Interview: Elliott Potter — CEO/Founder of Linq | The Better Way to Network
Blazer Interview Series
In this episode, we interviewed Elliott Potter, the CEO/Founder of Linq. Linq is a networking platform that allows you to share your information with others using completely customizable pages. Linq makes it easy to share your social profiles remotely, with use of their Smart Products. Linq is backed by Abstract Ventures and Alabama Futures Fund.
What is Linq? What are the use cases?
Linq is a networking app that allows users to build a highly-customizable profile page and quickly share it with others through the app or using one of our SmartProducts. A Linq page is a forward-thinking evolution of the paper business card. In addition to essentials like contact info and your photo, your Linq page can contain photo galleries, videos, website links, buttons to book meetings to your calendar, and more!
Many of our users are business owners, creatives, and sales professionals. Linq allows those people to give out info and showcase their work or industry at the same time. Realtors can give out their contact info to clients and showcase their properties all at once, photographers can import their gallery and book a shoot, sales professionals can showcase products in a video and collect customer info using a form, and the list goes on! We also let you collect info from the people you’re meeting, meaning you can replicate the value of exchanging paper business cards without any of the hassle or limitations.
What led you to become an entrepreneur?
I’ve always been eager to solve problems, and entrepreneurship is the perfect way to do that quickly, with others, at scale, and get paid for it! My co-founders and I are all action-biased and data-driven individuals, so starting a company has been extremely fulfilling. With the way I’m wired, no other career would be as exciting, rewarding, or challenging as entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are simultaneously explorers, warriors, builders, and leaders. How do you top a job description like that?!
Can you explain what NFC technology is and how it relates to your suite of products?
NFC, or near-field communication, has been around for a while now. It’s based on RFID (radio-frequency identification technology) protocols, which emerged in the early 1980’s. NFC allows for the exchange of information between two electronic devices in close proximity (4cm apart or less). As of a few years ago, smartphones began coming standard with NFC capabilities and have allowed for contact-less tech like Apple Pay and Google Pay to change the way we do business.
We’re accelerating the contact-less revolution with our NFC-enabled SmartProducts. Using our line of NFC and QR-code enabled cards, stickers, and wearable tech, users can instantly share valuable information with a tap or scan from a modern smartphone.
Tell me a bit about the team behind Linq?
The team is 100% the secret sauce! Jared Mattsson, Patrick Sullivan, and I started Linq last year after a whirlwind of a career with grocery delivery startup Shipt. We saw Shipt go from 10 employees in a room in 2015 to a $550m acquisition by Target in 2017. Talk about scaling a company quickly! We left Shipt last September, raised money from some brilliant investors, and quickly hired some of the smartest people we could find. Zach Gramstad and Sam Holloway complete our full-time team of 5 people, and in just over a year’s time, together we’ve reached a global customer base and built a powerful way to bring people together.
We’ve cultivated a culture of excellence through candor with one another, a bias towards action, and meticulous attention to every word of feedback from our users.
What are the biggest challenges and obstacles that you have faced in the process of building Linq?
The pandemic really threw us for a loop. I joke that I really don’t recommend starting a business and a family in the midst of a global pandemic, but hey: uncertainty is what we all signed up for! Aside from navigating that, I’d say the biggest challenge has been scaling our operations to meet customer response. We launched our product line initially as an experiment, and we’ve been playing catch up to demand ever since the first one sold.
Building software is one thing, but simultaneously building a product line that needs to integrate seamlessly with your software is a whole other ballgame. Since we’re a networking solution, we’re building a product that’s magical for 2 customers every time Linq is used: our users and the people they’re sharing Linq with. That 👈 is truly a thrilling problem to solve.
How have you attracted customers, and what platforms/strategies have you used to grow your company?
Again, the fact that Linq is a networking solution has definitely played to our favor. If you’re not constantly sharing Linq, then we’re not doing our jobs. Consequently, our organic reach has been extensive. We also advertise our products on social media because of the alignment between those audiences and what we offer.
In addition to consumers, we also offer Linq for businesses. We love when customers love Linq enough to implement Linq for Teams throughout their entire organization.
Has Covid-19 affected your business? In a negative or positive way?
It’s two-fold. Covid-19 interrupted our strategy of Linq for events pretty severely since, you know, events stopped and all. However almost immediately, people were looking for a contact-less way to connect, ie not handshakes or business cards. In addition to meeting that need, Linq has served as a way for people to quickly share all kinds of important information, not just personal info. Since Linq makes it really easy to build mobile-friendly web pages, we’ve seen Linq pages built for disaster response, Covid-19 protocols for universities, and as an emergency contact resource list for an entire city — just to name a few!
Covid-19 has also raised awareness around QR codes and NFC technology in an extremely short amount of time. Think about how many QR codes you’ve seen just in the last week. It’s probably more than you saw in all of 2019!
How does Linq distinguish from itself from other brands like Popl?
While I can’t speak for other companies, Linq has several distinct strengths:
- We give users a lot of control over what they’re sharing. From the extreme customization of their Linq page, to the privacy controls around their account, we make it seamless for users to share exactly what they want, when they want, and with whom they want.
- Linq can be used with phones as old as the iPhone 4. Linq utilizes QR codes in conjunction with NFC tech, so we’re able to handle virtually any smartphone our users want to share with.
- Our product line addresses a wide variety of use cases. From the Linq Tap, which can be stuck to a user’s phone or wallet, to our wearable technology, to the stainless steel Premium Linq card, Linq is built to compliment your existing workflow and make you look like a pro doing it.
Have a particular startup you want to hear from? Leave a comment down below with your thoughts on this interview and any interview requests that you have in mind.
