Cultivating an online following often involves keeping your audience engaged across multiple platforms. So if you sell hand-knitted beer koozies on Etsy, it helps to post aesthetic pictures of them on Instagram. If you’re a music producer who uploads your music to Spotify and SoundCloud, you may want to use Twitter to let your followers know when your next album will drop.
When you come across this type of cross-platform promotion in the wild, you may notice accounts post the phrase “link in bio” to send followers to a different website where they can learn more. But when creators and influencers have multiple things they’re promoting, one link isn’t enough. That’s where Linktree comes in.
On Monday, the company announced that it raised a $10.7 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners and AirTree Ventures.
Linktree is a startup out of Melbourne, Australia, that helps people create link-centric micro websites. These micro websites essentially act as a central hub that links to all the platforms or sites that the user wants to direct people to. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Linktree links to his appearance on Twitch streams, an article he wrote for the Atlantic, the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, available merch and various social media accounts.
Over eight million people and businesses use Linktree, ranging from celebs like Schwarzenegger and Selena Gomez, to brands like Red Bull and HBO, sports teams like the LA Clippers, independent creators and everything in between. The company says Linktree sites collectively saw over half a billion visitors in September alone.
“A big part of our mission right now is to democratize the internet and to democratize people’s digital presence,” CEO and co-founder Alex Zaccaria told Built In. “The last six months have seen this acceleration of the digital transformation, where everyone from mom-and-pop stores to massive sports organizations are focusing on their online content. Linktree is perfect for unifying your digital presence across all platforms.”
Linktree has grown exponentially this year. In March the company was just 10 people, but half a year later the company stands at 50 employees. The company has also been profitable and bootstrapped since its inception in 2016, so this Series A funding round is a big step for the company and will help as it looks to build upon its product and expand.
Part of this expansion involves opening an LA office in 2021, and hiring 30 people for its LA-based team, Zaccaria told Built In. This team will focus on growth, marketing and partnership strategies, and a few of these open roles are currently listed on the company’s website. Zaccaria says that bringing the business to LA is an important step for the company, since many of its partners and users are based there and in the United States in general.
Once Linktree establishes its LA presence, it will be a jumping off point for further expansion into the U.S. and other parts of the world. Zaccaria told Built In that the company is currently building a distributed workforce in order to better serve a global base of customers. The first stop in that world tour will be LA.
