It took Reid Hoffman, the chairman of LinkedIn, less than 30 minutes to earn himself an extra $200 million but many small investors have not been so lucky reports the NYTimes.

“Some poor idiot bought it at $122 and never saw that again,” he said. “It’s the greater fool theory, like we saw in 2000, but I’m going to do the same thing with Groupon”, said Yves Duquella, a banker in New York, bought 300 shares at $91 on the morning of the offering, and dumped them above $100 by noon.

For a small group of LinkedIn insiders it has been a bonanza. Jeff Weiner, the President of the company was loaned the money to buy 3.5 million shares at just $2.32 and he had a great IPO day.

He was not the only one venture capital firms including Bessemer Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital, scooped up 6.6 million shares at $11.47 each in return for early financing. Goldman Sachs, which also got 871,840 shares at $11.47, sold all of it for a one-day gain of nearly $30 million.

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase the underwriters of LinkedIn shares made $28.4 million.

Lawyers and accountants also made out big. Wilson Sonsini, the most powerful law firm in Silicon Valley, collected $1.5 million, while the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche earned $1.35 million.

Stephen Beitzel, a software engineer, who worked at LinkedIn from its founding until March 2004, made out well too. His shares are now worth $17 million, and he made $1.3 million from the IPO.