Revenue
$37.00M
2023
Valuation
$1.30B
2022
Growth Rate (y/y)
49%
2023
Funding
$165.70M
2022
Revenue
Valuation
Linktree has raised a total of $165.7M from 3 rounds of fundraising. The lead investors on their Series C and Series B were Coatue and Index Ventures.
Product
Linktree is a website generator that aggregates creators' on average ~6 social media profiles and other monetization channels and links into a single link they can drop into their bio.
Link-in-bio companies like Linktree found their initial product-market fit as a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram and more debaucherous, prosperous monetization channels like OnlyFans—allowing for peaceful co-existence.
Creators’ potential customers can discover them via the social media platforms, but have to go through the link-in-bio to get to and purchase their more explicit SKUs.
Premium tiers of Linktree's service include features such as the ability to customize the appearance of the user's Linktree link, access to analytics and metrics, and the ability to add more links and content to your Linktree page.
Creators can use their Linktree page to collect emails and phone numbers from their fans, embed content like YouTube videos or tweets, paywall content, use analytics to understand their audience, and market to their fans.
Competition
Linktree competes head-to-head with 40+ other link-in-bio companies, from Beacons ($29M raised) to Koji ($36M raised) to Snipfeed ($6.4M), most of which are targeting specific creator segments like Linkfire ($2.7M raised) with musicians to differentiate.
All the major social media platforms are taking a stab at helping their creators monetize through ecommerce, between YouTube (live shopping videos), Pinterest (live shopping stream), Meta (daily live shopping streams), TikTok (shopping livestreams), and Twitch (live game shows with giveaways).
At the same time, all-in-one, vertical-specific creator platforms like Playbook, Circle, Stem, and Gump are adding public profiles to their suites of content creation, community, and back-office tools.
TAM Expansion
There are a few big categories for expansion available to Linktree:
“Enterprise” creators: Linktree could expand revenue by launching its own upmarket product offering for creators whose business has outstripped the capabilities of the core Linktree product. A parallel example here would be Shopify Plus, which Shopify launched as a product for bigger ecommerce brands and starts at $2,000 per month compared to $29 per month for the base Shopify service.
Vertical SaaS for creators: Linktree could build a range of other features to help creators manage their business—revenue splitting, sponsorship management, tax support, etc.—and then monetize by collecting a take rate on each transaction, giving them an additional revenue stream while better locking in their users. At scale, transactional revenue can become a key driver of revenue: today, transactional sources represent 75% of Shopify’s revenue ($4B of $5.5B).
Risks
Creator recession
Growth at link-in-bio companies like Linktree and Beacons has slowed in 2022 alongside both a general slowdown in the economy and a cratering in funding to creator economy companies. If this “creator recession” continues and the reality of the growth of social commerce and creator platforms falls short of expectations, it could be a powerful headwind for the link-in-bio companies.
Fundraising
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