A venerable VC firm keeps poaching from its high-profile portfolio company
Venture capital firm Greylock Partners is soon going to have to rename itself LinkedOut Partners.
Greylock was one of the business-focused social network’s earliest investors, leading a $10 million Series B round in late 2004. When LinkedIn (LNKD) went public this past summer, Greylock held around a 15% position.
But Greylock’s relationship to LinkedIn now goes well beyond investor/investee. The VC firm has been on a hiring binge this year, almost all of which has involved former LinkedIn employees.
Earlier this week, Greylock hired Adam Nash, VP of product management at LinkedIn, as its newest entrepreneur-in-residence. This comes less than a month after Greylock added Josh Elman, who managed product development for LinkedIn Jobs in 2004 and 2005, as a principal. And two months after former LinkedIn chief scientist joined as “data scientist-in-residence.”
Or maybe a more appropriate name would be Hoffman Ventures, after LinkedIn founder and current chairman Reid Hoffman, who joined Greylock as a partner in 2009 and is largely responsible for recruiting so many of his former colleagues. And the “sphere of Reid” extends beyond LinkedIn. For example, the firm hired ex-Mozilla CEO John Lilly as a partner earlier this year. One of his board members at Mozilla was Reid Hoffman.
So if you’re wondering you Greylock will hire next, just view Hoffman’s bio. Or, better yet, his LinkedIn account…
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