In a series of interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington speaks with LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid Hoffman. He begins the interview by asking Hoffman
whether he's ever considered merging with Facebook (Arrington points out that Hoffman is good friends with most of the Facebook execs at Davos). The answer is a flat "no" as Hoffman insists that
professional and personal networks should not be linked. Because of this, he says, both companies need to stay separate brands.
Meanwhile, Arrington notes that LinkedIn "continues to grow
like a weed," adding that the company has raised over $100 million to date, $75 million of which came in 2008 alone. The company has also been profitable for the past two years, and has $80 million in
the bank. According to Hoffman, LinkedIn has over 34 million registered users, 9 million of which are in Europe. It adds 1 million new users every 17 days.
Unlike most Web startups, the
economy is actually helping LinkedIn's business, as more job seekers turn to their professional networks for new work. "Everyone knew we'd get an uptick from job seekers, free agents, consultants,"
Hoffman says. "A pleasant surprise is the recruiting space, all of our customers are keeping or increasing their spend...we have three principle lines of revenue, advertising, subscriptions from
users, recruiting tools." And because LinkedIn has been profitable for two years, Hoffman proclaims, "when we want to IPO we can do that.
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