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Coffee Chat: Running LinkedIn Singapore like a Startup

Summary

Penn Olson founder Willis Wee talked with LinkedIn APAC VP Arvind Rajan about running LinkedIn like a startup. Arvind talked about how he focuses heavily on taking the time to hire the right team.

They also talked about LinkedIn’s expansion, which has kept Arvind on the road nearly 80 percent of the time over the past few months. As for the elephant in the room, China, they’re looking at it, but Arvind wouldn’t talk specific plans. He did suggest LinkedIn doesn’t see a “breakout” competitor there yet, though. What advice did he have for startups? Focus your time. Be sure you’re spending most of your time on the most important problems and moving your business forward. Because you have to juggle so many balls at a startup, it’s easy to get bogged down in the unimportant things. Also, be careful about your team. You spend all day every day with them, so you don’t want to hire weak links, and you really don’t want to hire assholes.
Liveblog

#10:17: And that’s it for that session. Thanks folks. Check out the next one with Steven Goh of mig33, coming up immediately! #10:16: The hardest part of working at a startup is prioritizing. Focus on high-value opportunities, especially low-risk high-value opportunities. Work on the stuff you really think is going to move the business forward.

#10:15: Tips for startups: Don’t expand too quickly. Test first and make sure you’ve got the model right. LinkedIn waited five years before they opened an office outside the US because they wanted to get it right. But once they figure things out, they expand quickly.

#10:14: Would you ever quit and try to build your own startup? “I’d never say no,” but he’s happy and engaged in LinkedIn for now, hasn’t thought that far down the road. #10:13: Arvind says he hasn’t mingled with the startup crowd in Singapore much, in part because he’s on the road more often. “But as I build the team out [...] I’m looking forward to do more of that.”

#10:10: LinkedIn does have a recognizable brand, which can be a hiring advantage, but there are also people who prefer to build something. Sometimes startups have an advantage, too.

#10:09: “We want to make sure wherever you walk into a LinkedIn office…it still feels like the same culture. We spent an awful long time [...] talking about culture and values.”
#10:08: Languages? “I speak Tamil like a 3 year old, French like a 10 year old, and Spanish like a 5 year old.” No Chinese or Japanese though. So how do you manage an office if you don’t understand the languages? “It comes down to hiring the right people [...] we look to entrepreneurs to run our offices.”


#10:06: What’s exciting? Because Asian markets can be so different, we get to innovate. Also says he’s really enjoyed growing their markets in India. Australia also growing fast. “There’s a lot going on here!” LinkedIn’s focus is on professionals worldwide. 40 percent of them are in Asia. “We’re still at the very start of a journey in Asia” and that’s exciting. #10:05: Are you here long term? Not really. “I think for now, I’ve got the most exciting job in the world.”

#10:05: Arvind hears from lots of clients, ‘we’re looking to hire more in China.’ So it China is important to lots of people.

#10:03: Why hasn’t LinkedIn been blocked in China? Advantage of context. People use LinkedIn for professional life; people don’t use it for politics. LinkedIn is about business, and that’s OK. “We have Chinese users connecting to professionals all over the world, and getting deals done.” #10:01: Worried about competition in China? “I wouldn’t say that we’re not worried .. but we haven’t seen anyone break out yet.” What about Tianji? “They’ve done OK .. I wouldn’t say they’ve received a lot of success. But we don’t discount them.”

#10:00: “We’re thinking about it [but] we don’t have a presence there yet,” Arvind says on China. Big competitors there too: Tencent, Renren, Weibo. Says no one on the professional side that has achieved significant scale yet though.

#10:00: What about China? China is difficult. But exciting. Scale and scope impressive, but it’s a market where many Western companies have failed. ‘So at this point we’re studying and thinking about it.’ No official Chinese version yet. #9:59: Localized development is going to be the approach in Japan, Arvind says they’ll be taking that approach elsewhere as well.

#9:57: Japan is LinkedIn’s newest Asian office. Arvind says he’s on the road around the Asian offices a lot, 65-75% of the time. Plus he’s looking at new markets around Asia. Which new markets, asks Willis. Arvind dodges.

#9:55: No exact numbers, but LinkedIn has “roughly half of the professional workforce” in Singapore.

#9:55: One challenge in Singapore is finding talent, as unemployment here is very low and competition for talent is fierce. But, of course, they can find people through LinkedIn. “We only use LinkedIn for hiring.” #9:54: “I don’t want to hire assholes.” In LinkedIn, as in a startup, you just spend too much time together with the people you work with. Hiring jerks can be a big problem.

#9:53: Remember, hard refresh your browser to see the latest updates!

#9:53: “The biggest single thing I think about every day is finding the right talent [...] it’s easy and tempting to hire the first warm body you see, and I think it’s always a mistake.”

#9:51: Do you like Singapore? Arvind says it’s hot, but yes. And it’s so convenient!

#9:51: “One of the things I’ve loved about LinkedIn is that we tend to be very entrepreneurial in the way we approach things.” Growth has been impressive and exciting, especially in the APAC reason. #9:50: What makes LinkedIn APAC like a startup? They hire very slowly and carefully. Building the right team is paramount.

#9:49: LinkedIn APAC: offices in India, Japan, Singapore, Australia. But Arvind says they’ve got users everywhere, and are adding languages. Singapore team has grown from six people, now approaching twenty.

#9:47: Arvind: One of the challenges of working in Singapore, where he is now based, is that the time zone difference is rough when he has to communicate with offices in the US.

#9:47: This session is a discussion between Penn Olson founder Willis Wee and Arvind Rajan, the managing director and VP of LinkedIn for APAC and Japan.