Seven growth secrets: How hyper-growth startup Linktree attracted 12 million users in just five years

This article was first published in April 2021. In March 2022, Linktree raised $150 million, giving it a valuation of $1.7 billion. At that time, it had 24 million users, and counting.

Linktree’s early growth story is a spectacular one. Alex Zaccaria, along with his brother Anthony and their friend Nick Humphreys, were running a music and entertainment digital agency, and using Instagram a lot.

They wanted a way to share multiple links in their Instagram biography, by just posting one link. So, in 2016, they found a way to do that — and Linktree was born.

The founders started sharing the tool within their network, and it didn’t take long for a happy user to pop it on Product Hunt.

Suddenly, Linktree was seeing between 3,000 and 4,000 sign ups a day. And the rest is history.

The is the very definition of exponential, hockey-stick growth. Zaccaria himself puts a lot of it down to Linktree’s innate virality. 

People display their Linktree in public, and that makes others want one too.

Still, the co-founders made deliberate choices to take full advantage of that. And, 12 months ago, they hired Linktree’s first head of growth, Jess Box, who took things up another notch.

Seven key lessons for growth

1. The product and the user experience is everything. Communicate with your customers to find out what they need.

2. Don’t skimp on the free version.

3. You don’t need to pay influencers. But, if one finds you, turn customer service up to 11 to make sure they spread the word.

4. No founder is an expert at everything. At a certain point, you should hire a pro to oversee your growth.

5. Use data to inform your strategy.

6. Experimentation can open up a world of growth opportunity.

7. Rather than a hard sell, try educating you customers and bringing them on the journey with you.

Focus on the product

First and foremost, Zaccaria was the original Linktree user. From day one, he was focused on solving a very specific problem, and solving it well — for himself. That’s an ethos the startup still lives by.

As the product gained traction, he sought out ways to connect with users and to try to understand the problems they were facing.

If your product can solve a customer pain point, “it’s going to get used”, he says.

“And they’re going to tell others to use it.”

Of course, that communication process now looks a little different. Zaccaria can hardly call 12 million users individually.

Instead, the team sends user surveys at specific points of their customers’ life-cycle, helping them to improve the onboarding experience by having consistent reference points to compare.

Perfect the freebie

This product-centric approach also shaped the free product.

The strategy has always been to add value for paying customers, never to strip away value for users of the free version, Zaccaria explains.

He describes the free version as “our marketing engine”. The majority of Linktree’s growth has come from organic and self-referral.

“That’s all driven by our free version being the best it can be.”

Influence the influencers

In its early days, Linktree caught the attention of international superstar Alicia Keys — or, at least, the people who manage her Instagram account.

Again, Zaccaria puts this down to the strength of the product. The startup has never run a paid influencer campaign. Even if it had, without a strong product, it would have got them nowhere.

However, he did take steps to capitalise on the opportunity, simply by stepping up customer service.

The founders reached out to Keys’ management agency, to learn how they were using the product, and what could add further value.

It was about “doing what we needed to” to ensure the management agency signed up the rest of its roster, Zaccaria explains. And it worked. 

Pretty soon the likes of Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The Killers had their own Linktrees, visible to millions of fans.

Appoint the right people

When asked what’s changed about Linktree’s growth strategy some five years later, Zaccaria points to one major development — the appointment of Jess Box as head of growth, in early 2020.

Jessica Box. Source: supplied.

It was Box who oversaw the monumental boost over the past year, and who has been busy building dedicated teams, both in Australia and around the world.

Speaking to SmartCompany, Box admits her job was made easier by what she calls Linktree’s “flywheel effect”.

“I was able to just tap into building a growth engine that supports that, and continue the momentum and the pace,” she explains.

The growth department sits “squarely between product and brand”, she adds. She and her team sit at the intersection of the product roadmap and the market messaging, and her job is to understand exactly how and where the two connect.

Growing a business from three million to 12 million users is one thing, Box says. The strategy for growing from 12 million to 100 million will look a little different.

Luckily, she arrived with a few tricks up her sleeve.

Go deep on data

Box’s first priority was to put data structures in place, to ensure she and her team were making well-educated decisions from day one.

“Data is such a valuable tool to be able to prioritise,” she says.

For Linktree, the focus is on finding which features are being adopted, and which are ignored. This includes looking at broad trends across the group, for example: are people spending more time with analytics, or customisation? 

This helps to predict how the platform could be adopted next, in the same way Netflix tries to find what a consumer will likely want to watch next.

Customer location data is also crucial for Linktree’s growth plans.

There’s opportunity in every direction, so data analysis has been instrumental for figuring out what the right places to focus on.

It has also allowed Box to start planning the next steps of Linktree’s “growth engine philosophy”.

For example, she’s building teams in markets such as Brazil and Argentina, to build on the momentum there. 

“It’s so important to have a holistic view of each of our markets and tip in spend where we’re seeing growth.”

Experiment

“Our approach is to always experiment first, and then codify,” Box says.

And no matter how big Linktree gets, that’s the plan she’s sticking to. For example, over the past 12 months, the growth team has tapped into the TikTok trend.

They weren’t sure exactly how Linktree would fit into this environment, but as soon as a few people were using Linktree, that flywheel was moving.

Now, the team is communicating with high-profile new users who found them on TikTok first, not Instagram. The two platforms are now “pretty much neck-and-neck in terms of growth trajectory”.

This represents positive movement towards Linktree being the “identity layer of the internet”, Box says.

The TikTok experiment shows it can be platform agnostic, meaning the market opportunity is significantly expanded.

“It was a natural progression that Linktree should live wherever you live online.”

Educate

Finally, Box doesn’t think about users in terms of demographics, or even the platforms they inhabit. Instead, she’s focused on digital literacy.

If a customer is using the free version, it’s her job to “nudge them” towards the premium product.

There’s no hard sell. Users are walked through the functionalities, and encouraged to make use of some of the features they may not have discovered yet.

If they haven’t made an avatar, or checked their analytics yet, for example, they will get a suggestion explaining the benefits.

“We educate them based on the actions they take,” Box says.