Linktree is a tool allows you to create a directory to multiple websites from one URL link. Starting in 2016, Nick and his co-founders have grown the company tremendously to now have over 40 million users and was valued last year at $1.3 billion dollars.
Throughout the episode, Nick talks about the difficulty of trying to control a rapidly growing business. He discusses the importance of clearly defining what your business does and how that leads translates to a more aligned effective team and culture. If you enjoy this episode feel free to leave a 5 star review and share with family and friends.
Share the episode: https://thedionguagliardopodcast.buzzsprout.com/share
More on us!
Dion's Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hHg1ff
Our social media: https://linktr.ee/FortressFinancial
Fortress Family Office: https://www.fortressfamilyoffice.com/
Contact us: admin@fortressfamilyoffice.com
Linktree is a tool allows you to create a directory to multiple websites from one URL link. Starting in 2016, Nick and his co-founders have grown the company tremendously to now have over 40 million users and was valued last year at $1.3 billion dollars.
Throughout the episode, Nick talks about the difficulty of trying to control a rapidly growing business. He discusses the importance of clearly defining what your business does and how that leads translates to a more aligned effective team and culture. If you enjoy this episode feel free to leave a 5 star review and share with family and friends.
Share the episode: https://thedionguagliardopodcast.buzzsprout.com/share
More on us!
Dion's Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hHg1ff
Our social media: https://linktr.ee/FortressFinancial
Fortress Family Office: https://www.fortressfamilyoffice.com/
Contact us: admin@fortressfamilyoffice.com
Highlight Clip
[00:00:00]
Nick: There was sort of a pivotal moment actually was costing us. any profit
that we had coming in was going, out the door the next day. So it was actually becoming quite, expensive to run. there was the choice, do we
shut it down? Is this thing a viable business?
Should we keep, investing it? Do we go get a bank loan? And then we started to peer our heads into this new world of
VC and tech and started to meet other founders just to get a sense of what changes, how do investments sort of transform your business. a lot of them spoke to the money was obviously amazing, but just the strategic doors.
That the investors could open you want to get connected to the CEO of
Figma. No worries. that level of access was kind of unbelievable. that was what excited us most. we assumed the vision would take us X amount of years to execute. We had to these features and build all these like foundational structures. It just sort of like reduced the time scale in. which we could actually achieve that. So I guess the founders that are rather impatient, it just felt like fuel injection to get to the future faster.
Introduction
(Generic Introduction)
Dion: Welcome to the Dion Guagliardo Podcast, where I interview [00:01:00] business people who run or have sold businesses worth a few million dollars all the way through to billions of dollars. While most of my time is spent to managing investment portfolios for people after they've had a successful exit. I've always been fascinated by the entire process and hearing the insights that successful entrepreneurs and business people have learned along their.
At Fortress Family Office, we're an investment portfolio manager and we manage portfolios for ultra high net worth families. If you'd like to know more about not only the way we approach investment markets by our philosophy on life and business, feel free to subscribe to my weekly insights note. Go to www.fortressfamilyoffice.com and hit subscribe.
(Episode Introduction)
Dion: In this episode I interview Nick Humphreys, co-founder of Linktree. Linktree is a tool that allows you to create a directory to multiple websites from one URL Link. Starting in 2016, Nick and his co-founders have grown the company tremendously, to now have over 40 million users and was most recently valued last year at $1.3 [00:02:00] billion.
Throughout the episode, Nick talks about the difficulty of trying to control a rapidly growing business. He discusses the importance of clearly defining what your business does and how that translates into more aligned and effective teams and culture. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to leave a five star review and share it with your family and friends.
Guest Background and Introduction
Dion: All right, Nick, welcome to the show.
Thanks for joining us.
Nick: A pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Dion: Do you want
to start by telling us a little bit about
the early days
of the business? And I know it's It's growing quickly in the last few years. But you want to just go back a few years and
tell us about
the early days and how it all
started?
Nick: Yeah, let me just rewind. it's been a long time,
but a short time as well. I've lived
kind of
dog
years,
I suppose
you could say.
But yeah,
Linktree
was born out
of an
agency. So
my co
founders, Alex and Anthony. We've been working together for the
better part
of
almost a decade,
maybe longer.
and
that working relationship
started in
Independent record labels
where I was
sort
of the
in house [00:03:00] designer that then grew into
a digital marketing agency.
We were servicing. all the festivals around Australia,
doing data strategy, audience
segmentation,
helping them
Craft a
brand and reduce ad span, but
build
a brand that they could really
target,
and communicate to,
This audience is rather small audience we have for music.
Yeah, that
agency
was going crazy,
scaling like all hell. and
then we thought we'd try our
hand at,
building digital products to
supplement
also add on to
our
agency offering. One of those tools was
a little thing
called Linktree.
Alex
comes in
after a
meeting with
like
a harebrained idea. we had hundreds
of clients
on the go at any moment.
And
we were trafficking sort of ads
across all of their
socials, And
this monotonous behavior of
every day
having to swap out this link in bio was,
do that 10
times,
a hundred times, a
week.
It
can be
video1567376689: kind of infuriating. Alex,
Nick: Runs
over. He's what if
we
just make this
thing
that links to other links? And this would be how
it could be
how it
could function. Six hours later, we had a prototype and
the rest is kind
of
history. I It's a
long piece of [00:04:00] string, but
yeah, that's the
the genesis of Linktree.
Dion: And it was that simple. it was,
like, here's the idea
and
you built
it straight away. So within a few hours,
within
a day, you've got this product. And how quickly after you had the product, did you go,
actually, we've really got
something here Well, did you know straight away? Or was it,
there's always that you've come up with something you think is going to work, but then
there's the proof in the pudding type thing.
