Keith Rabois explains that the key to LinkedIn’s success was investing 80% of resources in virality

Keith was employee number 20 at LinkedIn, and when he left almost three years later, they were at employee 59:

“People forget that it took two years to get to a million users, which in a social product feels like an eternity. Revenue - we had like none for the first 2-3 years.”

He continues:

“The key was Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, was very savvy, and he knew what the ingredients for success were. He was very consciously aware that LinkedIn had to be a viral product. We could not afford to pay for customer acquisition. So almost everything was predicated on: How do you create a truly viral product? And there’s ways of measuring it. That was like 80% of resources. And once we nailed the viral product, and the [viral] coefficient was above 1, then we could take time to build other products.”

Full video: Khosla Ventures “Lessons from Five Companies (Part II) | Keith Rabois & David Weiden“ (Aug 2024)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Keith Rabois insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: “Best startup advice from Keith Rabois“