Welcome to the audio-centric edition of Unmade. Today we speak with Chris Wirasinha, co-founder of Pedestrian TV, the longest-running youth media brand in Australian media, about how he set out to scale his new venture, Linkby. Also in this post, we cover how the Unmade Index's selloff continues for another week, especially when it comes to audio stocks.
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In today's episode of The Unmakers, we speak to Chris Wirasinha about his latest venture in the publishing industry: Linkby.
Like many entrepreneurs coming out of the media and marketing industries, Wiracina is finding more scalable tech opportunities as a supplier to older ecosystems. In the same way that Matt Farrugia and Henry Innis left WPP to start media-mix modeling system Mutinex, and Ben Gunn and Nathan Powell left Nine to start influencer platform Fabulate, Wiracina is doing the same thing in the middle ground between affiliate marketing and PR.
This week, Linkby announced a third round of venture capital funding ($4 million in Series A funding) to expand its teams in the US, UK and Australia.
Linkby offers a new way for publishers to get paid by brands for links within their editorial content.
Speaking with Unmade's Tim Burrowes, Wirasinha revealed that Linkby's marketing spend has reached $30 million, which means the company's annual revenue is approaching $10 million, based on a 30% commission.
In addition to talking about the Linkby model, why he came together with his Linkby co-founders and why he chose the VC-funded path, Wirasinha also reflects on how he and Oscar Martin achieved a big exit from Pedestrian and the current state of the media market.
Hear more about how the Pedestrian TV founder made the move to Nine.
The Unmakers: Fabulate it – How an Australian tech platform is helping brands manage large-scale influencer campaigns
The Unmakers: Mutiny's SaaS bet to reinvent marketing analytics and how they hope to change the industry
Nine's performance improved on Wednesday, helping lift the overall Unmade index, despite another tough day for some stocks.
Nine rose 1.8%, pushing its market capitalization back above $2.2 billion, and the Unmade Index followed suit, rising 0.76% to 476.2 points.
It was a bad day for major audio stocks. Southern Cross Austereo fell another 3.85%, dropping below $150 million in market cap for the first time in its history. ARN Media was down about 1.5%. Both stocks have seen their valuations fall by more than 20% in the past month alone.
Meanwhile, Seven West Media fell 2.9%, back to its lowest level since 2020.
Today's podcast is Abe's Audio.
See you on Thursday and see you tomorrow.
Have a nice day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrows
Publisher – Unmade
email address