So how long
after you.
Built that first phase. Did you go, Oh, hang on, we really
When did Nick Humphreys Realise Linktree Would Be Huge
Dion: have something.
Nick: Yeah. This answer, I don't know how impressive this answer is. we honestly
didn't
realize like what we'd had,
what we had built.
And I
think that's not because
we were ignorant. I think at the time, like
I said,
this agency
that we were building,
We, we started with two, like one employee and then another, and
every single
step is like
this incremental milestone. We get
this new client, we can hire this
new person. So it was, yeah. we weren't paying ourselves as
well,
by the way.
So everything was just like focusing
on building this fledgling agency
and getting it on its feet. And every sort of dollar in meant, meant,
another step towards this sort
of milestone.
So [00:05:00] frankly,
we built this little
link tree thing,
in, in a matter of hours. We're like
great. This
is a little tool that we
can sell to our clients,
make our lives and their lives better.
but we basically
shipped it, gave
it to a bunch of clients,
and then just went back to focusing on the agency.
or who we gotta hire. I've
got to go clean the toilets later.
We need to you
know, figure out
like employment
contracts. Like it
was just
Every single hat
we were wearing all
at
once. So I don't think we
were
that,
We weren't so deep in
the
detail, but very surely, you
know, after a number
of
weeks, sort
of. giving it
to
these clients.
So we're
talking Flume, I think was one of
the
first sign ups,
so it's a
musician you
may be aware of
Coachella
randomly,
we were working to
make some digital strat,
like audience
strategy for
them.
Gave that to them, gave it to Splinter in the Grass, a whole
bunch
of these clients. And they were sort
of loving
this thing, But yeah,
again, at the time, we were
just like
hanging on for dear life
as the
agency just scaled out from under us.
Dion: yeah,
So you've come up with
this great, what you think is a
product, not realizing you've got a business
and effectively a billion
dollar
business.
So
how does that
transition go and how many
days, weeks, [00:06:00] months
did it take To go from get a
product. Yeah, this product is doing really well and people love it to
Hang on
we've put a business. this
is, this is the focus now.
Nick: Yeah.
I suppose,
maybe was it so we did
this six hour,
like back of the napkin,
prototype. I was working, sat next
to
Mike, one of our developers, still with us to this day, beautiful man.
So We sat there
figuring this
thing out. We sketch
something like
really awful.
I've got
the
initial sketches and I'm quite embarrassed by them. but in
truth, the sort of Those initial
sketches, you can still see the
echoes of
those design paradigms
today, which I don't
know
if it's a good
thing or a bad
thing. Who
knows? Anyway, two
weeks,
we
decided, let's spend two
weeks,
get this thing productized.
So
we need
a brand,
some content,
like how do
we position this thing?
it was all really centered around just
this solution for Instagram, shipped it to the
world.
we
put it
on somebody.
Found
us on product time,
which
is this sort of
like emerging products. That's where people
having all of their wares And we just saw this massive inflection point. So I suppose we realized
after about
a month, we had Alicia Keys sign up.
We were [00:07:00] curiously checking if this
was actually real or just somebody sort
of
spamming us. Found out
it was
recognized
that it was,
This entire music, agency wanting to like portal
it over
their entire roster. So I think pretty quickly we were like, okay,
this
could be something really big.
But I
think the
beauty
of it
it was
just to solve this problem
really simply.
So there was this
like
lovely organic nature to, Okay, let's just solve this
problem,
not
overthink it, not
trying,
over to manipulate it and trying to
make it something
that it
wasn't.
We just
let it organically
float for
about 12 months,
which is probably not
good advice to be honest.
I
wish we,
we,
focused
on it
a little bit earlier, but. Yeah, We
next minute,
12 months happens.
We were
slowly incrementally building it
and
improving it. And we
had about
a million
users
and because of
our background
in music,
being in the
beer
soaked sort
of music
scene, we had no sense of
was a
million users a lot.
was this
a viable business? So yeah, probably a year and
we're like, okay, it's
time to
commit and
put some money where
our
mouth is.
Dion: Yeah, okay. So what
year did the business start?
Effectively.[00:08:00]
Nick: Yeah.
2016, April
2016, we of created Linktree.
Dion: Fast forward
seven
years it's now a business worth
more than
a billion
dollars. And you've raised a lot of money.
Is that public information,
the amounts you've
raised through VCs
And
that sort of stuff?
Nick: Yes. it's pretty astounding. It's
north of
video1567376689: 000.
Nick: 110,
120 US dollars, which I still
struggle
to grapple
video1567376689: with.
Dion: Yeah. So seven years ago, you come up with this
product.
And now you've got
a business
worth over a billion
dollars.
You've raised over a hundred million dollars.
At what
point during that journey, did you think this is where we're going to be?
Or has this just been
a surprise in terms of how quickly things have
grown?
Nick: I
mean, I'm always
maybe not surprised.
I'm more thankful
and kind
of
amazed. I
never
really had a sense of where my
life was going. I'm just, happy to be
here. it's
like the
baseline. I'm just a puppy dog
happy to
be around. I
guess there was just
this organic
sense of like
constantly wanting
to
continue to chase, to solve the problem,
to, have
delivered some level of impact to the
world.
I'm the more, I'm the more
idealistic of
the
three [00:09:00] founders,
not to say Alex
and Anthony aren't, but
I'm definitely the more,
sort of
hippie one.
but I just,
yeah, It was
really sort
of astounding, like
the impact that
we were having,
millions of people
using this
tool. and if we're making their
life,
a fraction better,
we're saving
them five
minutes
of time times that by eight, 10
30
million.
