1. Businesses that can cut costs for clients can IPO in a recession. LinkedIn cuts the cost of business development, recruiting and finding experts.
2. The best businesses IPO when markets are down. It shows strength. Who cares if it takes 12 months for markets to pickup? Insiders will be locked-in for a while anyway.
3. Facebook cannot IPO. Their $15bn valuation won’t wash with public investors and they can hardly do a down round. So LinkedIn gets the mindshare and public currency to win the next round.
4. Public currency is needed to buy local business networking sites such as Xing and Viadeo, where non-English languages make organic expansion hard.
5. LinkedIn keeps innovating, such as their recent move into expert networks to compete with Gerson Lehman Group. This move is an obvious revenue earner.
6. LinkedIn’s revenue model is not tied to advertising and is therefore more recession proof.
7. The bloom is off the Facebook rose, so strike while the iron is hot (sorry about mixed metaphors Ed)
8. We all need some cheery news amidst all this recession talk.
9. Somebody needs to show that public markets are suitable for high growth, high tech businesses and not just dividend-spouting oil companies.
10. Because I forecast that they would and I would love to be proved right.
Finally, why do we always need 10 items on these lists?
