What happens when a side project becomes a platform used by over 75 million people—yet the founder feels like they’re losing control of it?

In this special live episode of Wild Hearts , Linktree co-founder and CEO Alex Zaccaria joins Mason Yates on stage at Sunrise Australia to unpack the messy, inspiring story behind one of Australia’s most iconic tech exports.

From unpacking Alex’s early creative instincts to the cultural tensions between Australia and the US, this is an unfiltered conversation on clarity, leadership, and staying close to the product that made it all possible.

In this conversation, we cover:

🚀 How Linktree grew from a music industry side project into a global internet infrastructure tool

🔁 Why Alex Zaccaria scrapped traditional org charts and rebuilt the team from a “zero-based budget” approach

🧠 The internal mindset shift from people-pleasing to product-led, founder-first decision making

🔗 Why simplicity is one of the hardest product challenges—and how Linktree maintains it at massive scale

🗺️ What it means to build a business across two cultures—Australia and the US—and how the team navigates tall poppy syndrome

💸 How Linktree's new “Sponsored Links” marketplace is flipping influencer marketing into measurable performance

🎤 The evolution of leadership clarity and why Alex now operates in “mandate mode”

📈 What it takes to stay true to your product intuition—even when everyone around you tells you otherwise

And of course, because this is a live episode, there’s some audience questions and banter along the way! Listen in for a conversation about reclaiming vision, rewriting culture, and building at global scale while staying grounded in creative instinct.

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