“We optimize as a true north the business for long-term revenue and I say long-term revenue not short-term revenue because there's a lot of revenue we forgo and don't want to take because we believe it will squeeze you know the funnel in a way that we're not interested in.”

Optimize for long-term revenue even when it means forgoing short-term gains

LinkedIn explicitly declines revenue that would optimize a short-term metric at the cost of member trust or long-term retention. Pricing experiments are evaluated on a 5-year revenue model, not just the first year. This long-term revenue orientation is enforced structurally: there's allocated 'revenue we won't take' and the team has permission to decline short-term extraction tactics. The result is a subscription business running at several billion dollars in annual run rate.