Background

Questions

1. When we first covered Beacons in early 2021, link-in-bio focused on routing traffic. Now the focus seems to have shifted to helping creators monetize traffic. Is that accurate and how have you seen the space evolve over the last 2 years?
2. Can you talk about link-in-bio as critical marketing infrastructure for OnlyFans creators? What can link-in-bio companies do to help OnlyFans creators do to monetize better without crossing the line and getting blocked?
3. Can you talk about what SKUs creators make money on besides OnlyFans—e.g. swag, ads, paid newsletters, courses, downloadable resources, affiliate—and give us a sense of the relative sizing of each one? How does link-in-bio help monetize these other SKUs better?
4. Indexing on the upside of successful brands to grow ARPU is a big part of why Shopify’s been successful. Beacons’s top paid plan is $10/mo vs. Linktree’s $24/mo premium plan. How’s your progress been on driving ARPU, and are you able to index on the upside of successful creator businesses?
5. When we first covered Beacons, revenue churn was relatively high at 16-18% monthly. High churn is OK for a company like Shopify if you also have a high velocity of signups and also reactivations—to what degree have you seen that kind of dynamic play out for Beacons?
6. What do the most successful creator businesses look like? Are you seeing them start to transition onto more “SMB” tool stacks or are they still on the creator tool stack? What are other breakpoints you’re seeing, if any, in terms of the tooling that creators use?
7. Providing folks with a CRM so they can see and act on their audience is a big part of building vertical SaaS. If the traffic to a link-in-bio page is anonymous, how does that turn into an identity living in a user’s CRM that they can then use to own their own audience?
8. OnlyFans creators can add multiple links to their bio but they can’t see their fans’ real names or email addresses. How do you think about helping creators with OnlyFans as their primary method of monetization build an audience they can own?
9. There’s a lot of “link-in-bio” companies now— Linktree, Beacons, Linkfire, Linkin.bio, Smart.bio, Koji, Snipfeed, LTX.bio, Taplink—how do these companies think about differentiation and winning a slice of the market?
10. Linktree is likely the biggest company in the link-in-bio space. How do you think about differentiating from Linktree at Beacons?
11. What is the strategic value of living at the link-in-bio point?
12. Earlier this year, HubSpot launched HubSpot Creators, specifically courting podcasters and helping them get distribution and monetize their content. How do you think about CRM companies getting into the creator economy?
13. We’re seeing platforms offer their own embedded monetization options like Instagram with Instagram Checkout. Can you talk a bit about the monetization potential and relative advantages/disadvantages of these kinds of embedded options vs. monetizing via link-in-bio?
14. Squarespace has recently started rolling out more features, tools and templates designed specifically for creators. What do you think about Squarespace and other full-on website creators getting into the creator economy?
15. How do you think about the competitive dynamics between Beacons and companies like Stir building vertical SaaS for creators with a focus on finance and sponsor management?
16. Where do you see link-in-bio companies going from here? Is it more about building simple website creators that can compete with companies like Wix and Squarespace, or about building “vertical SaaS for creators” that can be Shopify-like platforms serving creators?
17. How do you think about the potential competitive dynamics that can emerge as you build more native monetization methods that might compete with companies that you might also partner with—for instance, offering a native, embedded means to take tips when some Beacons users might be using a service like Buy Me A Coffee?
18. Beacons has an invoicing feature as well as an EWA-like “early pay” feature so creators can get paid earlier for the work they do for brands. What are some of the other big use cases for creators that you see will be important for link-in-bio products to address?