A $US110 million ($148 million) Series C capital raising round led by San Francisco and London technology investment firm Index Ventures and Silicon Valley hedge fund Coatue Management has lifted Melbourne social media platform Linktree into the unicorn category.
The round was supported by AirTree Ventures, New York growth capital firm Insight Partners and San Francisco technology investment firm Greenoaks Capital.
The raise increases Linktree’s valuation to $US1.3 billion.
Co-founder and chief executive Alex Zaccaria said: “In some ways its hard for me to believe that an idea that started as a side hustle landed us here. In other ways, it isn’t hard at all. Now, 24 million plus people know and recognise what we first believed and have since proven.”
Linktree enables brands, artists, publishers, agencies, creators and small businesses to curate an online ecosystem, instantly guiding their audience to the destinations that they want them to visit without the need to use search engines or websites to get there. The company has a freemium business model.
Zaccaria said the impetus for the creation of Linktree was the fact that Instagram, TikTok and Twitter only allow a single website to be linked to biographies.
“We started back in 2016 with a really clear use case to solve this problem for musicians and artists that needed a better way to link out of socials for all their different revenue streams, and we really needed to unify that experience for them to help drive monetisation,” Zaccaria said.
Linktree is now used by clients such as Hollywood actor Selena Gomez and country singer Dolly Parton but influencers and even social media users who simply want to direct followers to causes they care about also use the technology.
Similar offerings have been created but the Linktree team work to keep ahead of competition introducing regular updates focusing on the needs of creators.
Along with the capital raise, Linktree has recruited a US-based president, Michael Olson to drive marketing. Olson has significant experience in the creator economy and has previously worked for Twitch, Pandora, Linkedin and Microsoft.
Linktree was founded by Zaccaria, his brother Anthony and their partner, in an artists’ representation business, Nick Humphreys.