That's
the most astounding
thing to me.
So
I guess I'm more proud of that
I never
really stopped
to think, okay, in five years
time, I want
to have this And
I want to be
here.
It's more about I
want to continue
to deliver to deliver
that
impact and just
It's also really fun to work
with
these two, Italian
brothers that
video1567376689: met
12 years ago.
And I'm more thankful
that our working relationship has continued to become stronger. And we have this like lovely intersection of our, the Venn diagram. We all sort of compliment and overlap in really nice ways. So yeah, I don't know. I
never really sat down and had a five year plan. I'm just, it was kind of live to find another day,
continue to stay true to the mission.
And. it was
Nick: was never something I just thought that was way too But then I met Alex and he was,
he's a few
years younger than I am. And I remember meeting [00:10:00] this kid going, Like, how did it happen? There's no commission. He just didn't ask for permission. He just did it. You want it to go
into a, to a Europe.
So you
start, he was managing these two DJs
at the time and He just figured out how to run a
European tour. So
all expenses paid, got these two guys
playing gigs and like
amazing places.
And I, just. I
was sort of
astounded that He didn't need that permission. He
was just so confident. So I
guess like working with him
and seeing that,
there
are no
barriers, I kind
of started this reluctant entrepreneur
started to realize like
it is actually attainable.
you just,
have this sense that it's so
incredibly difficult to like get started, but
Alex has
this, to his credit,
like
this fearlessness
and there's no
The relationship of the Linktree co-founders
Nick: glass or barrier. He's just well, I'm just going to keep pushing until I get through.
Yeah. For
me now, I guess I find I'm, I'm
an entrepreneur,
but I yeah, still sort of pitch myself as to where I've
landed.
video1567376689: yeah, it's, I'm just
Dion: an interesting journey, right
now
you talk about your
co
founders, they're brothers, right?
video1567376689: Yep.
Nick: Italian telling Beautiful brothers.
Dion: Yeah. And I'm also
Italian, I've got brothers. So
I know [00:11:00] drill
works.
I'm interested in, how, that goes from your perspective as the non
brother
founder in the
group.
Nick: It's an interesting one.
I always say that marinara
sauce
is thicker than blood.
like the Italian
bond is just
so incredibly strong,
but it's
only,
it's really, what's
worked in my
favor is I've felt.
video1567376689: into
Nick: that
family
very
early on. So 10 years ago,
11 years ago,
when I started working with them,
you know, I was invited around to their house
and I just
felt
like art of furniture, they're incredibly welcoming.
And I've got this question a
lot where people are
like, you've got two brothers,
you're
always outvoted. But
what's actually
happened is
we have such high
alignment. We definitely have
disagreements and sort
of opinions. But
we, it's always a task conflict and
never relationship conflict. And I've never
at once felt like, getting me up.
So I sort of see myself as
almost the
mediator, like the piece of white bread between the
two meatballs is the analogy
that I've
used before.
yeah. And so
far so good.
It's just been the most.
fulfilling, enriching relationship of
my life, which is.
but there it is.
video1567376689: yeah, quite sentimental.
Dion: I think people might be making some assumptions [00:12:00] there about
being
outvoted by
the two brothers. I
think,
again, knowing what Italian
brothers are like, I
don't imagine they necessarily always see eye to eye on stuff So I
don't, I don't
think the voting stuff's the foregone
conclusion.
Nick: Yeah,
I've definitely been more of a mediator, and I think that's, I sit somewhere between the
eternal empath,
so I
can see both sides, and then I
can help be
that communicative bridge. But a lot of the times we
have, where we're going.
video1567376689: may disagree in sort of certain areas, we have like
really high alignment on where we're going.
Nick: And
it's never been a question of
like ulterior motives or Alex wants something that I don't, It's always, I don't know, we're just so
lucky
that naturally we're sort of oriented in the same direction. So I thank my lucky
video1567376689: is ours.
Nick: for
Dion: A disagreement doesn't
necessarily matter, does it? In terms
of,
those
robust conversations, even sometimes arguments.
Within family or
within
business, as long as, like you say, everyone's got
the
same, all aligned
in where they're trying to get
to
those things are
healthy
in terms of
trying to
get to the bottom of an
issue. We'll work where you're going
to go,
whatever it
might be. That's
not
necessarily,
there's [00:13:00] differences
between healthy
conflict and unhealthy conflict, right?
Nick: Yeah, I, I definitely it's
similar advice
to never let the sun set on an argument in your relationship. I think a business
relationship is
Exactly akin to
a marriage in many ways, if
you're not working on that relationship, if you're not
trying to be empathetic point of view, or just,
yeah, be
really committed to making
this marriage work because you're spending
almost more time with these people then.
your partner in many ways, you're often facing way
more challenges and sort of a frequency of difficult challenges
with your working partners,
then your relationship, hopefully, hopefully homes
calm. us, we could really go head to head
and have these like very heartfelt and intense debates.
And
maybe come out of
it quite flustered, but at that
The biggest learning curve that Nick Humphrey had to go through when building Linktree
Nick: meeting
ends and we
would be joking,
10 minutes later. And
I
think that's like super important to just
recognize that you're in this for the long haul. And
it's really important to monitor to
yeah, that relationship and make sure that
it's healthy on
both sides. So,
Dion: that stuff, if
you're all pulling in the same direction,
there's no agendas.
it's
really just, it's not personal, it's
business.
