LinkedIn 2011 Annual Report Download - page 27

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These systems enhancements and improvements will require significant capital expenditures and allocation
of valuable management and employee resources. If we fail to implement these improvements effectively, our
ability to manage our expected growth and comply with the rules and regulations that are applicable to publicly
reporting companies will be impaired.
Our international operations are subject to increased challenges and risks.
We have offices around the world and our website is available in English, as well as Czech, Dutch, French,
German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and
Turkish. We expect to continue to expand our international operations in the future by opening offices in new
jurisdictions and expanding our offerings in new languages. However, we have limited operating history as a
company outside the United States, and our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations
internationally requires considerable management attention and resources and is subject to the particular
challenges of supporting a rapidly growing business in an environment of multiple languages, cultures, customs,
legal systems, alternative dispute systems, regulatory systems and commercial infrastructures. International
expansion will require us to invest significant funds and other resources. Expanding internationally may subject
us to risks that we have either not faced before or increase risks that we currently face, including risks associated
with:
• recruiting and retaining talented and capable employees in foreign countries and maintaining our
company culture across all of our offices;
• providing solutions across a significant distance, in different languages and among different cultures,
including potentially modifying our solutions and features to ensure that they are culturally relevant in
different countries;
• increased competition from local websites and services, that provide online professional networking
solutions, such as Germany-based Xing and France-based Viadeo, who may also expand their
geographic footprint;
• compliance with applicable foreign laws and regulations;
• longer payment cycles in some countries;
• credit risk and higher levels of payment fraud;
• compliance with anti-bribery laws including without limitation, compliance with the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act and the UK Anti-Bribery Act;
• currency exchange rate fluctuations;
• foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned outside the United
States;
• political and economic instability in some countries, specifically in Ireland;
• double taxation of our non-U.S. earnings and potentially adverse tax consequences due to changes in
the tax laws of the United States or the foreign jurisdictions in which we operate; and
• higher costs of doing business internationally.
If our revenue from our international operations, and particularly from our operations in the countries and
regions on which we have focused our spending, do not exceed the expense of establishing and maintaining these
operations, our business and operating results will suffer.
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