[UK] Business social network LinkedIn has hit a milestone in the UK, surpassing 3 million registered users in these parts. Kevin Eyres, Managing Director Europe at LinkedIn, announced the feat at a London event last night and on the company’s blog this morning.
LinkedIn founder and chairman Reid Hoffman attended the event as well, and told Reuters afterwards that the company plans to pursue an IPO at some point, but not any time soon.
This is in line with what Hoffman told us in February this year, when he told Michael Arrington in a video interview that LinkedIn could pursue an initial public offering at any time it wanted to, considering it’s been running at a profit for a couple of years already and still has massive growth potential (the company only recently started opening up to third-party developers).
Hoffman reiterated that point once again in an interview with Sarah Lacy at the TechCrunch50 Conference, saying that they’ll go public as soon as it makes strategic sense for them to do so.
LinkedIn reached a total of 45 million registered users in August 2009, and now counts about 53 million members around the world (that’s already 3 million more than the number of users it announced last month). The company has raised over $100 million to date, its 2008 $53 million round valuing it at a whopping $1 billion.
Interestingly, Hoffman also told Reuters that they haven’t yet spent a dime of their last round of financing ($22.7 million from McGraw-Hill and others).
My guess is they’ll look to the public markets by 2011.