It's 2025, but business cards are still in the air - just visit any conference or industry fair and you'll end up stacking up the piles you discarded earlier than later. But as smartphones have become a repository of our information and contacts, people are eager to try digital alternatives to their business cards.

Blinq is a Melbourne startup when the trend stood out when it started as a hobby project in 2017 and offered a digital business card app with QR-Code Widget. Today, the company is making money with a bag of gold: now it has more than 2.5 million users, including individual customers, as well as 500,000 companies in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

On the back of this progress, the startup has now raised a $25 million Series A funding round led by Touring Capital. Returned offspring Blackbird Ventures and Square PEG Capital also participated in the round, with new investor Hubspot Ventures also participating.

“(Blinq's QR) is a simple, personal way to share your identity and run well among iPhone users. But until the second half of 2019, most Android devices caught up with QR scans and adoption began to grow,” Jerrod Webb, CEO and founder of Blinq, told TechCrunch. “There was then Covid-QR codes that became mainstream, in-person meetings became more intentional, and Blinq focused on making these moments seamless and memorable starts to take off.”

Since then, the startup has adopted the B2C2B route. The app allows users to create several customized digital business cards to meet different needs and connect with the contacts that use them. The app can also automatically capture details by using QR code, email signature, NFC, short link or video call background and sync it with a CRM system such as HubSpot or Salesforce.

Webber said Blinq is used by individuals, small businesses and global businesses, with 80% of its customer base located in the United States. Its team has expanded from five employees in Melbourne to 67 employees in Sydney, Melbourne, New York and San Francisco to support its product development and marketing efforts.

"Every time someone uses blinq, they introduce it to new people. In addition, we see that the longer active users are used, the longer they spend on the platform," Weber said. "This built-in virus rate drives organic growth and makes our customer acquisition cost less. On the business side, the company pays per seat. As more employees adopt products, the team grows organically, creating revenue expansion over time."

Blinq competes with several companies that offer similar digital business card services, including Mobilo, Popl, Wave and Wix. Of course, the app also has to compete with social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, Landing Pages and Linketree services.

But Weber believes that blinking is more suitable for relationship building and provides users with more ways to follow up and interact with new contacts.

Weber believes that digital business cards are more than just endpoints. “They are our wedges. Because when you become a trust tool at the beginning of a relationship, you get the right to shape what follows. We are committed to giving people everything they can first turn their first impression into real motivation – from a dynamic, context-rich way to a smart way to stay at the top of your head. This means expanding into new markets, bringing our reach to business and business, and deepening our business in business and business, and continuing to work hard and being able to grow rapidly and integrate into the world.