It's just [00:14:00] trying to
get to the
right
solution,
And
work out the best
solution you can. In terms of your.
Leadership style or
your role in that
business from
start
till now. What
was the curve?
No doubt there's been a few
different learning curves along the way with the rapid
growth you've had. But what's
been the
biggest learning curve
video1567376689: Yeah, for
Nick: mean, from
my perspective, Alex and Anthony, I'm sure have different sort of learning arcs.
For
me, tricky one, I've thought
about this. Sometimes you're, it's scaling so
quickly. You
don't really know
what you've
learned until
you stop
to reflect. And
it's, it's very rare you
video1567376689: that
time.
Dion: you? don't get a chance,
right?
Nick: Yeah.
not, not often.
I think for
video1567376689: I
Nick: have relatively
good pattern
recognition where I can
get a sense,
I think this is, this is something that
you tend to develop in
a production role. So
I'm a designer by trade. I used to
do the
end to end production of,
started in print,
then into
web and
content and all
these sorts of things.
So I sort of
understand the individual steps of
producing And
knowing how long
things take or how [00:15:00] difficult
it is to like align people.
and one of those sort of
crucial structures that
you?
need
to align and to align a team. So I think in the early
days, the biggest learning curve, or
maybe
it's a
mistake that
I
felt I had counted was as we rapidly scaled, I don't think we had a lot of these like fundamental
structures in
place to help
the team
scale
and understand
exactly what we're building.
So
it's classic things like. Guiding principles, clarity vision, you know, it's really, really tangible and
clear artifacts. So
a new person this week can get really quickly up to speed, understand the context
and sort of like build this thing.
we instead, what we did was we scaled so quickly, hiring
10
video1567376689: people a week.
Nick: or 15
video1567376689: positive sense that self organization would just happen
Nick: a week.
Um, and an
equal agreement
would just occur.
not exactly what happened. And I guess the biggest learning curve was. There are just certain
things fundamentally you
should have in place before you before you scale And before you bring anyone into the business, make sure like,
they're able to
build in, in that, within that vision.
Yeah, that's that was a hard hard lesson.
video1567376689: lesson. that,
Dion: I was going to
say, Is that,
[00:16:00] something that you could have known ahead of time or do you have
to experience
that
video1567376689: Yeah,
Nick: it's funny.
you kind
of get, the same
repeat advice
over and over again, get,
get your vision really clear, get some guiding principles. And to an
extent, you
question the real value of this It's like a lot
of time that You're spending
not on the business, but sort
of
sitting in this higher, more theoretical,
ethereal layer. You're not
giving people absolute clarity or build
the thing. Build it in this way. Here's all the context you need. You're trying to sort of like
Distill and communicate this whole
grand
vision into
like a single sentence It's it's actually some of the
most difficult work
and I think we
spent months.
up the project trying to
clarify what
exactly it is. We're building struggling
getting frustrated and just going All right, we're going back to just
being you
know in the
details
and to this day, it evolves
every few years where, you know, you're still heading in the general direction, market factors change, team composition changes,
when we treat this and all the sort of pro we
orbit around that change. So we're having to constantly [00:17:00] reshape and reorient and re
clarify the vision.
but yeah, to answer your question fully, think there's a little element of maybe listening to the
advice, but also knowing
that, yeah, it's sage advice, but it's
also
I think us seeing
how it didn't work really
clarified to the it.
It's a tricky
one, man. It was a it was a wild couple
of years.
Dion: yeah, some of that's... yeah,
video1567376689: yeah, some of
that stuff is, like, you can see the advice,
but until you live it,
it doesn't make as much sense, right? And then suddenly, oh, okay, now I
get it, type of thing.
It's like that with a lot of things. Until you actually experience it, you can hear the
advice, but
it doesn't
mean the same until you've gone through whatever it was that that advice
was intended for.
At what point did Linktree raise money? Why they bootstrapped for the first few years
Dion: But what was that like Going from starting a business, rapidly growing. Firstly, I guess,
asking yourselves, at what
point do you need capital to come into the business, or even do you need capital. So that's the first thing. Because no doubt at a certain point, people are starting to knock on your door if you're not knocking on theirs. trying to work through that process and work out who you
should work with, who not to work. because that's a big [00:18:00] decision, right? And especially when you're dealing in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from a cap raise. What was that
process
like?
video1567376689: Yeah, it
Nick: it
was. It was an
interesting time, I suppose, Because of our background in music.
We really weren't immersed in the tech world. So we would,
we would go to music conferences, we would speak to music clients, we would build products specifically for our music audiences. Alex definitely had this, this urge to create some kind of digital products, but it was generally music focused. So, and because we were sort of centered in
Australia, we didn't really look out and, you know, out into the, to the realm of BC and we had always been bootstrapped since day one. So we've never taken a loan, never had any sort of loans from our parents. It was always just whatever was in our pockets. Um, and, you focusing on like incremental building a business.
So that bootstrap mindset was you know, we'd scaled this agency to like 30 or 40 Just our small meagre, you know, um, meagre life saving. So, we had seen that we could, we were capable of building a sustainable [00:19:00] business just through like sweat and grit. Uh, but what happened sort of a few years, or maybe two years in, Linktree's scale was pretty significant, you know, a few million users.
video1567376689: and
Nick: And also we had so much traffic that there's an Alexa ranking, which sort of maps highest visited we were sort of climbing that pretty significantly, like the
chart's
Dion: people are seeing this, right?
video1567376689: Yeah.
So
you've
Nick: So you've got, you know, VCs around the world monitoring sort of certain areas definitely one of those places.
