'The product became the viral loop': how aussie startup Blinq turned sharing A business card into its entire marketing strategy. Published on: 18th September 2026 at 8:28 AM Imagine having no need for a marketing strategy or paid media because your customers are doing all of the marketing for you. Sounds pretty good right? Well, that is essentially the growth model behind Melbourne-founded digital business card and QR platform Blinq, which has grown to around four million global users through a combination of product-led growth, organic search and, most importantly, people sharing their digital cards with one another. Sitting down with B&T in Boston during HubSpot's UNBOUND conference this week, Blinq founder and Melbourne-based entrepreneur Jarrod Webb said the company's growth has largely come from a simple loop: one person shares their Blinq card, the recipient receives it without needing the app, and that person can then create and share their own. "I was obsessed with product-led growth motions," he said, when recalling the beginnings of Blinq as a side project in 2017. "When I first built Blinq, I noticed people would share their information with other people, and that's what led me to be like, 'Oh, maybe this is going to be a company'." He eventually left his role at Uber Eats as a software engineer to work on Blinq full-time, with the company's growth continuing to be driven by that exact behaviour. The platform now has users across 93 per cent of the Fortune 500. "Most of our growth is just from people sharing their card with someone, and then the recipient sharing their details back, downloading the app, making their own card, and then eventually, when there's enough people at a company, they just sign up as a whole business," he said. Rather than building a conventional marketing machine around paid media and large-scale campaigns, the company has focused on making the sharing experience itself as seamless as possible. "The product was the viral loop," he said. "That was the core product. I didn't actively think, 'Hey, I really want to add a viral loop onto this.' It's like the product just became the viral loop." From Melbourne to four million users. Blinq was initially built in Australia, but the company's expansion into the US and other English-speaking markets was not driven by a deliberate international marketing push. Instead, the founder said the product simply travelled through its users. "I never decided it. Blinq organically grew globally, especially in the US," Webb told B&T. "I never did marketing to make it grow to the US, it just happened to be that way." The platform now has around four million global users, with the founder estimating roughly three per cent are based in Australia and around 80 per cent in the US. That means Australia remains a relatively small proportion of Blinq's global user base, despite being where the company began. "I started in Australia. I showed some of my friends, and then it was on the App Store and Play Store," he said. "When people search for a solution, like a business card, digital business card or QR digital business card, they downloaded it, and I guess they started sharing with people." The company has also built its acquisition strategy around search, including SEO and what the founder described as "GEO" - optimising for visibility across generative AI and large language model-driven search. "We focus a lot on search, the App Store, Play Store search, as well as Google search, as well as GEO," he said. Blinq also uses Google search advertising and maintains a presence on LinkedIn, but the founder said the majority of its growth still comes through its viral product loop and organic discovery. The QR code breakthrough. The company's proposition is relatively simple: replace the traditional paper business card with a digital identity that can be shared through a QR code. But the founder believes the crucial difference is that the recipient does not need to download Blinq to receive someone's details. He pointed to previous attempts at digital contact-sharing, including PalmPilot's infrared contact exchange and the Bump app, which required both users to have the technology. The QR code changed that dynamic by creating what he described as a "hyperlink into the real world". "When the recipient can receive the details without having to have the app," Webb said, "it's a fairly universal product." That is also where Blinq sees a point of difference from platforms such as LinkedIn. While LinkedIn can be useful for sharing a professional profile, Blinq is designed to exchange the wider collection of details people may actually need to follow up with someone - from phone numbers and email addresses to calendar links, social profiles and websites. "If you send me your details back, then we enrich that, and we just add the LinkedIn link to that contact," he said. "So it's like a really great way to actually build relationships with people, especially from a sales perspective." The company also allows users to update their details, with changes reflected in the contact for another Blinq user in real time. When the customer does all the work. That viral behaviour has also become Blinq's route into businesses, Webb said. He told B&T the company often sees a "bottoms-up" adoption model, where a handful of employees begin using the product before marketing, brand or event teams eventually bring the wider organisation on board. "For us, it's like a real bottoms-up motion," he said. "You will get a few people who are power users within a company, and then eventually, the person that runs marketing or brand or event marketing will say, 'Hey, how about we get this for our team?'" For businesses, the attraction is less about simply replacing a paper card and more about controlling how employees represent the brand. Teams can centrally manage elements including logos, fonts and the information displayed on employees' digital cards, while contacts generated through the platform can be pushed into a company's CRM. That makes the product particularly relevant to marketing and event teams, according to the founder. "You can control all that from the one place," he said. For events, Blinq can also scan badges, enrich contact details and capture notes, including through an AI notetaker. The company says this creates an opportunity for marketers to better connect face-to-face activity with measurable business outcomes. "You can start to attribute new leads or new contacts generated, and you can start to really prove the ROI of events," he said. "It means that you're kind of being able to run this in-person channel like a paid digital channel." Blinq raised a $25 million Series A round in May 2025 to scale its digital networking tools and fund global expansion. B&T travelled to Boston as a guest of HubSpot. Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

Blinq to develop non-food licensing programmes for Marmite and Pot Noodle brands. By Samantha Loveday August 18, 2026 Blinq has been appointed to develop non-food licensing programmes for two of Britain's most iconic food brands, Marmite and Pot Noodle. The partnership will see Blinq work with licensees and retailers to extend the popular brands into new consumer product categories, creating commercially relevant programmes that remain true to each brand's individual personality. The appointment comes at an exciting time for the portfolio, with Marmite set to celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2027. The milestone creates a unique platform for brand extension and consumer engagement through innovative product collaborations. "We are incredibly excited to be working with two of Britain's most recognisable and culturally relevant food brands," commented George Birtchnell, founder and director at Blinq. "Marmite and Pot Noodle each have a distinctive identity, loyal consumer following and strong permission to extend beyond the grocery aisle. Our focus will be on developing creative, retail-led licensing programmes that feel authentic to each brand while opening up meaningful new opportunities for licensees and retailers. "With Marmite's 125th anniversary on the horizon, there is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate an iconic British brand through thoughtfully developed consumer products that resonate with both existing and new fans." Melissa Wimble, licensing manager for Marmite and Pot Noodle, continued: "Both Marmite and Pot Noodle have built strong emotional connections with consumers over many decades, creating a level of affinity that extends far beyond their core product categories. We see significant opportunity to leverage the strength of these brands beyond the grocery aisle, creating non-food licensing programmes that consumers will genuinely connect with while remaining authentic to what makes each brand so distinctive. "We're looking forward to working with Blinq to unlock new opportunities, ensuring every product reflects the quality, personality and values that consumers know and love." Blinq is now beginning conversations with prospective licensing partners across its initial priority categories, with the first wave of licensed products targeted to launch at retail during 2027.