Mediaboss Marketing

Eric Ly, a co-founder of the professional social networking site LinkedIn, was in San Antonio on Wednesday to speak to local entrepreneurs about taking their companies to the public market. He was a guest of the Entrepreneurs' Organization San Antonio, a networking group for business owners. Ly spoke with the Express-News about taking a company public, his current venture and the future of social media.

Q: What are some things people should consider when the decision is made to take a company public?

A: The most obvious reason to go public is that there's a certain amount of validation. From the financial perspective, it's really about raising more money to help the company expand the business. But at the same time, it comes with a lot of responsibilities. Now you have to be accountable to public investors, do a lot more reporting, and basically the company has to be at a certain maturity level before it should be subject to all the scrutiny from the public markets.

Q: At what point should a company look to go public?

A: The first thing is that your business has to have profitability. You want to definitely fill out your executive team and have people in all the key positions. The most important of that group is the (chief financial officer), who is going to be dealing with the public investor market and they need to be ready for that. And finally, you need a vision for the future.

Q: What are some of the challenges associated with taking a company public?

A: One of the common challenges is that investors, who have previously invested in the private company, are pushing the company to go public before it is ready. And sometimes the private company is not quite ready for the demand public investors have. I mean, public investors basically expect things to continue to look up. There is such a thing as going public too soon. When you have to report your financial results and there's a bad quarter, that can do some significant damage.

Q: Can you talk about your current venture, Presdo?

A: We're taking all the things that have been done with social media and professional networking and applying that to the face-to-face world. The ultimate goal of social media is to bring people together face-to-face once they've had a chance to talk online. Our product is geared toward events like conferences and trade shows where people are meeting for business and nurturing relationships. And we want to apply social media to help connect people.

Q: In what ways will social media evolve?

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LinkedIn co-founder goes public