Why I Sold Linkedin To Microsoft - CEO

Microsoft announced Monday that it
would acquire LinkedIn, the
professional networking site, for $196
per share in an all-cash transaction
valued at $26.2 billion.
The chief executive of LinkedIn, Jeff
Weiner, has explained why he sold the
company.
In an email to LinkedIn employees,
Mr. Weiner outlined the reasons he
chose Microsoft.
See Weiner’s full letter below, which
the CEO posted to LinkedIn on
Monday:
December 15th, 2008, marked the first
day of the best job I’ve ever had. My
rationale for joining LinkedIn was
simple: The opportunity to work with
Reid Hoffman, a founder I greatly
admired and respected; to join an
extremely talented and dedicated team;
and to massively scale LinkedIn’s
membership and business, both of
which had the potential to
fundamentally transform the way the
world connects to opportunity. Never
in my wildest dreams, could I have
imagined what would happen in the
next 7½ years. Our team has grown
from 338 people to over 10,000, our
membership from 32M to over 433M
and our revenue from $78M to over $3
billion.
Despite those accomplishments, we’ve
only just begun to realize our full
potential and purpose: Our mission to
connect the world’s professionals to
make them more productive and
successful, and our vision to create
economic opportunity for every
member of the global workforce.
Today’s announcement, that LinkedIn
will be combining forces with
Microsoft, marks the next step in our
journey together, the next stepping
stone toward realizing our mission and
vision, and in remaining CEO of the
company, the next chapter in the
greatest professional experience of my
life.
No matter what you’re feeling now, give yourself
some time to process the news. You might feel a
sense of excitement, fear, sadness, or some
combination of all of those emotions. Every member
of the exec team has experienced the same, but
we’ve had months to process. Regardless of the ups
and downs, we’ve come out the other side knowing
beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is the best thing
for our company.
Let me explain why.
Every day I come to work, I’m primarily guided by
two things:
First, realizing our mission and vision. While this
has always been top of mind for me, it’s never been
more so than now. Remember that dystopian view of
the future in which technology displaces millions of
people from their jobs? It’s happening. In the last
three weeks alone, Foxconn announced it will
replace 60,000 factory workers with robots, a former
CEO of McDonald’s said given rising wages, the same
would happen throughout their franchises, Walmart
announced plans to start testing drones in its
warehouses, and Elon Musk predicted fully
autonomous car technology would arrive within two
years.
Whether it’s worker displacement, the skills gap,
youth unemployment, or socio-economic
stratification, the impact on society will be
staggering. I’ve said it on multiple occasions and
believe it even more so every day: creating
economic opportunity will be the defining issue of
our time. That’s why I’m here and why I can’t
imagine doing any other job. Simply put, what we
do matters, and matters more than ever.
The second thing I focus on every day is making our
culture and values come to life. Ten years ago, had
you asked me about culture and values I would have
rolled my eyes and recited a line from Dilbert. But
when I started as CEO I began to appreciate just how
important they were. Culture and values provide the
foundation upon which everything else is built.
They are arguably our most important competitive
advantage, and something that has grown to define
us. It’s one thing to change the world. It’s another
to do it in our own unique way: Members first.
Relationships matter. Be open, honest and
constructive. Demand excellence. Take intelligent
risks. Act like an owner.
That’s who we are. That’s LinkedIn.
I primarily focus on these two things, because that’s
all I ever wanted when I was in your shoes: A clear
sense of purpose and the opportunity to be
successful in pursuit of that purpose. Thankfully, in
my current role, I can actually do something about
that.
In order to pursue our mission and vision, and to
do so in a way consistent with our culture and
values, we need to control our own destiny.
That, above all else, is the most important rationale
behind today’s announcement.
At this point, some of you may be thinking this
sounds completely counterintuitive: How will we be
more likely to control our own destiny after being
acquired? The answer lies in both the way in which
the world has been evolving and the unique way in
which this deal will be structured.
Imagine a world where we’re no longer looking up
at Tech Titans such as Apple, Google, Microsoft,
Amazon, and Facebook, and wondering what it
would be like to operate at their extraordinary scale
— because we’re one of them.
Imagine a world where we’re not reacting to the
intensifying competitive landscape — we’re leading
it with advantages most companies can only dream
of leveraging.
Imagine a world where we’re not pressured to
compromise on long-term investment, hesitant to
disrupt ourselves, or hamstrung in the way we can
reward and acquire new talent due to stock price
concerns, but consistently investing intelligently
toward the realization of our mission and vision.
And imagine a world where a global economic
downturn doesn’t limit our ability to execute, but
reinforces the essential quality of our purpose and
actually strengthens our resolve when people need
us most.
