LinkedIn announced on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $22.7m (£14m) in funding, giving the business-networking site a little cushion in difficult economic times.
The strategic investment, from Goldman Sachs, SAP and McGraw-Hill, as well as long-time investor Bessemer Venture Partners, comes on the heels of a $53m Series D funding round in June that gave LinkedIn a valuation of $1bn. The latest funding round brings the total funds raised to just more than $100m.
LinkedIn chief executive Dan Nye announced the funding in a blog posting on his company's site: "I'd like to reiterate our commitment to creating the right partnerships to help us build a great service for over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn today — a number that's growing by leaps and bounds each month.
"This funding strengthens LinkedIn further, and will help us to continue creating additional services for professionals to connect and collaborate more effectively, around the world."
LinkedIn is managing to raise fresh cash as many tech companies are scrambling to horde cash. But while the site is small in comparison with social-networking sites Facebook and MySpace, with 30 million users, the average LinkedIn member is 41 years old and earns about $110,000 a year.
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Its white-collar focus — billionaire Bill Gates is proud of his profile — means LinkedIn can attract premium advertisers and charge quite a bit for ads: reportedly $75 per thousand impressions.
However, the economic state is certainly on Nye's mind. The networking site has reportedly slowed its hiring rate after growing from 60 to 370 employees in the past 18 months.
