The document discusses how LinkedIn achieved success and competitive advantage through a strong focus on culture. It describes how LinkedIn grew rapidly to 5,000 employees and $26 billion in revenue despite facing many challenges as a new company. LinkedIn prioritized building an amazing culture focused on career growth and transformation through inspirational experiences and constant listening to employees. This strong culture allowed LinkedIn to attract top talent and outcompete larger tech companies, becoming a highly successful, world-class company.

1. Culture as Competitive
Advantage
Steve Cadigan, @scadigan
Winning in the New Reality

2. The answer to this question
says it all
Who is your main
competitor
@scadigan
?

3. Winning Today Ain’t Easy
• Hard to predict the future
• Who really believes a 5 year plan?
• Barrier to entry lower than ever
@scadigan

4. LinkedIn Story
@scadigan
• Create an amazing company
• Transformation journey
• Unexpected success

5. Results Do the Talkin’
@scadigan
• LinkedIn grew staff from 400 to 5,000 in 5 years
• Considered one of top IPOs of past decade
• Doubled revenue while doubling employee base y/y
• "Disrupted" an industry
• $26B exit in only 13 years from birth
• Built a "world class" company

6. The Billion Dollar Questions
• How do you build a company when:
all your leaders are recruiting most of the time?
• How do you double revenues every year when:
your employee base doubles every year?
• How do you avoid suffocating from:
the weight of your success?
@scadigan

7. @scadigan
The Irony of LinkedIn’s
Success
On paper this was not
supposed to happen!

8. Big Challenges
@scadigan
• Scaling without crumbling
• Culture, Communication, Org Layers, Titles…
• Constant Changes, Growth and Complexity
• New people, offices, countries, policies…
• What business are we in?
• How do I focus my team in chaos?

9. More Challenges
• How do you beat the best companies in the world
in war for talent:
• Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon…
• We had no brand!!
• “Linked…What???”
• And yet…..we succeeded
@scadigan

10. The Untold Stories of Success
@scadigan
• Exec team “rookies”/first timers
• First time CEO
• Complex business model
• Real competitive threats (Google, Facebook & …)
• The “pain” of growth

11. Inflection Point
@scadigan
• Biggest impediment to our growth?
• Hiring top tech talent
• Our main business product?
• Recruiting product
• Our biggest pain point?

12. Career “Transformation”
@scadigan

13. Culture was our Focus
• “What kind of company do we
want to be?”
• Everyone builds a winning culture
• “We want this to be the best job
you ever had!”
@scadigan

14. How Did We Achieve Success?
• Listening
• Culture++
@scadigan

15. Driving Career Velocity
Delivering transformation
@scadigan
• Talent was our #1 priority as a company
• Career velocity mattered
• Career “bursts”
• We tore up “one year before you can apply”

16. We Focused on our Brand
@scadigan
• Issue: we needed to stand out in a crowd
• Solution:
• Amazing experiences
• Guest speakers
• Work is an "adventure"
• Virtuous cycle created
• Message amplification

17. @scadigan
If Talent is your differentiator then…
• You must learn from your talent
• Listening and collecting information is essential
• Information informs strategy
• Information provides insights to adjust course
• You MUST have a Listening Strategy today
New Assets

18. We won with Culture
• InDays creation
• Inspirational speakers
• Creating – awesome experiences
• Career transformation
@scadigan
…We listened to the stories and responded

19. The Path Forward
• The world is increasingly transparent
• You must have a great culture or great talent will
not want to join or stay
• Employer brand is real
• So real you should not try to “produce”
• Your brand must be authentic
• Culture more critical than ever
@scadigan

20. In Summary
Culture can be your “competitiveadvantage"
• Stories are your brand
• Are you creating experiences worth talking about?
• Is having an awesome culture a priority?
• First step is building a listening strategy
@scadigan

21. Summary Thoughts
• You can win against better brands
• With bigger arsenals
• You can be world class as a first timer
• Everyone engaged in building your company is powerful!
@scadigan

22. Questions?
Thank you!