Investor Presentation · August 2026
LINX
Where your experience is your asset.
Stein Retzlaff · Founder
The Problem
Luxury travel has no marketing department.
Luxury operators focus on logistics and operations. Content, marketing, social, itineraries, pre-trip planning go to contractors. Distribution goes to travel agents.
- A production company: $50,000 for one week in the field
- Travel agents: 15 to 25% of every booking
- The past guest who caused the booking is never paid a percentage
LINX is their full marketing stack: we create the content, route the demand, and take 10% only on bookings we prove we caused.
Production rates founder-attested · agent rates, verified trade band
The Thesis
Travel is inspired by content. The post-trip infrastructure doesn’t exist. We’re building it:
A trip becomes a memory.
A memory becomes a storefront.
A share becomes a booking.
An experience becomes an asset.
We buy the archive by creating the film.
The film is the marketing department, delivered: every one ships as a tracked link, and a booking through it pays us 10%.
The film is the distribution. Every one ships as a tracked link, and a booking through it pays us 10%.
What LINX is
The marketing engine, and the record it leaves.
Operators hand LINX the selling they never staffed: create, distribute, attribute, paid on outcome. What accumulates underneath is the record of who caused what.
A referrer introduces a traveler, who books with an operator. Every exchange drops a record into the layer underneath, and settlement and proof rise back out. LINX is paid a tenth of what it routes, the referrer is settled only on a booking the record can trace to them, and so neither side takes the next one off the platform.
A referrer recommends. A traveler books. An operator delivers the trip. This happens every day, and none of it needs us.
Arrow keys, or select a step
REFERRER
gives the introduction
gets paid, on proof
TRAVELER
gives the booking
gets the memory, and credit
OPERATOR
gives inventory, trip data
gets proof of what filled the calendar
THE RECORD
LINX is paid 10% of what it routes. It keeps the record of all of it.
What accumulates underneath is a record of who caused what, and when. Nobody else holds it, and it is the only thing here that gets more valuable every trip.
The referrer is settled only on a booking the record can trace to them.
So neither side takes the next one off the platform.
LINX does not own inventory, compete on operator data, or sell ranking.
The Product
The memory is the storefront. Here it is, on a phone.
A real trip. A real memory. The film is the record of what caused the next booking.
Live demo: linx-product-demo.steinretzlaff.com
Value Proposition
One memory pays both sides.
Travelers meet here, go on trips together, and book the exact trip through someone who lived it.
For Operators
- Your past guests send your next ones, attributed end to end.
- The film and the library, produced for you. Post-production was the slowest part of this industry; we made it instant.
- 10% on outcome. Never 10 to 25% up front to someone who was never there.
For Travelers
- Your trip becomes a memory instantly, free.
- Meet other travelers: an invite-only community of the most experienced travelers alive, and go on trips together.
- Share it. When a friend books from it, you earn 30 to 60 percent of the commission it causes.
Business Model
Ten percent on outcome. Subscriptions on top.
10% closes the booking and pays the member who drove it. A peer referral is a referral, not an agent’s 10–25%.
Forty films. One attributed booking. And no operator has been asked to pay.
Commission Splits
How the 10% booking fee is divided.
Free
Invite-only
60%
30%
10%
Legend
$500 / month
30%
60%
10%
Splits favor the member as they commit. Membership is free for the go-to-market, until the first 1,000 members.
LINX vs the Agent
Yacht
Agent 15-20%
10%
Adventure
Agent 10-15%
10%
Lodge
Agent 10-15%
10%
Safari
Agent 20-25%
10%
Wellness
Agent 10-15%
10%
Yacht
Adventure
Lodge
Safari
Wellness
Agent
15-20%
10-15%
10-15%
20-25%
10-15%
LINX
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
5% floor grandfathered for founding operators (EYOS, Ice Axe).
SaaS Subscriptions
Members
$0 - $500
per month
Free (invite-only) / Legend $500 · The film, book or print ~$2,000, once
Operators
$1,000 - $3,000+
per month
Base $1,000 / Mid $3,000 / Enterprise by conversation
Three engines: the memory is the free hook, the 10% rail earns on every booking, storage keeps the assets.
