My Age of Investment

“LinkedIn was launched in May. At the beginning of the launch, we used a stupid method. The five founders each accepted the task of inviting 100 friends to join LinkedIn.”

Speaking of this, Hoffman smiled wryly, probably thinking of the difficulties in the early days of the establishment.

"Because Li and Vilent are engineers, they are relatively unsociable, so we eased their tasks a little bit. The two of them only had to invite 50 friends, while the other three founders still had a goal of 100 people. Change."

Hoffman pointed to one of the co-founders in the audience and said, "Gulick has accumulated deep connections through years of study and work. In just three days, he completed the task and found enough people... "

Xia Jingxing listened very carefully to LinkedIn's growth story.

In the early days of Facebook’s establishment, it was also very difficult. In order to place an advertisement on the campus newspaper, it was begging my father to tell my grandmother, and I exhausted all my connections.

Compared to them, LinkedIn is even more difficult.

This can also be seen from the growth rate of users. After all, business social networking is not as gimmicky as campus social networking, and the concept is too serious and serious.

Moritz and Kopelman didn’t interrupt. They also wanted to fully understand the entire process of LinkedIn’s creation and development, so that they could conduct a comprehensive analysis.

Hoffman continued: "Slowly, LinkedIn began to gain a certain reputation in Silicon Valley, and many forward-looking company employees, media and headhunters saw its potential and became our early seed users.

However, it is very regrettable that up to 50% of registered users are silent users, and the growth of the number of users and activity of the website has stopped for a while.

This is one of the biggest difficulties we are currently facing. "

Hoffman changed his words, "However, we have found a corresponding solution."

"The number of users and the depth of the relationship network formed directly determine the value of the website."

"I then led the team to conduct a series of "growth hacking" experiments, aiming to increase the number of potential contacts for each user, thereby enhancing community stickiness, user activity and user growth rate."

Hoffman went on to show the PPT.

“First of all, we researched the number of friends that newly registered users are willing to invite, and after trial and error, we finally settled on the magic number “4”.

When a newly registered user arrives at the "Invite Friends" page, if the system suggests that the number of friends invited by the user is less than 4 by default, they may easily ignore this step;

If there are more than 4 people, it may cause anxiety and trouble for the user;

Just 4 people are unbiased, which can achieve the maximum invitation conversion rate. "

Xia Jingxing felt quite magical, why was it four instead of six, six should be more auspicious, but it was another six-degree division theory.

However, the conclusions drawn by people through scientific research naturally have some truth.

This trick, take a note and write it down, Facebook can steal the teacher!

Just as Xia Jingxing was taking notes in his heart, Howard glanced at him and smiled evilly, as if to see through him.

Xia Jingxing shrugged, quite helpless, it wasn't a great discovery, as for looking at me like this?

Maybe it is suitable for LinkedIn, but not suitable for Facebook, is this clear?

After Hoffman had a "friendly interaction" with Xia Jingxing, he continued: "In the early days, our invitation method was to send emails to users' friends. But the earliest email copywriting was polite.

continue reading! Stiff and unattractive.

We recently changed our email copy to look like this.

"I saw you while browsing the network, let's be friends with each other, I will be happy to accommodate your request and provide possible follow-up assistance. This will help us build a stronger network."

This concise and powerful narrative directly clarifies the reason for the invitation letter, what the other party is expected to do, and especially the potential value it brings to the other party.

The effect is very good!

Every ten emails have been sent out to get a new user,

Now this data has become 3.2. "

Speaking of this, Hoffman looked at Xia Jingxing and smiled, "Daren and their Facebook are also using this kind of email copy marketing, and their recently launched picture tagging function covers this function.

But we are not plagiarism, this feature was launched at about the same time.

This is how good ideas can be imagined by smart people. "

Looking at the gazes from others, Xia Jingxing did not expect Hoffman to suddenly pull on Facebook.

This dog said, definitely wants to touch porcelain!

Facebook is valued at over 100 million, and LinkedIn posted it. Isn't it putting money on your face?

However, Xia Jingxing did not touch the smiling face, but Xia Jingxing still gave face, nodded and smiled: "Yes, Facebook's recently launched picture tagging function can tag friends and automatically send an email like this to friends...

