Unicorn start-up Linktree is ‘all grown up’ after re-brand, app marketplace launch

This start-up has grown from a company of three people to now worth nearly $2bn, and has kicked off its biggest product launch to date, along with a major re-brand.

Linktree founders Nicky Humphreys, Alex Zaccaria, Anthony Zaccaria. Photo by Sarah Chavdaroska

Linktree, one of Australia’s fastest growing start-ups, is opening up its platform to third-party developers with a new app marketplace and has begun a company-wide rebrand, a move Linktree’s co-founders say will change its positioning from a “small and friendly tool” to a company that’s operating one of the world’s most popular websites.

Fresh from a $150m capital raise in March that gave Linktree a valuation of $1.78bn, the Melbourne-based company this week is launching Link Apps, a marketplace for the company’s 25 million-plus users to access inte­grations from the likes of Cameo, PayPal, Reddit, GoFundMe and more.

Linktree CEO Alex Zaccaria, who co-founded the start-up with brother Anthony and their friend Nick Humphreys initially as a side business, said the addition was part of Linktree’s growth from a humble “link in bio” page to a platform enabling brands, artists and businesses of all sizes to engage with their audiences and monetise their content.

Linktree is now one of the top 300 most popular websites globally with 1.2 billion monthly views.

With Link Apps, creators and businesses will be able to raise money through GoFundMe or PayPal, for example, or link to their band’s next shows through BandsInTown, all on their existing Linktree page.

“We’ve been working on this for close to a year,” Mr Zaccaria said. “We assembled the first team to help build out our developer tools about a year ago and we’ve evolved those teams to work with our partners to help them build their apps, and so I’d say this has been a long time coming.

“We now have over 25 million Linktrees across about 250 different verticals, so it becomes quite hard for us to engage with those verticals and go as deep as the users need them to go, so we realised that we needed to bring our partners in much closer and they can help us build this out.”

Linktree has also announced a brand transformation, created with strategy and design firm COLLINS, and Linktree co-founder and creative director Mr Humphreys said it represented a point of maturation for his start-up. “When we launched Linktree it was this fast and friendly little tool, and it did this one thing really well and solved this one problem, and now it’s evolved into something much larger,” he said.

“We built it for musicians and artists but seeing local councils or your pizza store around the corner using it, how they take this one tool and use it for their own actions and outcomes, has been super interesting.

“We wanted to have a brand that actually celebrates our 25 million Linktrees and tells their stories; we’re all grown up.”

Linktree founders Anthony Zaccaria, Nicky Humphreys, Alex Zaccaria. Photo by Sarah Chavdaroska

Start-up valuations have come under pressure in recent weeks amid a broader market rout, forcing several local software companies to shut down or lay off staff, the start of what is expected to be a tech bloodbath.

Mr Zaccaria said that while it was a wild time to be leading a technology start-up, Linktree was still in a strong position given it had plenty of cash on hand after its most recent funding round.

“We’re still continuing to grow, but we are obviously paying close attention to the volatility,” Mr Zaccaria said. “Ultimately, generational companies have been born in downturns, and we think this is a great time to capitalise and be very smart and strategic about how we do things. We were completely bootstrapped and cashflow positive until we first decided to raise in early 2020, so we know how to run this business efficiently.”

Mr Humphreys said the forced focus on capital efficiency had been empowering. “We had so much opportunity on the table, we were like young children at a restaurant nibbling on everything, and now we want to have some main meals,” he said.