Linktree co-founders Anthony Zaccaria (left) Alex Zaccaria (center) and Nick Humphreys (right).
Linktree
Some companies animate verbs. Others pick up phrases.
The term “connection in bio” has become part of the folklore of the conquerors, thanks to brothers Alex and Anthony Zaccaria and their friend Nick Humphreys. While working at an advertising agency they co-founded, they saw just how difficult it was for companies to share content with just one link – the maximum that many social platforms allow in bio user.
To get around those boundaries, the trio in 2016 launched Linktree: a tool that people and companies can easily use to gather links on a single web page. As the internet became increasingly dispersed and social media users attempted to express themselves and their businesses across multiple platforms, their output took hold.
“We saw that the real bio was where it was consistent across all channels,” said Humphreys, creative director of the Australian start-up company. “You have one point of entry from your audience from where they engage with your content, where you review them, or achieve results.”
Since then, Linktree has gone from going to something more like a little sequoia. It was quickly adopted in Australia, the US, Europe and beyond to reach one million users by December 2018 and three million years later. Linktree now has around 12 million users belonging to over 250 businesses and an average of around 32,000 signs per day, compared to the 9,000 monthly signs it saw in March 2020 – a 300% year-over-year increase.
“We are much more than what we have already started: this idea is based on a bio-link solution,” says Alex Zaccaria. “We’ve grown out of there a lot in this place where people are representing themselves. It’s a cover of identity, like a place to jump off even necessarily something you find in social benefits, and logos and creative people now we recognize that they no longer need a website. They don’t need a random fake website. They can represent themselves in Linktree where everything about them is in a very cheap and seamless environment that is going to help users quickly find out who they are about . ”
The company hopes to grow its branches further. On Thursday, Linktree announced a $ 45 million Series B round led by Index Ventures (also an investor in Patreon and Discord) and Coatue (backed by TikTok). LinkedIn Executive Chairman Jeff Weiner, former Slack Product CEO April Underwood, former Bumble exec Michelle Kennedy and Afteround cofounder and U.S. CEO Nick Molnar took part in the tour. The funding comes just five months after Linktree raised $ 10.7 million in Series A, which involved companies from AirTree Ventures and Insight Partners.
This recent funding will be used to expand the headcount (which, in the past year, has jumped from less than a dozen to 80), developing new tools in the social trading space and analytical and startup creative hubs in several global markets that duplicate Linktree Offices.
According to Index Ventures Partner Danny Rimer, Linktree’s attraction and outlook was impressive, and while the concept is a “very simple metaphor,” he says the startup has also created a whole new place.
“The idea of giving yourself a curated presentation through the folding of an identity, called Linktree, makes a world of sense,” Rimer says. “Linktree would have made sense in the abstract 10 years ago, but the quality of the internet and the quality of the platforms was not there 10 years ago to make Linktree a logical choice.”
Linktree isn’t the only company looking to innovate around the humble-but-powerful connection. Others include Bio.FM and Carrd also already on the market, and last month Streamlabs launched a new tool that allows users to directly introduce a tidying-in feature. .
The Covid-19 outbreak has also accelerated Linktree’s growth, as individuals, small business owners and corporations – including Shopify, HBO and Yves Saint Laurent – have sought to increase their digital presence. Celebrities, such as chef Jamie Oliver, marketer Gary Vaynerchuk, and musicians Pharrell and Alicia Keys, have also created Linktree pages, as have sports organizations like the LA Clippers and Major League Baseball.
Linktree’s rapid rise reminds Coatue Partner Dan Rose of Facebook’s early days. Rose, who helped Amazon develop the Kindle in the 2000s before scaling and monetizing the social network, says it has the potential to evolve from being a product around links to a platform around identity. (Rose also joins the Linktree board.)
“[Amazon and Facebook] both ended in a kind of transition from product to something much bigger, where they support large economies above them. Linktree has that potential too, ”says Rose. “How do we continue to add features and continue to expand, while maintaining that fundamental simplicity that makes it so universal and accessible? ”