Operational and Team Updates

Earlier today, Linktree Co-Founder and CEO Alex Zaccaria sent the following note to all Linktree employees.

Linkies,

I am inspired by the momentum we see from our community each day on Linktree. What started as a small platform to help creators unify their digital identities, turned into the creation of an entire category with more than 35 million Linkers worldwide and 40,000 sign ups a day, growing faster than ever. Our unwavering dedication to our community placed our product in the spotlight, enabling us to transition from a humble coworking space in Collingwood, Melbourne to a renowned global brand with teams dispersed around the world. It is all of you who have helped this business take centre stage.

We all believe everyone should be able to own their digital identity, grow their community, and make a living from their passions. To empower anyone to curate and grow their digital universe is why we exist. Today we have some hard but essential operational decisions to share with you that will better position the business to continue to grow, focus and achieve its ultimate potential.

Market Priority

The United States is now our largest market with our largest opportunity, and the vast majority of our signups come from this region, meaning it is essential we are able to further expand the team based there. Linktree’s value, impact and rising brand awareness is taking shape in the US, recently welcoming both the White House and the Denver Nuggets to the platform through organic channels.

We have built this momentum to date with very few Linkies based in the US. We need to focus on our growth in the US and hire people with deep experience building products for this specific audience. It is for this reason we are making the decision to move certain roles from Australia to the US across our product, engineering, marketing and design teams. To be able to hire for those roles and further our growth in the US, we will be reducing our overall team by about 27% today, primarily impacting Linkies based in Australia and New Zealand.

If you are someone who is being impacted by this announcement, you will hear from us within minutes of receiving this email. Today’s announcement will impact many of our talented colleagues, and I can assure anyone directly impacted by today’s news, that your fellow Linkies care for you deeply and we will be doing everything in our power to support you.

A More Focused Team

As a business born and bred in Australia, it is difficult for us to have to make these changes. We are so grateful for our Linkies based here at home and around the world that have helped us build this together – those connections and relationships are what makes this such a hard decision.

Whilst we will be a leaner local team, I want those of you remaining to know how important you are to our next stage of growth – I guarantee you we will not lose our roots as we expand our US presence. Nicky, Anth and I will remain based in Melbourne (our home), and plan to spend more time in the States.

While the overall global Linktree team will feel a lot smaller, it will only be temporary. We will be hiring product, engineering and marketing roles with specific US market experience and are committed to an evenly distributed team between Australia and the US by the end of the year. We are also committed to ensuring development and progression opportunities for everyone across the company, regardless of geographic location.

I know not only is this significant news to process, but it is also not the first challenge we have experienced. As such, I want you to know that I am grateful for your continued faith and commitment to this amazing business that we have all built together.

A Strategic Acquisition

As we deepen our focus with a leaner and more evenly distributed team, we also remain super strategic about opportunities that can help us achieve our growth potential. Alongside today’s more challenging news, I also want to share a piece of significant and strategically important news — Linktree is acquiring one of the newest, most visually stunning and powerful link platforms, Bento.

We’ve seen a lot of competitors come and go as the category we created, and continue to lead, exploded. We look at numerous opportunities and rarely do we find a company and competitor that aligns with our strategy, cares for Linkers, and accelerates our growth and vision of empowering anyone to curate and grow their digital universe. Bento stood out above all others for a few key reasons:

Creator and Community Centric Product – creators are at the forefront of Bento, full stop. And you see it in the way they have developed, designed, built and shipped a product tailored to their needs as well as fostered an engaged community. Bento, just like Linktree, puts creators at the heart of the product and is central to its success as a platform.

Visually Powerful – they’ve built a platform based in visual expression and that vision is fully aligned with our strategy and direction as we continue to uplevel Linktree and the category we created.

A Shared Passion of our Category – the Bento team shares our same passion for building products that empower anyone to curate and own their digital identity. We have a shared vision for what our category can be and the impact we can have on creators around the world.

The Bento crew officially joins Linktree on June 19, and you’ll meet the cofounders, Sélim and Mugeeb, at an upcoming All Hands.

Moving Forward

To those impacted, I cannot express our appreciation and gratitude for your passion, care, effort and the impact you have made upon Linktree and our Linkers. Thank you. This was not a decision taken lightly, but one that was necessary for the future success of Linktree. For context, the following principles guided our approach:

• Stay true to our values
• Go above and beyond for those departing
• Provide as much support as we can for our remaining team
• Always be transparent and open

For those impacted, Linktree will be offering outplacement support and consultation services, as well as generous financial support beyond legal requirements. The next ESOP vesting milestone will also be accelerated and vested, and each individual will be gifted their laptop.

To those remaining with Linktree, I understand it is hard to say goodbye to colleagues you care for deeply and respect. We will gather as a team this Friday AU for an All Hands where we will be diving deep into our immediate and future plans, and will allow ample time for an open Q&A. Nicky and I will also be making ourselves available to meet with both those impacted, and those remaining. Please reach out if you would like to chat.

Following our All Hands Friday morning AU time, Friday will be a day for all Linkies to use for processing this news in whichever way works best for them — be it together with colleagues or logged off and out of the office for the day — it is up to each individual.

I want to assure you the opportunity for Linktree is immense and I am more determined than ever when making tough calls like these, to make sure we make it count. We are still at day one, and the changes today put us in the best position to reach our ambitious vision.

– Alex