And they were seemingly tree sort of climbing the ranks. and
So yeah, we started to get phone calls and it was mostly felt like tire kicking for the big, you know, VC firms that I had never heard of And Nora And Alex were like, what is this whole VC thing? Like, do we even need capital?
What would we even spend the money on,
You know, coming from a bootstrap mindset where you earn money and then you make an incremental step towards another milestone. It's like having all of this money. How would you even. How do you prioritize what to spend it on? So yeah, early on, it of tie kicking people sort of wanting to understand what our vision for [00:20:00] the product was just to see if like these, you know, three knuckleheads in Melbourne hadn't had a brain between them.
and so yeah, then 2020 comes around and we got a lot of, um, we're getting a lot of lot of requesting time with us and Alex was like, let's just go. We'll talk some big cities in Australia. Let's fly to America and just sort of see, no, like, we're going to come home with hundreds of millions.
It was really just to
say, you know, what the vibe was
talk to these,
people, understand what the relationship might look like. and then, yeah, so that was March, 2020, Alex and I on a plane, there was a cough
video1567376689: around the
world.
I was going
Dion: I was going to say, this is
COVID just starting, right?
Nick: we, we were like, we weren't the last plane, we were the second last plane to leave the States. So it was a bit of a
Catching the Last Flight to the US To Raise Capital Before Covid
Nick: risk to go, but we just thought. It seems pretty
got a bunch of advice for people. They're like, crazy not to go, just go and see, see what can happen over there. First discussions were, you know, kind of
video1567376689: astounding. In
my
Nick: In my mind, I was sort of talking about valuations and I never really imagined this world.
And then it started to become, okay, who is the right [00:21:00] strategic partner? There seemed to be a lot of money that we could have access, but It was really about finding the right people that understood what We were building and could kind of give up the greatest And Strategic leverage and advice Um, yeah. So that's kind of the beginning of the, of the BC story. It's quite a long one, but
How raising money changed the mindsets of the Linktree foundersz
Dion: How was that from the perspective of it's just the, three of you at that point, I assume. And now you bring in, you're raising money and you've got another,
video1567376689: it
Dion: it changes the whole way you go about things in some respects, right? But how did that impact your mindset and the
way you
go about business?
Or did it? Did you say, we just want to keep doing what we're doing or
how did that impact you having that responsibility?
Nick: Yeah. So at the time we had
around or nine employees at Linktree. Some,
some were sort of split across
half on the agency, half
on Linktree, a few full timers. and at the time we were receiving significant scale, so
our, our AWS servers were getting, like, our fees were getting super expensive. So there was sort of a
How raising money changed the mindsets of the Linktree founders
( )
Nick: pivotal moment actually where Linktree was costing us. Essentially, any [00:22:00] profit
that we had coming in was going, out the door the next day. So it was actually becoming quite, expensive to run. So there was the choice, you do we
shut it down? Is this thing a viable business?
Should we keep, you know, investing it? Do we go get a bank loan? And even, even sort of stepping towards that, trying to get a loan in Australia and convince the banks that just seemed harder. So it's decided to fly overseas.
we started to sort of imagine what like with investment to sort of fuel. get us closer to the vision faster. and then we started to like, peer our heads into this new world of
VC and tech and started to meet other founders just to get a sense of what changes, how do investments sort of transform your business. a lot of them money was obviously amazing, but just the doors, the strategic doors.
That the investors could open you get connected to the CEO of
Figma. No worries. that level of access was kind of unbelievable. And that was what excited us most. I think the money coming in. we, we assumed the vision would take us X amount execute. We had to these features and build all these like foundational structures. It just sort of like reduced the time scale in. which we [00:23:00] could actually achieve that. So I guess the founders that are impatient, it just felt like an fuel injection to get to the future faster. So I think like It was pretty quick for us to move from this.
bootstrap mindset into, okay, how do we sort of strategically use this money wisely? I actually happened is we probably got a little bit too excited and tried to
do everything all at once in every direction. and that's a lesson that we learned to be more sort of thoughtful and really sequence out how we're spending, where we're spending, who we're hiring.
but yeah, unfortunately we learned
that
lesson along the hard ways.
Dion: I was going to say, that's probably easy. To say in hindsight, but it's one of those things where in the last three years have been straddled over a year and a half of tech boom and a year and a half of
tech struggle a little bit more. So it's a different mindset, right? So that, path of the last three years has changed the way tech
businesses build in many respects, or the different, a year and
a half ago to now.
video1567376689: So
Dion: So that's part of the learning curve, I guess. in terms of your strengths and weaknesses, what would you say that strengths and or weaknesses are
Nick: [00:24:00] Yeah, I don't know if this is going to be sage
advice or helpful, but, I'm quite self reflective maybe to a fault. I think my biggest strength is
also my weakness, which might be like the cliche answer, but I really do believe it. So as a designer, I think you're just inherently empathetic because you're designing something for somebody else to either an action or to an audience. Trying to imagine how are they going to
receive this? How do I design this flow so they can simply move through this product? All these sorts of things. So you're constantly always thinking about the other, the person you're building for. Not to say others don't, but designers are intrinsically empathetic, I believe.
And because think I'm able
The biggest strengths and weaknesses of Linktree founder Nick Humphreys
Nick: to really deeply understand the
customer
and the problem and sort of advocate for them. Celebrate them, bring their sort of perspectives and voices into the rooms where we're getting a little caught up and excited over this feature. I'll try and remind the team what the problem is that we're trying to solve.
and
also advocating for just simplicity, within the product development process. but on the negative side, I think the empathy, if you don't channel [00:25:00] it in the right way, it can be very, it can be a lot of weight to carry, and it can also mean you're rather incisive. So sometimes because I can see both sides of an argument, I find it difficult to have a really distinct opinion.
