Covers 5:46–10:47. The second startup, Y Combinator, and the LinkedIn acquisition.

The product

  • Rapportive (~2010) put social media inside Gmail: a browser extension that manipulated the Gmail web UI to show, next to each email, a social profile of the sender — photo and job title from LinkedIn, recent tweets from Twitter, Facebook posts, whatever could be found. 5:46 6:14
  • It quickly became popular, which enabled raising money from a still-young Y Combinator; the team moved from the UK to San Francisco for the program and then stayed on US work visas. 6:14 6:38
  • The Bay Area proved very open to outsiders: starting with one or two contacts, introductions compounded into a real network and an established position. 7:30

The acquisition (2012) — the honest version

  • Sold to LinkedIn in 2012 with a team of just five people; a success for everyone involved, but not a huge sum. 7:57 8:11
  • The real context: they were burning money, user growth was okay but not enough to raise a big round, revenue attempts hadn't worked — so it was sell or shut down. They couldn't even reduce their own salaries because that would have violated their visa conditions. 8:11 8:37 9:10
  • Selling was "the least bad option", and given the lack of leverage Martin is happy with the outcome: LinkedIn let the team stay together and operate as an independent unit inside the company. 9:37

Aftermath inside LinkedIn

  • Rapportive itself went on life support; the team built a new product released as LinkedIn Intro, which got a weird reception and was shut down shortly after launch. The team was then disbanded, but Martin credits LinkedIn for the freedom they were given throughout. 10:03 10:36