how did LinkedIn get its initial Traction ?

Linkedin's website was officially launched in May 2003 and at the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4.5k users. As of 2016, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 467M users in over 200 countries and territories. Linkedin was acquired by Microsoft in Dec 2016 for $26B.

Credit: Press.linkedin.com/about-linkedin

Question that we are trying answer in this post is that how did LinkedIn get its initial set of users that triggered this massive growth ? After reading around the web, I was able to figure this out:

• The 13 people associated with the company invited 112 people. And, then it grew from there. The founder also seeded LinkedIn with his successful friends and connections recognizing that cultivating an aspirational brand was crucial to drive mainstream adoption. So, most of the first 12,000 odd people who signed up were either 1st degree (e.g. directly knew someone on founding team) or 2nd degree ("friend of a friend" of someone on founding team) connection. So virtually all of the people who signed up in the first week were part of the startup ecosystem (so predisposed to try out new products) and had a direct or indirect connection to the LinkedIn team.
• In 2003, the founder of LinkedIn refused to meet with potential VCs at the summit until they adopted LinkedIn and ideally recruited their partners as well.
• In 2003, LinkedIn also deployed an Outlook contact uploader (very painful to build/support) to allow viral spread among professionals. This is what gave them a 5x-10x distribution for each invite that was sent out.
• LinkedIn also deferred any features related to revenue or engagement until after the growth path was established, which took 15-20Months.
• Invitation reminder mailers also helped a lot.
• They launched 3 revenue streams in 2005. The first was job listings. The second one was subscriptions (enhanced communications and search capability - People need to talk to people they don't already know in order to get the job done). And advertising - 2 things that persuaded them to launch advertising - (1) demographic was so good (2) they realized that they could build unique business products.

Credit:

Ourstory.linkedin.com

Quora.com/How-did-LinkedIn-product-get-its-initial-traction