San Francisco — LinkedIn, the Mountain View online business networking site, has agreed to acquire start-up “ChoiceVendor” a company that classifies and reviews business-to-business service providers in its second major acquisition in the space of six weeks.
ChoiceVendor, a San Francisco based start-up, established in 2008 by former Google employees, provides ratings and reviews to customers about accountants professionals, call centres and payroll services. It was founded by CEO Yan-David Erlich and Rama Ranganath, the company’s vice president of engineering.
“Our acquisition of ChoiceVendor is in the right direction with our top priority to build a world-class team at LinkedIn,” CEO Jeff Weiner said in a statement Thursday. “We have admired the work that Yan-David, Rama and the talented ChoiceVendor team have done for some time now and are excited to have them join us, especially given their highly relevant work experience.”
Financial terms of the deal announced Thursday were not disclosed.
By hammering this deal, LinkedIn has grown its portfolio of services, incorporating B2B reviews for more than 70 categories in the United States. The acquisition gives LinkedIn a richer set of features for users and provides more hooks to interacting with the site. LinkedIn is trying to position itself as a destination rather than just a service users visit occasionally when they need to network with professionals.
“Today, LinkedIn announced that it has finalized its acquisition of ChoiceVendor. The ChoiceVendor and LinkedIn teams are equally excited about helping professionals make the best decisions. As part of LinkedIn, we will impart our knowledge and ideas to the products and services that reach LinkedIn’s network of more than 75 million professionals,” a statement on the ChoiceVendor website read.
Top priority is to build a world-class team at LinkedIn
The acquisition makes LinkedIn more of a destination for users — instead of a service they only visit occasionally when they need to network with professionals. Reviews could be displayed about employees, or one could present customer evaluation about accountants, call centers, payroll services and other vendors.
Erlich has been an business executive in residence at Battery Ventures and served in software engineering and product management roles at Google and Microsoft. Erlich also founded Mogad/Social.IM, which was bought by iSkoot in 2008.
Ranganath is a former Google employee who served as an early AdSense engineer and handled several teams, including the Google Ad manager team. Prior to joining Google, he also worked at Microsoft.
“Since Yan-David and I worked with members of the LinkedIn team in the past during our time at Google, we have kept a sharp eye on the company’s phenomenal growth,” Ranganath said in the statement. “We are thrilled about the direction that LinkedIn is headed.”
With the acquisition, ChoiceVendor is “ceasing operations” at its site, according to a post from Erlich and Ranganath on its home page.
This is the second acquisition LinkedIn has made, last month, the company had acquired mSpoke, a Pittsburgh recommendation technology provider, for an undisclosed price. According to techonology website TechCrunch, LinkedIn has received more than $100 million in venture funding.
Weiner maintains that LinkedIn will continue to acquire top talent and technologies with an overall aim to build a world-class business team.