Chris Wirasinha’s Post

❤️ this testimonial from Boody! Helping brands grow into overseas markets (often Aussie and British brands cracking the USA) is when Linkby's full magic really goes on display. Boody knows how to perfectly leverage the full-range of benefits Linkby campaigns deliver and are seeing the longterm ROI impacts that come from turning your brand into a household name!

Leveraging key dates is a common trait amongst several of the top D2C brands we work with. Wanna be across what's going on in July all over the globe - don't forget to connect with Linkby's page for monthly updates so you're looped in! IYKYK

Want to know how Linkby expanded to the USA & UK just a year after launching in AU or how my last business grew from $15m to $100m in 3 years? As part of our Series A announce last week I was fortunate enough to get invited onto Tim Burrowes’ Unmakers Edition of his Unmade podcast. It’s always a pleasure to chat to Tim because he’s got the journalistic tenacity to always ask tough questions while having the experience as a two-time founder himself to personally understand how the commercials work.    One thing I’ll always remember back from Tim’s days on the Mumbrella news desk was how immediately as we’d send a press release out to him I’d get a call with Tim firing questions at me about the release. He’d never schedule the call or let us know it was coming. He would use it as a way to get content and angles that no one else had. By catching people somewhat off-guard it meant the responses were candid, honest and infinitely more insightful. It doesn’t happen enough! Links to our candid, honest and hopefully insightful chat in the comments!

After closing our Series A here’s a few things I learnt during the raise! i) ‘It’s rare to have a ‘bad’ meeting.’ The overwhelming atmosphere of most VC meetings are incredibly positive. So much so that it started to become disingenuous. Meetings that in any other context would lead to a sale closing or some kind of outcome ultimately would end with a no. I think it’s because VCs want to be supportive and are trying to build longterm relationships with you but it can be disorienting after 70+ 'awesome' meetings. Especially when as a broader business culture Australians are quite candid. ii) ‘A not-yet can turn into a yes!’ One famous letdown from VCs is them saying you’re too early for us. Often this can be completely true and a fund who specialises in Series C is unlikely to back a company at the Seed stage. It’s also a chance for a VC to buy time and see how you execute without burning a bridge. During our seed raise we were intro’d to Perennial Partners who we knew were typically a later stage investor. We were told ‘not-yet.’ But then during our Series A we went back to Perennial and showed them how we executed over the last two years. Perennial came onboard and led our Series A! This ability to go back and showcase that you actually deliver on what you promise is massive and can turn all those ‘not-yets’ into ‘where do I sign?’ (or more realistically an 'I’d like to schedule a meeting with my partners’) iii) ‘The value and pitfalls of a realistic forecast.’ Start-up modelling is definitely as much of an art as it is a science and the expectation is of course for everything to move up and to the right. At the same time I’ve always struggled with putting numbers out there that I feel aren’t rooted in reality. During this raise we experienced both the positive and negative outcomes of having a realistic financial model. On the positive note our model from our seed raise was a fantastic document to revisit with VCs who didn’t back us at that round but who were speaking to us again. Numbers which you hit show you understand your business and you’re a team who can be trusted to deliver. But on the negative we had another who after running significant financial DD on our forecast deemed that our growth plans weren’t ambitious enough and able to hit their internal metrics. I was a bit incredulous as I told them that it would be easy to just add an additional $10 to $20million on a forecast a few years down the line but we chose to put forward a forecast that we could deliver against. If you’re interested in some additional data on how Linkby’s tracking check out the excellent article by Yolanda Redrup published in the The Australian Financial Review technology section today or via the link in the comments. 

I recently spoke about one of my most hilarious founder screw-ups for the first time after 7 years.     Back in 2017 I launched a business podcast called Founders University in conjunction with my pre Linkby business Pedestrian Group. It was our first ever podcast. We’d hand-built a podcast studio. Bought all the best quality sound equipment. Had great interviews with talent I loved and respected. But the audio quality was TERRIBLE. It always sounded like I was interviewing people underwater. I kept asking our producer what we could do to fix it. We tried shifting the room around, adding more sound proofing, fixing it in post but nothing seemed to work. Finally exasperated I walked into the studio and noticed a tiny yellow dot. On the back of the microphone. We’d recorded the entire first season of our podcast with the microphones turned the wrong way round 🤦♂️  Shout outs to some of the amazing founders on that first ever season including Taryn Williams from #gifted, Creel Price from Investible, Oscar McMahon from Young Henrys,  Lisa Messenger from The Collective and especially Jane Lu from Showpo and the The Lazy CEO podcast who I revealed this story to for the first time - you can listen to the episode on the shared link!

I’ve never strongly identified with ‘imposter syndrome’… I’ve always had the belief that someone’s got to do great things why can’t it be you? However I did recently feel a pang of ‘imposter syndrome’ after I recorded a podcast with a founder friend, the inimitable Jane Lu  the founder of Showpo aka 'The Lazy CEO' We finished the recording which I thought was A+ talking about the founding of Linkby and Pedestrian Group. A few weeks later I went back to check Spotify to see if the episode had been published and I couldn’t see it! I did however see podcasts from entrepreneurial legends like Nik Mirkovic & Alex Tomic from Hismile, Bree Johnson & Jessica Hatzis from frank body and Davie Fogarty from The Oodie. I panicked felt like I wasn’t good enough to make the cut and my interview must have been left on the editing room floor. I quickly moved on and tried to shift it to the back of my mind. A few months later I caught up with the awesome Lisa Messenger who had recently gone on Jane’s podcast and she asked whether I’d done one myself. To which I replied that I’d gone in but I didn’t think I’d made it to the final edit. A couple of days later my phone buzzed and Lisa messaged me the link to my Podcast episode which I’d somehow skipped over and hadn’t been able to spot myself! (which was a. very kind of her and also b. had me face-palming myself for being such an idiot / probably needing to get my glasses prescription upgraded 🤓) I listened back to the episode, which I rarely do, and was pleasantly surprised. Jane is such a tour de force and it’s a great chat with, as the The Lazy CEO herself puts it, two “OGs of the sydney entrepreneurial scene” Long story short - don’t believe in the stories you tell yourself when they’re negative, just focus on the positive ones! Oh and listen to the podcast which is included in the comments!

1,500 agencies and brands, 15million clicks across the US, UK, CA, SG & AU delivering millions of new customers and sales! Very excited to watch the Linkby team swell from 45 to 60. There's nothing better than putting together a cast of superstars to help brands 'break the internet' and see our content partners pull millions away from the platforms. Being a 2nd time founder is a huge privilege and definitely feels like having a superpower x cheat code hybrid much like having the most excellent team and co-founders Andrew Chak and Adrian Fagerlund. Thanks to Mediaweek Australia and Jasper Baumann for the excellent feature. Also we're #hiring so if you wanna join the journey drop me a line!

Warning: Year 7 French skills incoming... 🥐 🇫🇷 It's always très bien to be called a 'game changer' by a Marketing Director. J'adore this French Beauty Co team up with news.com.au Merci for the kind words Emilie Roberson

Leveraging TikTok trends is easier than you think! Love this angle from The Daily Beast who utilised a Linkby brief from theVitamin Shoppe to jump on the #SleepyGirlMocktail trend 😴