Index, Coatue lead $110m round for Australia's Linktree
Index Ventures and Coatue Management have led a USD 110m round for Linktree, an Australian social media platform that drives audience engagement, at a valuation of USD 1.3bn.
It comes one year after Index and Coatue led a USD 45m Series B round with support from Airtree Ventures and Insight Partners. Airtree and Insight re-upped in the latest investment, which also saw new participation from Greenoaks Capital.
Linktree provides 24m creators, artists, and brands globally with social media profile landing pages that allow them to direct their audiences to other websites or internet content. By simply expanding the number of links that can be integrated into a social media profile bio, the company claims to facilitate more engrossing audience engagement.
The company now markets itself as the inventor of the “link-in-bio” category and an enabler of streamlined online identity creation, profile monetisation, and social ecosystem development across 250 verticals. The concept is based on the idea that as the creator economy grows, online identities have become more fragmented, making trust and engagement more challenging.
Linktree claims to be among the top 300 most popular websites globally, with 1.2bn unique visitors a month. In 2021 alone, it helped 1m artists generate 90m visits to streaming providers – twice as many artists and three times as many clicks as in the year prior.
From 2020 to 2021, the platform’s influencer, small business, and music verticals grew more than 300% each, on average. Users include TikTok, Selena Gomez, Red Bull, the Los Angeles Clippers, Comedy Central, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and HBO.
“Linktree is a modern identity system for the open web. Creators and businesses today post content and build fan bases across many platforms, and Linktree provides a home-base that brings it all together,” Dan Rose, chairman of Coatue, said in a statement.
The plan is to invest in geographic expansion, recruitment, revenue stream development, and new tools and partnerships to improve services for creators and brands. Concurrent with the investment, gaming and creator economy industry veteran Mike Olson has been hired in the role of president.
Olson – whose experience includes executive and operational roles at Twitch, Pandora, LinkedIn, and Microsoft – will be based in the US. He will focus on partnerships, strategy, talent and building culture across the global organisation.
“Over the past few years, the creator economy has grown rapidly and Linktree has led the way through innovations in discovery, engagement, and monetization – there are so many commercial possibilities with an audience of this size,” Olson said.
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