LinkedIn | Company profile & business background

Technology Company portrait

A professional networking platform co-founded by Reid Hoffman, connecting people with careers, business relationships and professional information.

2 min readEditorial review October 17, 2026

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Professional relationships move online

LinkedIn developed around the idea of a professional network people could maintain online. Reid Hoffman was among its co-founders, connecting his entrepreneurial background with a platform for careers and business relationships.

The value of the service depends on the professional context people bring to it: experience, connections, interests and the organisations with which they work.

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A platform for people and organisations

The service connects individual professional profiles with tools and information used by companies and recruiters. People explore opportunities and share material, while organisations use the network to find and communicate with relevant audiences.

Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016. The official announcement provides a dated business milestone in the platform’s development beyond its original founding period.

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A professional identity that can persist between jobs

LinkedIn’s organising idea is a professional profile connected to a network. A person can present experience and maintain relationships even when an individual job changes. This gives the platform a purpose beyond posting a vacancy: it is a setting in which professional identity, information and connections can continue over time.

The company’s current public site also provides routes into learning and business information. These activities serve different moments in a working life, from exploring a subject to looking for an opportunity. The shared professional context connects them without making every user’s immediate purpose the same.

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Recruitment and other organisational uses

An organisation approaches the network from a different direction. Recruitment involves finding people whose experience fits a role; marketing and sales activities involve understanding and reaching a relevant professional audience. LinkedIn’s business products address these organisational uses alongside the individual member’s profile and network.

The 2016 Microsoft acquisition provides a later corporate milestone, while Hoffman’s biography records the founding connection. The company portrait follows the platform and its relationships with members and organisations. The entrepreneur portrait follows the experience and later activities of one of the people who helped establish it. Together they explain both the familiar network and the business history behind it.

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Reid Hoffman’s founding chapter

Hoffman’s entrepreneur portrait follows LinkedIn alongside his later investing and other professional activities. His Greylock biography provides additional background on that career.

LinkedIn is the primary company connected to his profile here. The relationship is presented as a founding chapter, with the platform’s current services described on its official website.

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The connected portraits