LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs
Key ideas
Hoffman annotates the deck he used to pitch LinkedIn's Series B, advising founders to lead with an investment thesis, steer into objections and run investors in parallel.
- 1
Open and close on the thesis
Hoffman says the first slide should state what investors must believe to want to own the company, generally in 3 to 8 bullets, with the rest of the deck backing those claims. He says he now thinks a pitch should begin and end there, since feedback on the thesis helps refine it. He also says LinkedIn's own deck should have stated the essence of its pitch at the beginning.
- 2
Steer into the objections
Hoffman says one to three issues can threaten a financing, and they belong in the first slides, when attention is highest; with no revenue in 2004, LinkedIn went to revenue before explaining its product. He notes any good idea faces real objections, such as the charge that a network has no value for its first members. He adds that the deck lacked risk factors, which he now considers essential, and that claiming no competition hurts credibility.
- 3
Pitch by analogy, don't reason by it
Hoffman says analogies save time by anchoring a young company to businesses investors already value, which is why LinkedIn compared networks to eBay, PayPal and Google. He warns against using them to set strategy, because in a startup the details and exception cases matter. He also says not to debate an analogy when challenged, and to leave out a weak one.
- 4
Plan the financing before the product
Hoffman calls financing a startup's most fundamental strategy, since a company that runs out of money dies whatever its product. He maps LinkedIn's rounds as concept pitches for the network and then for revenue, followed by a data pitch and a scale pitch. He says to expect future investors to read today's deck, and that he showed a Series A growth curve he was confident of beating so the Series B could report against it.
- 5
Run likely and ideal investors together
Hoffman advises approaching the investors you most want and those most likely to say yes at the same time, rather than working your way up. For LinkedIn, he says another firm made an offer first and Greylock, knowing this, moved quickly. He stresses staying aboveboard with both, and says financing is not a popularity contest: you need the right person to say yes, ideally one who adds value beyond the money.
In Reid’s words
“If they ask you about your risk factors and you can't answer, you've lost all credibility because they assume you are either dishonest or dumb.”
Reid Hoffman·LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs·Read in context(opens the original in a new tab)“Any good idea has legitimate reasons why it won't work. In order to achieve real success, you need to be contrarian and right”
Reid Hoffman·LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs·Read in context(opens the original in a new tab)“Approach your likely investors and your ideal investors at the same time, because your likely investors provide a temporal forcing function by which you might end up with your ideal investors.”
Reid Hoffman·LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs·Read in context(opens the original in a new tab)About this entry
- Published
- May 22, 2013
- Publisher
- reidhoffman.org
- Type
- Essay
- Language
- English
- Added
- Nov 2, 2026
- Source last checked
- Nov 2, 2026
Cover photo of Reid Hoffman, not from this work: U.S. Secretary of Defense, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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