepticism. I thought I'd revisit it and share the story:

????First, you have to rewind mentally to early 2003. Google (GOOG) is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Yahoo (YHOO) is the leading consumer Internet company with Terry Semel as CEO. Silicon Valley is still emerging from the tech bubble and massive downturn of late 2000-2002. The market size for online advertising, e-commerce and web premium services is between one-tenth and one-third of the size it is today. (The entire U.S. online ad market in 2002 was $6 billion, versus $25 billion+ in 2010, and had shrunk year-over-year.)

????Salesforce.com (CRM) is a startup with 76,000 subscribers (over 2.1 million today). Apple (AAPL) is gearing up to launch a revolutionary iPod with a touch sensitive wheel instead of a mechanically rotating one, and the thought of Steve Jobs entering the cell phone business is mildly preposterous.

????Online social networking is a concept still being evangelized even in Silicon Valley: Friendster is in private beta (wasn't until Oct 2003 it received a Google acquisition offer, which it turned down for a Kleiner/Benchmark round). Facebook doesn't exist, even as a walled-garden college social network (Mark Zuckerberg was in his freshman year at Harvard). There are no social platforms to build on top of... if a social graph is important to what you're doing, you better create one from scratch. It'll be nearly two years before the concept of "Web 2.0" is popularized by Tim O'Reilly (the first Web 2.0 conference happened at the end of 2004).

????I also joke with Reid Hoffman that this was back in the days before he was "Reid."

????Yes, he was a very successful PayPal exec, but this is his first time as a CEO. And this is long before he was a legendary angel with investments in Facebook, Zynga, etc. (although he already was in Friendster and one or two other companies). If Reid were to start a company today, he'd probably have every VC in America offering to back him, but this wasn't necessarily the case when we started LinkedIn out of his Mountain View apartment at the end of 2002.

Pitching to Sand Hill Road

????Ok, now you have the context for early 2003. Reid assembled the founding team, drawing largely from his prior startups, with a few other folks he'd known for a long time. He provided our initial seed funding to launch the website publicly on May 5, 2003. Not long after the product launch, we began the initial conversations with VCs for a Series A round.

????Reid and I ran around Sand Hill Road for the next several months. Many of the firms you'd recognize, but a few you might not and a couple we pitched are essentially out of the VC business today. Some groups were intimately familiar with the PayPal story and others were only casual observers.

????In total, I think we spoke with at least 25 firms of various types. We pitched the full partnership of six that I can recall, though it's possible I'm missing somebody. It was an interesting mix of reactions. A couple quickly grasped the opportunity we were pursuing and liked our team and concept. One partnership was clearly very divided and a vocal minority of GPs thought consumer Internet companies were a massive waste of time and money. In another, we descended into a debate about our 5-year forecasts (I built the models so I fielded most of these questions), and it became clear they probably weren't the best fit for our Series A round (this group is no longer in the early-stage VC business). And a third firm "pressure tested" (i.e., grilled) Reid to see if he still had entrepreneurial zeal, after already having some success at PayPal. That one didn't end terribly well.

????I certainly bear no ill will to the various firms that ultimately passed on us. As a seed-stage VC myself now, I can appreciate how hard it is evaluating companies at the earliest stages of development. Lots of VCs had been burned in the bubble and enthusiasm about consumer Internet companies was very much a contrarian view. LinkedIn's product had only been live for a couple months, we only had tens of thousands of registered users and wouldn't start generating revenue for more than a year after this point. But I can similarly appreciate the enthusaism of the small handful of firms that did express interest in our round. As I'm fond of saying, startup fundraising isn't about convincing skeptics but rather finding true believers.

????At the end of the process, which ran into the fall of 2003, we received term sheets from two firms and had a third which expressed interest in participating (but it didn't want to lead the round). The terms and valuation for both offers were comparable and we felt both firms would have made good partners.

????For a variety of reasons we ultimately chose Sequoia Capital's term sheet. Kind of ironic, since Sequoia first showed interest pretty late in the deal process (but to their credit moved quickly from there). It was a $4.7 million round which closed in November 2003, and the pre-money valuation was between $10 million and $15 million. So, from start to finish, our fundraise took roughly four to five months.

????The rest, as they say, is history. Or more accurately many years of hard work and innovation by a lot of great folks.

????Lee Hower (@leehower) was part of the founding team at LinkedIn, serving as director of corporate development from the company's inception through its early growth phases. He currently is a co-founder and general partner at NextView Ventures, a Boston-based investment firm focused on seed stage Internet-enabled businesses. He blogs at AgileVC.