I have a preference, but I can, because I can sort of see both sides. I can sometimes feel a little bit wish washing on the fence. I'm still trying to perfect that. and then the other, the other downside of empathy can be the emotional toil and strain that it can, take to work in a business with, you know, as a rapidly dynamically shifting business scaling, and then, you know, making reductions in the team, having to wear that. And sort of be the business minded person, but also be the recognizes the impact it has when, you know, you make a reduction in the team, how that person must feel. So, yeah, it's an interesting one. I'm, I'm trying to like tune, fine tune how to use
video1567376689: uh,
Dion: Yeah. And that's easier said than done, right?
Because some of that stuff does where you've got that, the business decisions that have to be made versus being human and, and understanding people, that sort of stuff. so I can say that that would be
from time to time, quite. quite confronting, Where you've got to look at those [00:26:00] things and, but you still have to make the business decision at the day, but you can handle it in a
different way because sometimes
you, people can be ruthless in that way,
but
you can also handle it in a more, empathetic way.
Nick: I definitely use that as a power to, I'll even, you know, go and talk to the team. Exit interviews are some of the greatest uh, resources for me. Well, it can be seen as kind of a negative sentiment. I actually really love to understand. You know, where did this go wrong or how can we have done a better job and then really taking that insight and applying it to like, how are we on board the next 100 people?
How do we make this business more empathetic to the, to the needs? Like, how do you find that balance between being a human being a business person? I think those two things can coexist, but you really need that feedback and making the, sort of process as you go.
video1567376689: Yeah.
And it's something
Dion: And it's something you get better at, I think get, as you get more and more experience, and as you get older. I think those things, once you've things a few times, then it
starts to become, not simpler, it's probably the wrong word, you've
video1567376689: better
Dion: better
versed in seeing how it plays out, And if something [00:27:00] you handle things differently next time, then you've got that next time, and so on and
so one of those sorts of things, I think.
The best advice that Nick Humphreys has ever received and how it helped him build Linktree
Dion: In terms of advice that you've been given along the
way,
what's the best advice you'd say?
You've been given Nick along the way.
video1567376689: Yeah,
Nick: Yeah, this may be sentimental. Um, and a little naff, but my very early on in my life, my grandfather gave me I'm not sure how robust this framework is, but he would always talk about the too hard basket. um, and I don't really know what that meant for a little while, but always sort of repeat it whenever I'd come to him and ask me what I was struggling with at school, It's like, this is hard or when, when I was sort of In the first few
years in the business really struggling with just like how much time I was spending. And yeah, he basically presented this framework of there's certain things that you just cannot control and you only have so much of bandwidth to, to sort of spend.
And yeah, it's very decisive with how you're spending. your energy and attention. Um, and there's just some things that you really can't control so yeah, ultimately it's about me helping me understanding what my locus of control Um, And, just not pushing [00:28:00] against immovable objects and, and if somebody didn't see the world that I, you know, the way that I saw, just like not trying to spin my wheels, trying to change them.
And yeah, so it was interesting. I'm sure it's probably, there's like a more business savvy way of saying it, but too hard basket for all the things in there. He never gave me, he never gave me the follow up, which is what do I do gets full, but he, he passed away before I could get the answer.
So that's fine.
Dion: So
he, he's.
video1567376689: Use
Dion: used the words too hard basket.
You've reinterpreted that. I'm guessing to be about what you can and can't control. is that what
did words control or did he just say
put that in a too hard basket? but you've interpreted that to
be, that really is about When, when you can't control? it, it goes in there because I can't do anything about it. Is that what, you're getting at?
Nick: Yeah. It's honestly just You have so much time that you can spend so much energy and effort and there's things
that sort of like you spend your energy and it's a
video1567376689: cycle.
You're
Nick: You're spending the energy and you're actually
getting traction and impact. And then there's other things like trying to convince somebody to see the world in another way, [00:29:00] We're trying to change broader structures or whatever it is
you can spend a lot of your energy pushing
against these inevitable objects and exhausting yourself and you burn yourself out. So it's really just about being mindful of, yeah, there's certain things I can immediately control and anything else that I can't, I can do my best to sort of shape it, but I'm not just going to throw good energy after bad. Um, so yeah, it's a
bit of a fluffy kind of thought,
but
Dion: it makes sense. And I think it's probably more prevalent.
video1567376689: In
sports
Dion: sports psychology, actually, because if you ever listen to athletes talk after something they would have been having bad games or they've been in bad form, but
they snap out of it or
whatever it might be. And it's oh, you had a great game today. How did you do that? And they'll just say something along the lines of.
look,
and they've obviously sat down with the sports
psychologist
around how they're being coached on that side. Yeah. Yeah, I just worry about what I can control and nothing else matters. So I just do the things that matter that I can control and then anything else that falls outside of that, Um, I about it. So what the media say, what this, what happens here, what
that, you know, whether I'm [00:30:00] kicking straight or
whatever it might be, whatever the thought, but I think that's where that sort of is more prevalent rather than in business, but I think it easily,
transfers across. But,
Nick: Yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned that just because, something that I was never prepared for was, you know, Linktree, the success story, this And then you hit sort of a level of success and notoriety. And then sometimes you'll, You know, you'll see precedent maybe isn't as positive as it once was more critical.
And that's totally And I think that was where I really utilized this too hard basket.
