JUNE 17 2024

Published in The Australian Financial Review

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Former Young Rich Lister Chris Wirasinha’s second business could not be more different from his first.

Mr Wirasinha’s first company Pedestrian TV, now 19 years old, was a success by all measures. It became a household name for Millennials, before being sold to Nine in two tranches for a total of about $50 million.‍

But with his next business, Linkby, he is learning a new playbook to scale an adtech company that had global aspirations from day one. He has just closed its second external funding round, with a $4 million cheque.

“There’s a lot of things I’m doing with Linkby that’s different from a personal learning point of view … to keep things interesting. Pedestrian was bootstrapped, Linkby is VC funded, Pedestrian was Australia-focused, Linkby is globally minded from day one,” Mr Wirasinha told The Australian Financial Review.‍

“Pedestrian was in-office focused, Linkby is very hybrid and was remote from day one.

“They look very different, but I hope the end results are quite similar – both businesses that are loved by clients they work with, and with a team of talented superstars that love coming to work.”

The former Young Rich Lister launched Linkby with Adrian Fagerlund and Andrew Chak in February 2020 to give brands a way to get more editorial coverage from publishers in Australia, the US and the UK, by creating a cost-per-click advertising platform that connects brands and publishers.‍

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Capital-efficient business‍

The company raised $5 million in seed funding in 2022, bringing on OIF Ventures as its lead investor. With that capital now spent, the fresh $4 million comes in a round led by Perennial Private Investments, with follow-on backing from OIF.

Mr Wirasinha said the amount, small for a series A raise, was not a reflection of the company’s ability to raise funding, but the fact that it did not need more cash and the founders did not want to give up much equity.

“In November we were profitable off the back of Black Friday and Cyber Monday [which drove advertising]. It’s always been quite a capital-efficient business, and we could be profitable each month if we cut a few costs very quickly,” he said.

“Because we’re so close to profitability, it didn’t feel right to sell down a bunch of equity in the raise. We only burn $100,000 per month.

“This raise will get us to the next major milestones and from there we’ll decide if we want to be a profitable company or raise a series B.”‍

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Clicks for cash‍

On Linkby, publishers are remunerated for every click driven to a brand’s website, not just if it results in a sale.

In the last two years the company has gone from 400 advertisers to 1500 on the platform. It has also doubled the number of audience and publishing partners, including signing up independent publishers such as the Morning Brew newsletter and The Daily Aus.

Click-through rates on advertisements typically range from 10 per cent to 25 per cent. Click rates from sponsored posts are higher than those from traditional advertisements.

Which direction the company would take, Mr Wirasinha said, was unclear. For now, the priority was to continue hitting its growth targets, and if it needed additional capital to do that the founders would take on extra funding.

The Linkby team now totals more than 60 and the platform has generated 15 million clicks for publishers and advertisers. Some large publishers are now earning “several million a year” from Linkby, according to Mr Wirasinha.

Now in his 40s, Mr Wirasinha said he was enjoying the ride more as a second-time founder.

“You get to just embrace and soak in the wins a bit more and the losses, or tougher times, don’t have as much of an impact,” he said.

“It’s seeing the world with a whole level of hindsight and experience, which lets you be more zen, whereas you’re more panicked the first time. When there is a fire it would feel like the whole house was falling down.

“A phrase I say a lot now is to trust the process – if we get good people on board, keep shipping great products, we’ll continue to grow.”