The effect is very good, simple and direct, arousing the user's curiosity and exploring ideas. "

Seeing Xia Jingxing's endorsement of LinkedIn, Hoffman continued with a smile: "We also found that less than 25% of the users who were invited by email would continue to actively add more contacts. .

After most people sign up, they only keep their friend relationships with their respective inviters, and it is difficult to add new contacts.

This fragile relationship chain is not conducive to the long-term development of any social networking site.

In response to this problem, we will allow users to import contacts in their email address book. "

The last sentence is astonishing!

It seems normal after more than ten years, but now it is an innovative move.

As soon as Hoffman finished speaking, all three investors asked questions.

Hoffman's chubby face squeezed into a smile, satisfied with the crowd's reaction.

He asked the most important Sequoia Capital to ask questions first, and Moritz asked: "It is difficult to import contacts by entering the account password of a third-party online email service, and users do not have such operating habits."

Hoffman nodded and smiled. As expected of an old driver, he could see through the essence of the problem at a glance.

"We plan to develop a plug-in for local mail sending and receiving software. After users download and install it, it can help them automatically import the contacts stored in the local address book."

Moritz nodded, "That's fine, as long as it can solve the problem of user habits, this is a very good idea."

Seeing that the question was three and five divided by two, it became clear, and Xia Jingxing and Copperman also gave up asking questions.

"When new users register, they will be invited to fill in their current company and position. The data shows that more than 90% of them are willing to fill in..."

Hoffman continued, "We're going to add a contact recommendation feature in this segment, which is a list of related users who also belong to the company.

New registrants only need to simply tick the

continue reading! Connect with your colleagues.

This will break the previous single connection dimension based on ready-made email contacts, and move the colleague relationship that exists offline to the Internet.

If the effect is satisfactory, we also plan to add a "Please enter previous company and position" to fill in.

Users can use this to sort out their personal careers, form exchanges with old colleagues in the past, and help start a new career.

This idea, we internally call "reconstruction of relational flow".

Not only can it directly and effectively increase the number of friend connections of each user, but it can also beautify the user's profile page and provide more valuable display information to the outside world, which will facilitate subsequent natural interactions.

Moreover, as new users continue to register and join, old users will also passively receive invitations to add friends from new users from time to time, which helps to recall them and maintain the activity of the website. "

After speaking, the conference room fell silent.

Xia Jingxing, like the other two investors, is thinking seriously.

He thought for a while in his mind, as soon as these functions were launched, LinkedIn basically had the prototype of the previous life, and then it flew into the sky.

Two other investors, Kopelman and Moritz, were mentally assessing how much the new features would change the site.

With the current number of 60,000 users, they are definitely not satisfied.

The key is whether these new features are as magical as Hoffman said, injecting several new growth drivers into LinkedIn.

"If these new features reach the ideal state after they are launched, it will bring a steady stream of new users to LinkedIn, while maintaining the vitality of old users."

Moritz hypothesized, "What about LinkedIn's monetization model?"

"This has been considered and is planned."

Hoffman continued to put the PPT and introduced: "What is envisioned is the realization of multiple ways and multiple sets of products.

The first is the recruitment solution. At present, a large number of headhunters have seen the potential of LinkedIn and settled in our platform, and some headhunters have found suitable candidates through LinkedIn.

At present, the user is not large enough, so we have not launched our own recruitment product.

There are also advertising and marketing solutions. Our members are highly educated. Currently, more than 90% of our users have a college degree and their income is also at a high level.

Maintaining such user attributes all the time can naturally attract big brands serving the middle class to advertise.

The last is the paid business, we can launch premium user accounts.

For example, if a user wants to contact a friend of his boss, that is, a third-degree relationship, he must pay LinkedIn to buy an account with advanced permissions. "

Xia Jingxing suddenly admired the fat man who weighed more than 200 kilograms. He thought clearly and clearly about product functions, growth methods, profit models, etc.

What else are you discussing, just call the money!

Koppelman took a deep breath and took the lead in applauding, "Excellent speech, Hoffman, tell me, how much valuation do you want? How much capital do you raise?"

Xia Jingxing and Moritz also looked at the fat man on stage, and after hearing Hoffman talk so much, nothing else was a problem, except for the money.

Today they came to LinkedIn, and they are naturally willing to invest.

But when it comes to valuation and self-interest, there are still more trade-offs to make.