2025, but business cards are still fashionable – just visit any conference or industry exhibition and you will end up with a pile that is likely to be discarded faster than later. But while intelligent phones have become our information and contact warehouses, people are clear that they tend to try digital alternatives to business cards.
Blinq, a Melbourne start, the bet that the trend would remove when it started as a hobby project in 2017, offering a digital business card application with a QR code widget. Today, the company is being made with a gold bag: it now has more than 2.5 million users – both individual customers and 500,000 companies in SH.BA, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
In the back of this progress, the beginning has now set up a $ 25 million series A Touring Capital -led funding round. The return of the Blackbird Ventures and Square Peg Capital supports also participated in the round, as are the new Hubspot Ventures investors.
“(Blinq’s QR) was an easy way, personal to share who you are, and it worked well among iPhone users. But it was not by the end of 2019 when most Android devices were caught in the QR scan, and adoption began to grow,” Jurrode Webb, CEO and the founder of Blinq, told Techcrunch. “Then came Covid-Kodet QR went to the main stream, meetings within persons became more intentional, and the concentration of Blinq on making those moments smoothly and memorable began to be removed.”
The beginning has taken the B2C2B road since then. The app allows users to create several personalized digital business cards for different needs and to relate to contacts using them. The app can also capture details automatically and synchronize them with CRM systems such as Hubspot or Salesforce using QR codes, email signatures, NFC, short or video calls.
Blinq is used by individuals, small businesses and global enterprises, and 80% of its customers base is located in the US, Webb said. Her team has scaled five Melbourne -based employees to 67 throughout Sidnein, Melbourne, New York and San Francisco, supporting its product development and market efforts.
“Whenever someone uses Blinq, they are introducing it to someone new. And further, we see more frequent use by active users, the longer they are on the platform,” Webb said. “This integrated viral runs organic growth and keeps our customer purchase costs low. On the business side, companies pay for the country. While more employees adopt the product, teams grow organically, creating income from expansion over time.”
Techcrunch event
Berkeley, ca
|
June 5
Reserve now
Blinq competes with several companies that provide similar digital business card services, including mobil, popl, Wave and Wix. Of course, the app also has to fight social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, landing sites and services like Linkete.
But the weBB thinks Blink is more suitable for building relationships and provides users with more ways to follow and engage with new contacts.
Webb sees digital business cards as more than one last point. “They are our wedge. Because when you are the reliable tool for the moment when a relationship begins, you gain the right to form what follows. We are focused on giving people everything they need to turn the first impressions into real momentum-from dynamics, rich in the context of smart profiles in our minds. Businesses and enterprises, and continue to evolve how people are connected in a rapidly changing world. “
