The eight-year wait of LinkedIn Corp. for the first initial public offering has finally ended as the company’s founder Reid Hoffman and its three top venture backers have owned a combined stake of about $5.14 billion for the first initial public offering by a major U. S. social-media site.

Venture capitalists have contributed approx $100 million in investments in Mountain View, which is California-based LinkedIn’s headquarters since 2003. Sequoia Capital amassed a holding worth $1.59 billion, and Greylock Partners have a $1.32 billion stake. As per the contract, Hoffman, LinkedIn’s Chairman and biggest shareholder together holds $1.8 billion and Bessemer Venture Partners has a stake worth $431.5 million.

Post owning the stake, LinkedIn’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange has today reached at $45 a share, or a valuation of about $4.25 billion, which has drastically brighten the prospects for the venture capital industry, which has earlier lost money in the past 10 years amid a dearth of IPOs.

“Any solid returns like this are clearly a great thing and there’s been too few of them in the past decade”, said Eric Risley, Founder of Architect Partners, a technology merger-and- acquisition advisory firm in Menlo Park, California. “This was not an overnight success by any means.”