Customer Acquisition
Acquisition runs through the operator.
Operator Onboards
Operators share memories with their clients, not website links.
Clients Become Members
Those clients pass the memories through their own networks.
Geometric Scale
Members arrive through the operator at $0 marginal cost. Target: 10 to 50 per operator.
Operator Invite Credit
$250
Paid to an operator who brings another operator onto the platform.
Blended Operator CAC
$1,200ESTIMATE
Blended across demos and in-person meetings.
Blended Member CAC · Phase 0
$42ESTIMATE
Most arrive free, invited by their own operator. Some through $50 credits.
We never pay to find them.
The one measured comparison: Lindblad pays $3,900AUDITED up front to find each new guest. The one attributed LINX booking paid $3,000FOUNDER-ATTESTED commission, billed on outcome.
Phase 0 acquisition, founder-network driven. CAC rises as paid channels open. LTV to CAC is untested by construction: the supply is the founder’s network.
AI Inside LINX
An AI concierge that can only recommend what is real.
Ask for your next trip.
Answers drawn only from verified, lived experiences. Never the open internet.
A bookable itinerary in minutes: priced, seasonal, refined with the operator.
The Memory Engine already turns a phone roll into a cinematic film: live today, at near-zero marginal cost.
Humans set the taste bar once; the machine holds it.
Chatbots guess. LINX vouches.
The concierge: in build now, live in 2027.
The Growth Engine
Your past guests send your next ones.
The memory is how both sides join. The film recruits the operator; the share recruits the next traveler.
Ice Axe
Expeditions
Antarctic Peninsula · 2026
A Memory, for the Hansens
Thirteen days at the bottom of the world.
Crafted by LINX
The trip ends. The memory arrives instantly, under the operator’s brand. Post-production is the slowest part of this industry; we made the thank-you instant.
Ice Axe
The memory ends.
The next trip begins.
Antarctic Peninsula Ski Cruise · $50,000 per guest
Booking lives inside the memory.
Ice Axe Expeditions
A Memory, for the Hansens
Share this memory
Every recipient sees the trip, the operator, and the way to book it.
“You have to see this. Best trip of our lives.”
The Hansens · to 12 friends
Shared with 12 friends
Attribution follows every share
The guest shares it. Their trust does the selling.
Ice Axe Expeditions
Memory analytics
A Memory, for the Hansens · 30 days
Booked from this memory
Member reward $3,000 · paid on completion
There is no more “how did you find us?” on the referral lane: every open and inquiry is attributed. This round puts every share on the same rail.
One operator publicly credits our content with selling out two years of Antarctica departures.
Product illustration. The one booking LINX has attributed end to end to date is on the traction slide.
The operator’s media library lives on LINX.
Network effects are the guests, and every deck claims them. The platform effect starts when what compounds exists nowhere else: every trip adds attribution only the LINX library carries.
Season one, one season of footage in one place.
Season two, last year is already in the edit.
Season three, three seasons nobody else holds.
A competitor signs the same operator tomorrow and starts empty.
The average operator runs eight charters a year. The luxury ships run more.
Three sources.
One trip folder.
- Guest footage, from every phone on the trip
- Guide and crew footage the operator already owns
- B-roll we shot at the start of the relationship
Nobody is asked to do anything new. They were already shooting it.
Traction
Eleven days from MVP to first revenue. Three years to profitable.
Jul 1
MVP Live
Jul 12
First Revenue
$30,000 GMV · $3,000 commission billed
Now
Live Today
Operators hosting · Experiences bookable
Q4 2026
In the App Store
iOS and Android · 6 operators using LINX monthly
2027
Payments settle through LINX
AI concierge live · Two hundred transacting operators(target)
2028
New markets
$5K trips · New verticals: culinary, jets(target)
2029
Profitable
(target)
Founding Operators · six under contract
The Human Truth
The traveler, the referrer and the operator say the same thing.
“The most transformative trip of my life didn’t come from a search engine. It came from a friend.”
Kara Brenholt
Product Leader, formerly Wealthfront
“When you’ve skied the entire planet, people ask you where to go. Now there’s finally a way to make that count, and there’s infrastructure for attribution.”