I was
like, I can't control how people perceive or what story they want to tell. I know what's true. Um, and sort of I focus on what I can control within the business. And I think those things, if you can just sort of like focus your aperture to the You know, way easier than carrying all this sort of negative baggage.
Dion: Yeah, 100%. A lot of times sport is an easier analogy to look at in how to approach things in life or, uh, or even business. And it does transfer across some of those simple type
things that make sense there and you can, can [00:31:00] use it for exactly that same thing. I mean, you got that classic tall poppy syndrome in Australia.
We all want everyone to do well, but you go, don't go too well, because then we want to drag you down a little bit. And that's what happens, right? It happens in the media, it happens with people in the industry, all those sorts of things. But you can only do what you, you can do get on with it. And if you're going to let yourself worry about what they're all saying, you're never going to get anywhere
video1567376689: Absolutely.
Nick Humphrey's Biggest Business Inspirations and How They Inspire Him to Succeed with Linktree
Dion: what about business people that you, admire?
video1567376689: mind either
Dion: either or in overseas?
Nick: I don't have one. I think it's,
video1567376689: it's,
Nick: it's not
I'm
not saying it's a fool's error to to sort of like idolize one person. I do think, you know, individuals can be, tricky to, to follow and sort of use them as this oracle sort of thing. But I, I am obviously Steve Jobs from a design perspective.
The way that he leveraged design and viewed about and sort of like Turn the ship as the ship to be more design oriented so I think like there's there's certain things that leaders have done that I admire, but I think Idolizing individuals or saying this person hasn't has it covered I think that's kind of tricky or a bit of a challenge, this [00:32:00] is this may be incredibly natural and cliche But I'm actually inspired by anybody doing any kind of business, you know, going out on their own, taking some of a risk. doing things independently. I, actually get motivated just by speaking to, the local vintage store and there's a woman in there sort of starting this little journey. I got this, I got the shop and I started to build a brand about expanding or the guy who has like a sandwich shop is thinking about expanding.
I actually get so motivated and yes, it's super cliche to, say it, but. constantly being exposed to Linktree users that, you know, they've had this little dream and they've acted upon it. And I think the bravery that that takes, and I'm learning from them every day. These like tiny brand new fledgling companies that are figuring out content strategy and they're gaining hundreds of thousands of followers And building these businesses back. So yeah, sometimes I look at the big dogs and but I also get sort of motivated and pushed along by just people chasing a dream
video1567376689: taking the risk. Yeah,
Dion: yeah, no, I don't think that's cliche at all. And I don't think people think of things. Along [00:33:00] that line, probably enough. I mean, anywhere you look at what you're talking about is it's, you admire
people that have a go that's And you've got to respect you know, it's easy for people Well, not easy. that's, it's
easy for people to admire the people. who are successful, because that's sort of like the low hanging fruit in terms of looking at, oh, well, they've done it well, but there's all sorts of nuance that goes into. These guys are at point, but you don't know where they came from, right?
They might have come from a really tough background and having their own little business where they employ five people is actually like, you know, they're the first because everyone else in their family were alcoholics, unemployed or you know, like, and they've, they've actually excelled and they've created something.
The nuance to that sort of thing, I think is really worthwhile and is actually really interesting. so I wouldn't say it's cliche at all.
Nick: Yeah, I think just ideas are very cheap. it's really easy to generate a bunch of ideas. I
think acting upon them is, is a different thing and it takes a different muscle, resilience and grit and, and sort of trust in yourself. And there's this like. I can't remember the exact framework, but there's a bell curve [00:34:00] of effort.
It feels really, really easy at the start of great. Here's the logo. We're going to sort of do this thing. And then you get into the really, really depths and, and you can only really draw upon your own instinct and, will to push through. And I think people that have made that made it through that sort of path and onto the other side.
Like, I just find that it's incredible. I share a kindred spirit. You know, it's not easy unless you have some, unending bank account, you can draw upon the people for most of us, like being able to through it and start this idea And foster a business into life. I just think there's something quite astounding and yeah, so we should be celebrated to do it too.
video1567376689: think
Dion: I think that goes back to the core of being Australian, right? Because that's the Aussie pat line that you're describing really in some respect. business books? Do you ever read business books? Are you, do you,
would you say that you were entrepreneurial in any way when you were younger? Is that Or were you just more creative?
video1567376689: I
Nick: I think I
was always, I am always fascinated with sort of psychology or there's something
about designing something to, to create [00:35:00] an action. So whether it's like a poster on the
street, I always, found it quite powerful to, to
The best business books that Nick Humphreys recommends reading to build a successful business like Linktree
Nick: be able to design a bunch of stuff, text letters, photography to communicate a message to someone I would never meet.
And then we it's like a puzzle that you're building and I find that really satisfying. So I started designing posters, for gigs and Okay, I'm driving past this poster at speed. I've designed a terrible poster No one could read this because I was too focused on like the little details.
So I was always like really trying to understand I have this message I need to send. I have an audience that I, that needs to receive it, how to sort of communicate, It was never about wanting to start my own business. It was always wanting to like understand how do I communicate messages So I, was often less entrepreneurial, More interested in understanding the mechanics of the mind, understanding advertising. I was always so drawn to those compelling ads that you're like, that is just so transfixing. And I, it's not even about buying a product. It's about
so anything I was consuming was sort of to that end. And in terms of the business books now, that's like 95 percent of the consumption. non nonfiction for me. [00:36:00] sorry. Yeah. books and But I sort of dabbled between trying to understand, you know, business teams, building cultures, but also trying to understand just the world at large.
