Alex Zaccaria, his brother Anthony and Nick Humphreys ran a Melbourne digital agency that looked after musicians and entertainers. Instagram allowed one link per bio, so they asked a recently hired developer to build a page holding several links. The first version took about six hours in 2016.
Early on the product got about 10 sign-ups a day, mostly from the agency's own clients. A Product Hunt post by a US user landed the night before Alex's sister's wedding and brought 3,000 to 4,000 sign-ups in a day. Alicia Keys was the first major celebrity user.
In 2018 Instagram flagged the links as spam and banned them, then reversed the decision and apologised. Linktree reached 1 million users in December 2018. By August 2019 it had about $3 million in annual recurring revenue, 2.8 million users and no outside funding.
Outside money came in 2020: a $10.7 million Series A from Airtree and Insight Partners in October, when users passed 8 million. A $45 million Series B led by Index Ventures and Coatue followed in March 2021, with nearly 16 million users. Linktree bought Odesli in August 2021, and a $152 million round in 2022 valued it at $1.7 billion.