Chris Davenport
Pro Skier, 2x World Extreme Skiing Champion
“The value in selling experiences comes from those who are sharing stories. There is no platform that captures that until now with LINX.”
Doug Stoup
CEO, Ice Axe Expeditions · LINX advisor
The Team · San Francisco
Built by the leaders of the industry.
Ben Lyons
Advisor
CEO, EYOS Expeditions
Runs the leading expedition-yacht operator; the superyacht beachhead opens through him.
Doug Stoup
Advisor
CEO, Ice Axe Expeditions
Sixty-plus polar expeditions; the polar operator network follows him.
Roy Kim
Technical Advisor
Early engineer at Expedia, principal at SoFi
He has scaled travel platforms before.
Jay Patry
Advisor
Founder and owner, Patry Group
Builds and owns hospitality assets; the traveler this platform serves.
Erich Roepke
Advisor
Emmy-winning filmmaker, National Geographic
The taste bar for every memory the platform ships.
Stein Retzlaff· Founder
Ten years inside the industry this platform digitizes.
Ani Palaskar
Founding Product Engineer, San Francisco.
This round hires
Backend and Mobile Engineer. Scales the platform and ships the apps.
Product Manager. Owns the roadmap and the member experience.
Director of Operations / Chief of Staff. Owns operator relationships at scale.
The loop is proven with the founder as the engine.
This round makes it work without him.
With Uber, your car is your asset.
With Airbnb, your house is your asset.
With LINX, your experience is your asset.
Trust outsells advertising, and the people who lived the trip are the proof.
Financials
The path to profitability.
>6:1
LTV : CAC · Phase 0
< 6 mo
CAC Payback · Phase 0
+$2M
Net · Year 3
Gross Booking Volume · GMV
Total volume booked on the platform · to scale
Year 1
2027
$200K
Revenue
−$515K net
Year 2
2028
$2.2M
Revenue
Year 3
2029
$11M
Revenue
+$2M net
Where The Revenue Comes From
Commission today · SaaS & storage grow to a third of revenue · this chart runs to Year 5; the chart at left ends at Year 3
Year 1
25 operators
SaaS $20K
Comm. $180K
Year 2
200 transacting operators
SaaS $0.5M
Comm. $1.7M
Year 5 · at scale
~1,760 transacting operators
SaaS $11.8M
Comm. $26.1M
Net −$515K → +$2M · profitable in Year 3 · SaaS & storage grow to about a third of revenue at scale
Figures shown are the growth case. The conservative bottom-up model is retained for diligence and is available on request.
The Ask
$600K
Pre-seed SAFE · $12.5M post-money cap · 20% discount · converts at the priced round.
Allocations of $25K to $100K; larger by conversation.
What the round has to produce
Now
Mobile beta
Founder-led through the 127
Q4 2026
iOS + Android launch
6 operators using LINX every month · memories and shares, reported
Q1 2027
Payments through LINX
150 members transacting
Q2 2027
AI concierge v1
Recommends only what the record verifies
Use of Funds
Product · 40% · The three hires and the platform.
Acquisition · 30% · Operator onboarding and member growth.
Operations · 20% · Lean operations, priced to the milestones.
Reserve · 10% · Optionality. Nothing earmarked.
Product, 40 percent. The three hires and the platform.
Appendix · The Opportunity, derived
The $208M is three verticals, each at its own rate.
A different row from the opportunity slide, on purpose. That asks what LINX earns at full penetration: $3.57B on $26B of GMV. This asks what the incumbent is already paid on a narrower, price-gated slice: $208M on $2.41B above $10,000 per person per week. The revenue opportunity against the wallet we displace, never summed.
