Australia’s Blinq raises A$5m to build simple, shareable identities

Melbourne-based startup Blinq announced that it has raised A$5 million from Blackbird and Square Peg Capital to revolutionise how professionals share their details and manage ongoing relationships.

Blinq lets users share a snapshot of their professional identity, make great first impressions, and manage ongoing relationships. It replaces business cards and static contact apps with a live profile that can be shared with anyone via QR code, NFC card, short link, email signature or even video call background.

The startup integrates with CRM platforms and directories like Salesforce, HubSpot and Azure AD to provide companies with a single source of truth on contact information, and rich context to help keep their pipeline information up to date and ready for follow-ups.

“Blinq is one of the fastest-growing platforms we’ve seen in recent years. Just as Twitter and Airbnb took off at events such as South by Southwest, it’s exciting to see Blinq do the same this year,” said Rick Baker, Partner at Blackbird.

“The last time Square Peg and Blackbird co-invested in a seed-stage startup, the result was Canva. With many social networks leading to fragmentation of identity, Blinq is creating a way to help people manage, control and share their identities in one place. We see such an exciting opportunity with what Blinq is building,” he added.

Early Uber Eats operator and software engineer Jarrod Webb developed Blinq in 2017, observing frustration with paper business cards and the lack of a truly transformative digital option for exchanging contact details.

What started as a hobby grew into a substantial opportunity last year as QR code adoption unlocked a reliable way for professionals to quickly share their identity with anyone. In January 2021, Webb left Uber Eats to catch this tailwind and accelerate growth in users and businesses in the post-COVID era.

“The paper business card has been outdated for decades, but we have never had something that could truly replace it. With QR codes becoming more commonplace during the pandemic, it’s now easier than ever to quickly share your information, manage it from anywhere and keep it up to date,” Webb said.