With reports of a 2011 IPO swirling, professional social network LinkedIn has brought on another notable board member—Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz.
It appears that Moritz will be replacing LinkedIn board member and Sequoia Partner Mark Kvamme, who recently left the venture capital firm to run Ohio’s Department of Development. On LinkedIn’s board, Moritz joins Stan Meresman, Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore, former Ask.com CEO George “Skip” Battle, LinkedIn founder and former CEO Reid Hoffman, current CEO Jeff Weiner, Greylock’s David Sze.
At Sequoia, Michael Moritz focuses on software and services investments. Moritz currently sits on the boards of 24/7 Customer, Aricent, Gamefly, Green Dot, Klarna, Kayak.com, and WeatherBug. Moritz’s previous investments at Sequoia include Google, Yahoo, PayPal and Flextronics (he served on the boards of all of these companies as well). Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1986, he worked in a variety of positions at Time Warner and was a Founder of Technologic Partners, a technology newsletter and conference company.
Weiner said of Moritz’s addition in a statement: “As one of the founding investors in LinkedIn, Mark’s vision, passion and insight helped fuel the company long before others had recognized the full potential of our platform…Mike brings an impressive range of knowledge and expertise which will be invaluable to the company as we work to continue to grow our business around the world.”
With 90 million users, LinkedIn has shown steady growth, especially in international markets. And the professional social network, which is cash-flow positive, has been eyeing an IPO for some time now. Moritz is no doubt a seasoned advisor of many companies that have gone public, so his insight should be very incredibly valuable to the company. As we heard at TechCrunch Disrupt last fall, most of Mortiz’s value comes outside of the boardroom — he offers the guidance and experience of someone who has been there many, many times.