Thursday, October 23, 2008

Local VCs hook up LinkedIn with $23M funding

By Mass High Tech Staff

Two venture capital firms with local ties, SAP Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners, have helped San Francisco social networking site LinkedIn Corp. land an additional $22.7 million for its fourth round funding. The financing adds to LinkedIn’s previously raised $53 million in the Series D round led by Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures.

Joining the investors in the Series D round were fellow backers Goldman Sachs and The McGraw-Hill Companies. Combined, LinkedIn has raised $75.7 million in its fourth funding round alone.

LinkedIn is a social media site in which more than 30 million business professionals maintain networking connections through online identities. 

Bessemer Venture Partners, which operates an office in Wellesley Hills, was founded in 1911. The firm specializes in investments in early-stage technology companies and operates offices in New York, California, China, Israel and India. Last week, Bessemer co-led an $8 million Series B round of funding for BillShrink Inc., an online personalized savings advisor. Last year, Bessemer raised the second-largest fund in the nation, attracting $1.3 billion in capital. The firm was also the third most active investor in New England during 2007, closing 38 deals, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

SAP Ventures, which has an office in Boston, is the venture capital arm of SAP AG in Germany.

Bain Capital Ventures has more than $1 billion under management and invests in software, wireless, information services, health care, retail, Internet and consumer businesses. On Wednesday, the firm announced that it had led the second round of funding for Blip Networks Inc. and its online television network blip.tv, based in New York City.