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A LOT of room in an office is a sign either of a blossoming company or a shrivelling one. Happily for Frank Han, the empty space at Kenandy, a cloud-computing company in Redwood City, a few miles south of San Francisco, indicates the former. As manager of “talent acquisition”, he is busy filling it. Since he joined Kenandy last October, Mr Han has recruited 32 of the nearly 80 staff. At some point when hiring half of them, he used LinkedIn.

LinkedIn, based a bit farther south in Mountain View, had its origins in 2002 as a “network of people”, says Allen Blue, one of its founders. “We had in mind a tool for ourselves,” he explains, “and we were entrepreneurs.” People starting a business may have a little money, but no office, no team and no big institutions behind them. “So much of what entrepreneurs need is about interrelationships.”