💼Links in Bio (Business Feature #12)

🧠 Top of Mind Technology

• One of the most concerning aspects of AI is Deepfakes. Deepfakes are essentially AI created videos, pictures, or audio clips that are fake but portrayed to look real. Because generative AI technology has come such a far way, there are legitimate concerns that these deepfakes will become undistinguishable and allow people to be blackmailed or manipulated. But never fear, many companies are racing to solve this inevitable problem, including Reality Defender, which just raised a $15 million Series A fund last October.

• Sticking with AI, as you can probably tell from your internet searches over the past couple of years, much of the content generated on the internet is written with using generative AI. A new paper from Northwestern University shows which 7 words used in an article or text suggest that it may have been written using AI.

• If you are really into startups like us and wish you could invest in them Pre-IPO, now you can! Hiive is the go to marketplace for buying & selling pre-IPO stocks. They offer over 2,000 companies on their platform including SpaceX, Flexport, and Epic Games.

🍪 Business Bites

• You’ve heard of Bitcoin, and you’ve probably heard of Ethereum. But did you know that there are thousands of active cryptocurrencies in the world? If you want to learn more about other cryptocurrencies, check out the top 100 crypto coins in the world ranked by market cap.

• We try to focus our newsletter stories less on day-to-day business news and more on long-term, focused articles that can help our readers. Financial Samurai is a great website we read to learn more about personal finance. This week, they ranked the best passive income investments.

• Beers with the fellas? Always. But for Athletic Brewing Company, they only want non alcoholic beers with the fellas. The brewing startup closed a $50 million equity financing round that comes off the back of recent data showing 40% of Americans are trying to drink less in 2024, with that figure being 61% for Gen Z participants.

🤔What It Is - Linktree is a software tool that enables users and creators to share multiple links from one single link:

💸The Business

If you use social media, then you know that most platforms only allow users to have one visible link shown in their bio (AKA the account profile heading that is visible to the public). For artists, creators, and the like, that can be frustrating, as they need an easy way to direct their followers to the many things they promote.

Linktree recognized this problem and, in 2016, launched a prototype to allow social media creators to create a simple landing page that is displayed as one link in their bio. Upon clicking the link, users/followers are directed to all of the webpages the creators want to direct their followers to. For instance, an Instagram creator can share the links to their TikTok and YouTube accounts, or could collect donations by adding their Venmo and PayPal accounts to the landing page.

🧑‍💻The Model

Linktree uses a freemium model, meaning that anyone could use the basic features of the service for free, but for various upgrades, you would need to purchase one of the premium/paid tier options.

The good news is, anyone can use post unlimited links on their Linktree with the free version. There are three levels of paid tiers with various features that you can see below:

The main difference between the free and paid tiers are that the paid tiers allow for increased styling and customization options, along with conversion metrics and customized support, all of which can be very valuable to a creator. The full list of features per plan can be found here.

💰Revenue Streams (Expected)

• Subscription Fees – As we showed before, Linktree has three different premium plans.

Side note - It will be interesting to see if Linktree ever charges commissions for sales made directly through their pages.

🔻Potential Expenses (Expected)

• Technology Costs – Servers, webpages, customization features

• Human Capital – Developers, Product Managers, etc.

😎 Customer Appeal

• Unlimited Links via One Link – Instead of spamming followers with twenty different links to their products/promotions, creators can just send them to one link.

• Simplicity – Creating an account is super easy, as is adding links to the “tree” or page. One of our editors created a Linktree in under 5 minutes.

👍The Good Stuff

• Free marketing – Linktree created a tool that is used by artists and creators with millions of followers. This allows their product to be seen by millions of people without much advertising.

• Customization – Although many creators stick to the free version, the paid versions allow for awesome and beautiful customization. Check out some examples here.

👎The Risks

• Competition – Because the idea is so simple, competitors have flocked to the marketplace.

• Improper Usage – As many of you know, the internet and social media can be the wild west. Linktree must be cognizant of how its product is being used, as illegal activities or links could be easily shared on their landing pages.

🧠 The Op Ed

This product is so simple it is almost infuriating – why couldn’t we have come up with the idea! But seriously, Linktree created not only a great product, but one that is accessible to anyone who wants to use it. Influencer marketing is a common tactic used by brands looking to grow their customer base, but tools used by influencers can be even more powerful. Creators view other creators pages for inspiration and research, and Linktree is a perfectly placed product to capitalize on that visibility.

Our only concern resides in the fact that because the product is so replicable, the competition will continue to be fierce, and potentially niche focused. For instance, some products could be focused on specific social media platforms or types of landing pages (i.e. contact pages, selling pages, music pages, etc.)

📚For the Road

• The Stories Behind 20 Inventions That Changed the World

• How to Raise Capital When Starting From Zero