Linkly Hits 1,000 Customers: A Milestone Conversation with Founder Chris Muktar

Reaching 1,000 paying customers is a moment most founders only dream about. For Linkly, it's a number that represents years of customer conversations, hard-won infrastructure decisions, and a stubborn refusal to chase the wrong kind of growth. To mark the occasion, we sat down with founder and CEO Chris Muktar to talk about where Linkly came from, what's been hardest, and what the next chapter looks like.

What problem were you trying to solve when you first built Linkly?

My previous company was an internet publishing business that made a lot of money from affiliate links. We were using a product called ClickMeter, paying $220 a month for it, and running into a lot of problems. I hadn't coded in several years and wanted to get back into it, so I decided to build my own and bring it in-house.

We used the product internally, put a "buy it now" page on it, and did a little marketing. Over time people began to subscribe and find use for it — and organically it grew into the platform it is today.

What's been the hardest moment in your entrepreneurship journey?

There have been many times I've stared at the brink — not making money, paying salaries, managing people. Nobody prepares you for this. Elon Musk's line about running a company being like eating glass is very accurate. The truth is, it's all hard — but the hard parts are also what make it worth doing.

Who's using Linkly in ways you never expected?

We see people creating millions of links, sending millions of clicks, running SMS marketing, building clever automations, generating purpose-built reports — lots of things I never anticipated. If it's possible to flex a tool to do something creative, there'll be a customer out there who goes all the way and does it. That never gets old.

Was there a feature or decision that changed everything?

Scalable infrastructure was a turning point, and the arrival of AI has let us improve the product in ways that weren't economically viable before. But the honest answer is that building something people love is thousands of small fixes driven by thousands of customer conversations. I still interact with customers directly — it's how I keep a pulse on what's working and where the friction is.

What does your team look like, and why stay lean?

Linkly is fully remote. We work with a lot of freelancers, and people using LLMs have dramatically higher leverage than in the past. Staying lean lets us move quickly and adapt. Large teams carry an inertia that's orthogonal to nimbleness — and in this market, speed matters.

Big players exist in this space — where does Linkly fit, and what is it not trying to be?

Linkly was never trying to compete with the big players. It was built for a use case they couldn't serve. Those tools aim to be simple. Linkly aims to be comprehensive — and that distinction is exactly what our customers come to us for.

What's the biggest product mistake you've made?

Two things. First, waiting too long to improve the product. Shipping our new interface and translations dramatically increased customer satisfaction — and sales — in ways I hadn't anticipated. Second, not investing in enterprise-grade architecture earlier. We had a significant outage that exposed real weaknesses, and I resolved we'd never have one like it again.

What would you tell yourself before your first paying customer?

Honestly, nothing. I think I was delusional — and that delusion was probably necessary.

What kind of company are you intentionally building?

We want to be a leader in this space. We've served customers of every type and size — from the Olympics, banks, and governments, down to individuals marketing their personal brands. We want to be an honest, transparent business that wins because it genuinely serves customers well and charges a fair price for the work we do.

1,000 paying customers — what does that number mean to you, and where does Linkly go from here?

It's 1,000 concurrent customers — we've probably had 15,000+ paying customers over the years. From here, we're focused on improving and expanding the platform, particularly around automations, AI, and integrations, and on making Linkly faster, more flexible, and more useful. It's a niche that's too small and finicky for big players to invest in — but for a lean and efficient business like ours, we can do things in a day that would take a large software house months. We want to stick to our customer-focused values and keep getting things done quickly.

The Takeaway

Linkly's journey to 1,000 customers wasn't a rocket ship — it was a decade of relentless iteration, direct customer relationships, and a clear-eyed view of who the product is really for. While the big players chase simplicity, Linkly has quietly become the platform of choice for teams that need power, flexibility, and a partner that actually picks up the phone.

Whether you're running enterprise affiliate campaigns, building complex link automations, or just need tracking that goes deeper than the basics — Linkly was built for exactly that.

Ready to see what Linkly can do for your team? Book a call with us — we'd love to show you around.