Swipe the table for the full derivation.
| Vertical | SAM | Agency share | Rate | Effective | Pool |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polar | $1,092M | 31.8%VLindblad FY2025 audited, and a floor | 15.07%Vaudited, 20,521 of 136,195 | 4.79% | $52M |
| Safari | $1,016M | 52%Eband 45 to 60, three converging lines | 22.5%Vtrade net rate, 20 to 25% off rack | 13.25% | $135M |
| Experiential | $300MFLOOR | weightedEcensus, plus borrowed polar shares | 4.5 to 17.5%Emixed by sub-segment | 6.95% | $21M |
| Total | $2.41B | 8.61% | $208M |
Safari's effective rate is computed on operator-received revenue, because the safari SAM is measured net of trade discount while polar and experiential are measured gross. The correction is worth 13% of the safari pool and it is disclosed rather than smoothed: it is the single most likely place for this build to be attacked.
If the gate moves
| $15K | $20K tier | $25K | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAM | $1.45B | $830M | $480M |
| Agent commission pool | $127M | $76M | $43M |
| SOM at a 10% share | $12.7M | $7.6M | $4.3M |
| Operators verified to clear | ~40 | 24 | ~14 |
Per person per week. The gate moves the answer 3.0x across a $10,000 range and moves each vertical by a different factor: safari is four to five times more gate-sensitive than polar.
This SAM measures the agent-commission pool at the price gate, not the platform SAM on the market slide: the two answer different questions.
The ceiling, disclosed once
If every booking in this market were intermediated, agents would take $507M. We do not lead with it: Lindblad books 68.2% direct, audited, so full intermediation is contradicted by the only channel-mix datapoint that exists. It bounds growth, not today. Intermediation is rising: Lindblad's agency share went 24.9% to 31.8% in a single year.
What we will not claim
LINX's own 10% on this same SAM is $241M, which is larger than the $208M agents take. Market-wide, displacing the agent is worth less than our own rate. The substitution argument is true in safari and it is stated there, not in aggregate.
Sources: Lindblad FY2025 10-K, audited · safari trade net rate, 20 to 25% off rack · 83 Botswana camp rate cards read by name, against a concession register that closes the universe · IAATO ATCM 48 for the Antarctic fare ladder, where every dollar figure is modelled because IAATO publishes no fares · LINX operator census. Full derivation in the TAM verification dossier, 2026-08-18.
The Solution · Live Now
LINX is the marketplace where luxury travel’s participants meet for the first time.
Operators get a storefront made of their guests’ real trips. Pay only when a booking closes.
Members get paid for recommendations they already make. Every referral tracked.
Travelers book the exact trip through someone who lived it.
One platform. Three participants. Every dollar attributed.
The Wedge · Depth Before Breadth
Start where trips cost $50K. Win it. Move down.
The market is enumerable. In Antarctica, fifty-one operators put eighty-five thousand people ashore in a season. Deep-field land operations run through three of them. Private charter runs through three more. This market can actually be WON, cell by cell.
The win condition is a number. One cell = one activity in one place. At 20 verified memories the operator owns its cell.
Then we move down. Ultra luxury ($50K+) proves the loop at maximum value. The same rails then open the $10K+ tier.
The first cell, measured
$30,000
One booking, caused by one share, invoiced at $3,000. Eleven days after the MVP went live.
One observation. We are not extrapolating a conversion rate from it.
The cold-start problem is the reason this founder: supply is a handful of operators per cell who already know him, and demand is their own past guests.
Creator commerce trained everyone to buy through content. AI made the memory nearly free. Experiential travel is the last high-value category without a rail.
Antarctica figures: IAATO ATCM 48 (2026), 2025-26 season actuals.
For Members
Your experience becomes an asset that pays.
You have already been. Guides, athletes, and lifelong travelers carry the most trusted recommendations in this industry: verified by memories, not claimed in a bio.
Now the recommendation pays. 30 to 60 percent of the commission on every booking you cause, attributed automatically through your shares.
The only way to earn through LINX is to have actually been there. A memory is proof. That gate is why your vouch is worth something.
Ten experiences shared can fund the eleventh.
For Travelers
Relive it. Share it. Find the next one.
Share. An instantly curated memory of your trip, not four thousand photos in a camera roll. Free curation of the best weeks of your life.
Belong. A private, invite-only community of the most experienced travelers alive. Your profile is your verified travel history: your globe.
Verified
Discover. Your next trip, suggested from what you and people like you have verifiably done, bookable through the person who lived it.
You might make a buck. That is not why you are here.
