There is a new entrant to Silicon Valley’s tribe of billionaires. Reid Hoffman, the man who started Linkedin, has finally entered into the company of the superrich. It has been a long wait for Hoffman, however. Back in 2006, Hoffman’s start-up was slow to catch up – people found it difficult to make sense of LinkedIn. Hoffman described himself as an “embarrassment”. In a 2006 interview to the New York Times, Hoffman mentioned that it was embarrassing that even though he had started a year or so earlier, his fellow PayPal founders zipped past him to earn huge fortunes.
In the aftermath of the great recession, however, LinkedIn has come into its own. Since the financial crisis began in 2008, the business networking site has seriously bloomed and has ended up as one of the biggest creators of personal wealth. Finally, Hoffman has entered into the billionaire list of Silicon Valley.
LinkedIn may have projected profits of zero this year, but the company has been trading at over $80 a share. As for Hoffman, his stake in the company is now over $1.6 billion. Hoffman may be a new billionaire, but until recently, valuations had put his worth at $800 million, exactly half the new figure.
In the coming days, watch out for more IPOs from the likes of Zynga, Groupon and Facebook. Silicon Valley could soon throw up several new billionaires. Silicon Valley is known for its super-rich community. Currently, many of the people on that list are founders of social media sites. Hoffman has finally entered that prestigious community.