So I might read something by
Simon Sinek one week, And something about, what's the other, the book, there's Legacy by James Kerr, which is actually. it's about the All Blacks team. It's incredible for sort of principles and team culture and just sort of, it's like business, but kind of adjacent through sport.
but then I'll also read a book, that comes to mind. It's Your Profile, which is more about the psychology of, you know, it's about profile building, which to my world, I would imagine. Link trees are essentially this intersection of Your sort of all the slivers of yourself, all the little shades of, yourself across the internet link trees where it's like unified.
And this, this book that I've read is really about, you know, your craft crafting and profile, how you want the world to interact and how you want the world to see you. So I sort of move along the spectrum between business books that I can apply tomorrow and also just trying to understand human condition and psychology, all that sort of a bit of a weird bookshelf, I think.
video1567376689: Yeah,
but
Dion: Yeah, but that human [00:37:00] condition and
psychology is at the
core of,
business and what makes it all tick, right?
video1567376689: Yeah,
Dion: That's the thing that people
forget because often people have a business mindset, but that where you come from in terms of wanting
to get
into
how the mind ticks and what, what solving
this problem and what
makes it work.
Well, that's actually right at the core of. You know, what makes everything work.
You look at someone like
Johnny Ives or somebody like that from Apple, you know, from a design perspective, those guys are really getting into the ins and outs of that sort of stuff. and that's, that's what makes it work in the
end.
Nick: Yeah,
absolutely.
video1567376689: Any,
any
Dion: any particular, before we wrap up, any particular quotes or mantras or things that you might live by that have held you in good stead?
video1567376689: I
don't
Nick: I don't really have any quotes. you know what
though, I found myself wanting or longing to have more and more sort of quotes around me. So I don't have any like off the top of my head, but I've found want to have these like physical artifacts to just remind me, put me into this mindset. nothing really outside of, there's a, there's a quote by
Walt Whitman, an American poet. And [00:38:00] again, I haven't read
much of his work, but this notion of I contain multitudes was a big sort of unlocking point for Linktree when we created this thing, didn't really know what it was or how to describe it. But now that
The quotes that Nick Humphreys lives by to succeed
Nick: it's evolved, it's sort of become a little mantra that I say to
myself where Linktree sort of allows you to present your entire self.
So I'm just constantly thinking about how do I represent that in the product? How do I help somebody? Within the product,
compile this, like
whole self.
this holistic vision of who I am because on Instagram, I'm one LinkedIn. I'm another link tree is a place where you can sort of be that whole self.
So yeah, it's
it's more of
like, it's something that I practically apply, but there's nothing that I sit and ponder and read. from a business quote. So yeah, sorry, that's not the most satisfying answer, but I'm probably not the most like atypical, uh, you know, business guy.
video1567376689: No,
Dion: no, No, no, that's perfectly fine. I mean, All of your insights are interesting, and,
video1567376689: So
Dion: so that's totally fine.
What's next for Linktree and Nick Humphreys
Dion: What, what's next for you guys? For Linktree, and for you, what's
next
Nick: I'm probably, I'm not great at predicting the future, I'm not sure how
[00:39:00] many humans are.
(clip) So I think there's some things that I can predict, which is, you
know, more of the same. Really trying to get that impact that I desperately want. I I, I often do just a little in my head. If we make, we have 35, 40 million users.
If I can life just one percentage point better in some degree, saving them time, making them feel more empowered, that is, that's what drives me. That's what, why I get up out of bed every morning and go. we're actually shipping tangible value to millions of people I've never seen.
So it's understanding how do we solve more of those problems. but for the business, I think probably the last few years of rapid scale of missing some of those like foundational structures of clarity of what we're exactly building, you know, onboarding the team and making sure that they know what they're here to do and what, good looks like. I
think we're sort of
focusing on that. but it's really about clarifying to the team. What are the expectations? Exactly what a link tree is and defining that and providing principles so people can filter decisions through it. I think, historically, a lot of the context lived within my head or Alex's head [00:40:00] or Anthony's head. and that's just really challenging when you're scaling a team. and people don't have the answers and you can't scale yourself. I think now we've sort of
video1567376689: learnt
Nick: learnt that, that pain. So a big part of it is like, this is sort of the new clarity era. and then yeah, more of the same, just like scaling the business, not so much in terms of
headcount,
but just scaling our offering.
we've been doing a lot of foundational work. In the background, it's not, not super visible from a product perspective, but we, one of the best parts of being able to scale at the we did was to focus on
some of the bigger initiatives, such as a trust and safety and moderation because of link trees traffic.
We sort of have a lot of scrutiny from, you know, governments and platforms. So it's great that we've been able to build a very safe and compliant product. So now we've got this foundation. It's you know, keep more of the same, really, you know, just have a good time. Be good to people.
Yeah.
video1567376689: Get, get bigger without growing headcount.
I
think
Nick: I think so. Yeah. Being very strategic with how sort of sequencing
video1567376689: um,
Nick: the
prioritization thing is like probably the biggest challenge for most businesses
and [00:41:00] really looking for people, new people to come into the team to help us really be super with our prioritization as well. So yeah, lots of fun stuff.
I'm excited.
video1567376689: I'm really excited to see where you guys go in the next few years. It's been a rapid growth story and it's uh, fascinating to see.
Nick: Yeah.
video1567376689: the years ahead. you
Nick: Thank you
so much. Appreciate it.
video1567376689: Thanks very much, mate.
Outtro
Dion: Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, we would really appreciate if you would leave a five star review and share with family and friends. Thanks.