I hired a guy named David Sze to do consumer investing at Greylock. And he went on to invest in Facebook and LinkedIn. So I guess I did something right.
Just displaying your resume online, which LinkedIn lets you do, isn't enough.
In building a social network, the standards and mores of a community are its lifeblood; one does not lightly 'experiment' with these, and LinkedIn is exactly right to defend them.
I get my share of 'cold' requests via LinkedIn from people who are launching non-profit or for-profit ventures and who request a meeting to get my input or help. I wish I could say yes to all of them, but given limited bandwidth, I say yes to the subset who've written a compelling description of their work and who are underrepresented.
Facebook is the social graph with the organizing principle around your friends and your social life. LinkedIn is the professional graph, organized around you, your job, your industry, your title and your function. At Chegg, we are building a student graph centered around you, as a student.
You may have a small network, but growing that network has become easier with the use of social tools. LinkedIn, Conspire, even Facebook and Twitter allow you to grab branches that may have previously seemed out of reach.
LinkedIn is the Netscape of its era.
I've been lucky enough to be involved in a number of great startups, including eBay and Wikia as an entrepreneur and LinkedIn and Paypal as an investor.
This is now the way our culture prioritises. Look up 'Steppenwolf,' and you'll get the band before the novel. Look up Jesus Christ, and you'll get the musical. Look up Princess Link-a-din and you'll get LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network.
I am a huge consumer of social networks, and I utilize Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I'm interested and am learning more about Tumblr and other visually dominant sites.
