Matthew Blode

AI at Linktree · Forbes 30 Under 30 · Exited to Linktree and me&u

About

Two startups, two exits. I am a Melbourne-based product leader and engineer focused on going zero to one.

I co-founded VenueSafe during COVID and took it from idea to acquisition by me&u (formerly Mr Yum) in six months. I stayed on for two years, helped scale me&u to 15M+ users globally, and supported the US expansion from Austin, Texas.

After that I co-founded Fingertip with Olly Hoffman and the founders of Catch and Menulog. We scaled to tens of thousands of small businesses across 100+ countries before Fingertip was acquired by Linktree.

Today I'm on AI at Linktree, building agents for creators and the people who land on their page. Not another dashboard. Software that looks at your situation and acts.

On the side I build apps, developer tools, and open-source libraries. Most of them ship together as the Blode Stack: the Glide typeface, Blode UI, Blode Icons, and DiffHub, a local diff viewer for reviewing cmux and agent-written code.

Highlights

6 months: VenueSafe went from idea to acquisition by me&u in six months.
15M+ users: Helped scale me&u's mobile ordering platform to 15M+ users globally after VenueSafe was acquired.
100+ countries: Fingertip supported small businesses globally before its acquisition by Linktree.
Zero to one: My specialty is building the early product, engineering, and AI systems that get new ventures moving.

Experience

Linktree (opens in new tab)
AI Engineer
2025 - Present
Building the AI products 90M+ creators use inside Linktree.
- One agent reads a creator's analytics and socials, then acts on them: a control centre rather than a static list of links.
- Another answers the messages fans send a creator.
- One service, six runtime modes, three of them MCP servers.
- Evals in Braintrust, run in CI. Write actions go one at a time, behind an approval gate.
Fingertip (opens in new tab)
Co-founder & CTO
2023 - 2025
Co-founded Fingertip with Olly Hoffman, Gabby Leibovich, and Hezi Leibovich to help small businesses run more of their business online.
- Scaled to tens of thousands of small businesses across 100+ countries.
- Built product and engineering across website creation, bookings, payments, and invoicing.
- Fingertip was acquired by Linktree in 2025.
me&u (opens in new tab)
Senior Software Engineer
2022 - 2023
Joined me&u (formerly Mr Yum) after the VenueSafe acquisition and helped scale the platform to 15M+ users globally.
- Helped scale me&u's platform to 15M+ users.
- Moved to Austin, Texas to support US market expansion.
VenueSafe (opens in new tab)
Co-founder & CTO
2020 - 2021
Built a COVID contact tracing platform for Australian venues and hospitality businesses.
- Went from idea to acquisition by me&u in six months.
- Built and shipped the product during the peak urgency of COVID operations.
Light Creative (opens in new tab)
Front-end Web Developer
2019 - 2020
Built React frontends for enterprise clients across e-commerce and corporate platforms.
- Delivered fast, responsive interfaces for high-traffic web applications.

Education

Bachelor of Design, Major in Digital Technologies from the University of Melbourne (opens in new tab), 2018 - 2020.

Community & advisory

Startmate (opens in new tab)
Accelerator Mentor
Mentoring startups in Australia's leading accelerator and supporting the next generation of founders.
OpenAI (opens in new tab)
Codex Ambassador
Supporting local developer communities through community sessions, feedback, and hands-on learnings.
Airtree (opens in new tab)
Explorer
Part of Airtree's operator community connecting experienced builders with early-stage founders.
VCMC (opens in new tab)
Co-founder
Co-founded the Vibe Coding Micro Community with Luca Bonelli and Ryan Hendler to bring AI-native builders together. Grown to 120+ builders.