LinkedIn to acquire professional content sharing firm SlideShare for $118.8 mn

LinkedIn, the world's largest online network for professionals, yesterday said that it would acquire SlideShare, a professional content sharing firm, in a $118.8 million cash-and-stock deal.

Run by CEO Rashmi Sinha, San Francisco-based SlideShare helps professionals discover people through content, and content through people.

SlideShare users have uploaded more than nine million presentations, and had nearly 29 million unique visitors, ranking it among the most heavily trafficked sites for professional content.

SlideShare is also enabling the sharing of presentations across the Web; nearly 7.4 million presentations hosted by SlideShare are embedded across more than 1.4 million unique domains.

SlideShare is backed by venture firm Venrock and a host of angel investors, including Ariel Poler, Dave McClure,  Jonathan Abrams, Hal Varian, Yee Lee, Saul Klein and Mark Cuban.

Venrock, the only institutional investor in SlideShare, said that it generated a better than 15 times return on their investment.

The acquisition is made up of about 45 per cent cash and about 55 per cent stock, and is slated to close in the second quarter of 2012.