Reid Hoffman is part of the PayPal alumni club.  Former PayPal employees include:
1. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawad Karim – YouTube founders
2. Roelof Botha – Sequoia Capital Partner
3. Jeremy Stoppleman – CEO of Yelp
4. Max Levchin – CEO/Founder of Slide
5. Elon Musk – Founder of SpaceX
6. Peter Thiel – President of Clarium Capital and early Facebook investor

There seems to be a trend of former PayPal employees that go off and start their own successful ventures.  And LinkedIn is no different.

Dave Wehner, a Director at Allen & Company is working with LinkedIn to find venture capital for the professional network to be given a valuation at $1 billion.  This valuation is about 1/15th of rival, Facebook.  Wehner also supposedly helped Bebo sell to AOL for $850 million.  

LinkedIn has raised over $27.5 million thus far in the form of 3 rounds.  The company is expected to earn $100 million in revenue this year.

I have a LinkedIn account, but I rarely use it.  I really only login when another friend adds me.  I think that’s the social networks greatest flaw: retention.  I could be the only one, but I’ll let this poll decide.

[poll=7]

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch:  Allen & Co. Pitching LinkedIn At $1 Billion by Michael Arrington