Networking site opens downtown sales office
(Crain’s) — LinkedIn Corp., a fast-growing networking Web site for professionals, opened an office in downtown Chicago early this month with a six-person sales staff.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet firm is leasing a suite from shared office space provider Regus Group PLC at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange complex, 10-30 S. Wacker Drive. LinkedIn expects to have as many as 15 to 25 sales people here by the end of next year, says Bella Elharazin, a former executive with Oracle Corp.’s local office who is now LinkedIn’s director of central U.S. and Canada.
“We wanted a local presence,” Mr. Elharazin says. “Social networking is all about localizing.”
LinkedIn is opening its office here while other large Internet companies such as Google Inc. have been expanding.
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The Chicago LinkedIn office will sell to corporate recruiting departments, providing companies the ability to search for candidates among LinkedIn’s more than 26 million members. LinkedIn has more than 700 corporate clients, including local ones such as Allstate Corp., Kraft Foods Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp.
LinkedIn doesn’t disclose revenue, but in June the 5-year-old firm secured a fourth round of venture capital funding that valued the company at $1 billion.
In addition to its Mountain View headquarters, LinkedIn has U.S. offices in San Francisco; Atlanta; Omaha, Neb., and New York. Mr. Elharazin says the firm hasn’t yet begun searching for long-term office space here.
