It’s time for a brand spankin’ new edition of Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series where we snoop around inside the employee-only sections of the tech industry’s hottest companies.
Just like Walt Whitman, the tech industry contains multitudes, and we try to represent it all in Cribs. That means that in addition to touring bootstrapped startups, we also like to go inside established tech giants — and it was pretty amazing to have the chance to take an in-depth tour of LinkedIn, the professional social network that’s grown from its 2002 inception in Reid Hoffman’s apartment to a staff of thousands, a user base of hundreds of millions, a hugely successful initial public offering, and continued stock market success.
What’s even cooler was that our guide was none other than Allen Blue, LinkedIn’s very charismatic co-founder and current VP of product who has been with the company since day one. I think it’s fair to say that he’s the best possible person that we could have asked to give us a tour, even though it meant I had to suffer a pretty humiliating loss at expert-level Rock Band along the way.
Watch the video above to see what it’s like inside LinkedIn — from the in-house rock band, to the unlimited Indian food, to Allen Blue’s excellent elephant impression, and beyond.