Networking

Since Dan Nye joined LinkedIn Corp. as chief executive less than a year ago, he has presided over dramatic growth even by Silicon Valley standards. Membership in the career contacts site has climbed to 17 million from 8 million, and the payroll to 200 from 60. Nye, a former executive at Procter & Gamble Co. and Intuit Inc., has made high-profile hires, including tapping Lloyd Taylor, formerly Google Inc.'s director of global operations, as LinkedIn's vice president of technical operations.

Movie moguls Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Weinstein Co. said it had taken an undisclosed stake in social-networking website ASmallWorld. The founders of Miramax Film Corp. led a group of investors including Bob Pittman, former chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner Inc., to make a "significant investment" in the site, which can be joined only by invitation from members.

Developing a new use for the material that's already the foundation of the computer chip industry, Intel Corp. researchers have built a continuously shining silicon laser that could drive down the cost of optical networking. Such a laser could make high-bandwidth, light-based communication feasible for not only the connections between computers but also the links between components inside PCs. It also could slash the cost of lasers used in defense, medicine and other industries.

Internet whiz kids Marc Andreessen, Josh Kopelman and Joe Kraus share something besides the jackpots they reaped during the dot-com boom. All three have invested in LinkedIn, an online networking service that connects people with common friends and work interests. In 18 months, LinkedIn has built a following with an invitation-driven service that encourages members to share their Rolodexes to help find jobs, fill jobs and increase sales. That the Mountain View, Calif.

After years of being scattered about, the Valley's key business organizations could find themselves under the same roof as early as the spring. Escrow closed last week on a $3.1-million Sherman Oaks office building that would become the new headquarters for the Valley Economic Development Center and the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. The two organizations are buying the building in partnership with developer Rickey Gelb.

Myriad Internet "exchanges" now help businesses sell products and services to other businesses. Two leading business-to-business sites, ELance.com and Guru.com, specialize in linking businesses with professionals such as Web designers, accountants and freelance writers. There are two ways to use Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ELance. In one model, buyers who wish to purchase a service post a request for proposal, or RFP, to let sellers bid on the service.

In late 1995, Betty Levenbach got the news most people dread. The lump she had discovered was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the cancer was at an advanced stage. How could she undergo a grueling course of chemotherapy and still keep her educational-toy catalog afloat? The answer came when 54 fellow entrepreneurs pitched in to keep her company going for most of last year. Levenbach, whose cancer is now in remission, tells other business people never to underestimate the value of networking.

Even if you're not looking for another job, it's vital to keep networking, executive-search experts say. Why? Because although headhunters may sift through files and databases in their search for talent, they'll get their best information from people in and around the industry, said John Rau, president of Chicago Title & Trust Co. and a former dean of the Indiana University business school.

Senior sales executive Marion Bauer still remembers the day she closed a key deal with the executive director of a large Los Angeles law firm. For Bauer, the friendly, informal discussion last fall led to several bigger contracts for Merrill Corp., a document management company in Los Angeles where she has worked since 1990. But what made the meeting unusual was its setting.

From the moment he arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico, Pablo Cifuntas told everyone he met in his mostly Latino community that he was looking for work. It wasn't long before a man down the block found him a near-minimum-wage job at a soy milk factory. Nineteen-year-old Flossie Bradford never knew anyone in her poor, largely African American neighborhood who had a job.