With today’s news, we won’t need to imagine any of
it because it’s now our reality.
Some of you may be asking “Why Microsoft?”
Long before Satya and I first sat down to talk about
how we could work together, I had publicly shared
my thoughts on how impressive his efforts were to
rapidly transition Microsoft’s strategy and culture.
After all, it’s extremely rare to see a company of that
scope and scale move so quickly to make
fundamental changes.
The Microsoft that has evolved under Satya’s
leadership is a more agile, innovative, open and
purpose-driven company. It was that latter point that
first had me thinking we could make this work, but
it was his thoughts on how we’d do it that got me
truly excited about the prospect.
When Satya first proposed the idea of acquiring
LinkedIn, he said it was absolutely essential that we
had alignment on two things: Purpose and structure.
On the former, it didn’t take long before the two of
us realized we had virtually identical mission
statements. For LinkedIn, it was to connect the
world’s professionals to make them more productive
and successful, and for Microsoft it was to empower
every individual and organization in the world to
achieve more. Essentially, we’re both trying to do
the same thing but coming at it from two different
places: For LinkedIn, it’s the professional network,
and for Microsoft, the professional cloud.
Both of us recognized that combining these assets
would be unique and had the potential to unlock
some enormous opportunities.
For example:
Massively scaling the reach and engagement of
LinkedIn by using the network to power the social
and identity layers of Microsoft’s ecosystem of over
one billion customers. Think about things like
LinkedIn’s graph interwoven throughout Outlook,
Calendar, Active Directory, Office, Windows, Skype,
Dynamics, Cortana, Bing and more.
Accelerating our objective to transform learning and
development by deeply integrating the Lynda.com/
LinkedIn Learning solution in Office alongside some
of the most popular productivity apps on the planet
(note: 6 of the top 25 most popular Lynda.com
courses are related to Microsoft products).
Realizing LinkedIn’s full potential to truly change
the way the world works by partnering with
Microsoft to innovate on solutions within the
enterprise that are ripest for disruption, e.g., the
corporate directory, company news dissemination,
collaboration, productivity tools, distribution of
business intelligence and employee voice, etc.
Expanding beyond recruiting and learning &
development to create value for any part of an
organization involved with hiring, managing,
motivating or leading employees. This human capital
area is a massive business opportunity and an
entirely new one for Microsoft.
Giving Sponsored Content customers the ability to
reach Microsoft users anywhere across the Microsoft
ecosystem, unlocking significant untapped
inventory.
Redefining social selling through the combination of
Sales Navigator and Dynamics.
Leveraging our subscription capabilities to provide
opportunities to the massive number of freelancers
and independent service providers that use
Microsoft’s apps to run their business on a daily
basis.
And these are just some of the ideas that have been
discussed since our first meeting.
Turning from purpose, we focused our attention on
potential structure. I had no idea what Satya was
going to propose, but knew how difficult acquisition
integrations could be if not established the right way
from the start.
Long story short, Satya had me at “independence.”
In other words, his vision was to operate LinkedIn
as a fully independent entity within Microsoft, a
model used with great success by companies like
YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp. I would remain
as CEO and report directly to him instead of a board.
Together, along with Reid, Bill Gates, my former
colleague Qi Lu, and new partner Scott Guthrie, we
would partner on how best to leverage this
extraordinary combination of assets while pursuing
a shared mission. This, we both agreed, might not
only be a structure that could work, it would be one
in which both companies could thrive.
Now onto the most important question: What does
this mean for you specifically as an employee of
LinkedIn?
Given our ability to operate independently, little is
expected to change: You’ll have the same title, the
same manager, and the same role you currently
have. The one exception: For those members of the
team whose jobs are entirely focused on maintaining
LinkedIn’s status as a publicly traded company, we’ll
be helping you find your next play. In terms of
everything else, it should be business as usual. We
have the same mission and vision; we have the same
culture and values; and I’m still the CEO of LinkedIn.
I wanted to conclude on a familiar note. One of the
most memorable moments I’ve experienced at
LinkedIn was ringing the bell at the NYSE. I
remember the All Hands we had following the event
like it was yesterday. During that meeting, we
reinforced the fact that becoming public was not the
end game, but rather a stepping stone in the process
of our ultimate objectives. We finished the All Hands
with two words that have become LinkedIn’s
unofficial mantra: “Next play.” In other words, don’t
dwell on the past, lingering for too long on a lesson
learned, or the celebration of a special
accomplishment, but rather focus on the task at
hand. It’s a mantra that’s served us well.
So, here’s to the next stepping stone.
Next play.