Founder: François Mommens
Business: Linkody
Revenue/Month: $11.6K
Founders: 1
Employees: 1
Website: Linkody.com
Location: Spain
Founded: 2012
In the competitive world of SEO tools, Linkody has created a distinctive position by offering comprehensive backlink management solutions. This platform provides users with complete oversight of their backlink profiles, helping both agencies and small-to-medium businesses meet their SEO goals.
François Mommens, the founder who currently calls Amsterdam home, plans to relocate to either France or Spain in the coming months. When not immersed in his business responsibilities, Mommens embraces an active lifestyle.
“I enjoy climbing, hiking, cycling, and ice skating,” says Mommens, revealing a clear appreciation for outdoor activities and natural environments.
Mommens’ professional journey began as a backend developer at Echo Interactive, a startup later acquired by France Telecom. There, he worked in a small team developing one of the internet’s first search engines, even before Google appeared on the scene.
“It was a great adventure,” Mommens recalls about this formative experience, which was followed by positions at various companies across different countries.
As time passed, Mommens became increasingly dissatisfied with working for others. This growing frustration prompted him to seek greater independence in his professional life.
“I wanted more autonomy and control,” he explains, describing the motivation that ultimately drove him to establish his own business.
Linkody presents itself as an essential tool for anyone wanting complete control over their backlink strategy. The platform offers a unified solution for understanding link profiles, monitoring existing links, and acquiring new ones.
The tool caters to two primary user segments: SEO agencies managing client link building campaigns, and small-to-medium businesses handling their own SEO requirements. This dual focus enables Linkody to address the needs of both professional SEO practitioners and business owners developing their online presence.
The business currently generates approximately $140,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR), with hundreds of customers. While growth has been steady rather than explosive, the company continues to expand its influence in the SEO tools market.
From Failed Startup to SEO Innovation
The path to business success often winds through valleys of disappointment before ascending to peaks of achievement. For François Mommens, the creation of Linkody emerged from precisely such a journey—one marked by early setbacks that ultimately provided the foundation for his successful backlink management platform.
Before founding Linkody, Mommens launched a startup with a friend. The venture failed to gain momentum and was abandoned relatively quickly.
“It could be featured in a ‘failed business’ case study,” Mommens admits with refreshing candor about this initial entrepreneurial attempt.
Despite the disappointment, this early business experience offered Mommens a valuable lesson about the foundations of successful partnerships.
“I learned that partnering with friends solely based on personal relationships rather than complementary business skills or shared vision can be problematic,” he explains.
This unsuccessful venture, however, created the precise circumstances that would spark Linkody’s creation. While working on his first business, Mommens began to identify a specific gap in the SEO tools market.
At that time, Mommens’ SEO knowledge was basic, limited to understanding the fundamental importance of backlinks. He was actively participating in link exchanges but encountered a practical problem.
“I was struggling to verify whether my partners maintained the agreed-upon links over time,” Mommens recalls.
The existing tools on the market provided general reports about newly acquired or lost links, but Mommens spotted a critical missing functionality.
“None of them allowed users to manually add specific links and monitor them daily,” he notes, describing the insight that would become Linkody’s core value proposition.
Recognizing this unaddressed need in the marketplace, Mommens determined the concept justified investment of his time and resources. He made the decision to develop a minimal viable product—the first iteration of what would evolve into Linkody.
Bootstrapping a Backlink Tool to Success
Behind every successful software product lies a story of determination, technical adaptation, and strategic decision-making. For Linkody, this narrative revolves around rapid development cycles, efficient resource allocation, and a founder willing to transform his skill set to match his entrepreneurial vision.
The initial version of Linkody progressed from concept to launch in just three weeks. During this concentrated development phase, Mommens received design assistance from a friend who later created Lovehabibi, a notably successful venture.
“Though my background was in backend development with Perl and Java, I made the strategic decision to learn PHP and the Symfony framework,” Mommens explains, highlighting his practical approach to technology selection. “I recognized these technologies would better support rapid web development.”
This initial development sprint occurred during a brief employment gap. After releasing the first version and starting a new full-time position, Mommens temporarily shelved the project. The pivotal moment arrived unexpectedly when Linkody began gaining traction.
“The tool received positive reviews despite being very much a minimal viable product,” he recalls, referencing early screenshots as evidence of the platform’s initial simplicity.
Motivated by this unanticipated interest, Mommens invested additional time to create an improved version that included paid subscription options. This phase demanded considerable personal sacrifice.
“Development work was confined to evenings, weekends, and holidays,” Mommens says, describing the intense schedule he maintained while still employed full-time.
When the first subscriptions sold, Mommens recognized sufficient potential to leave his job and focus exclusively on Linkody. His financial foresight proved crucial during this transition.
“Building adequate savings provided the financial runway needed until the business could sustain me,” he notes.
From this point forward, Mommens embraced lean startup principles, continuously enhancing the product through user feedback, competitive analysis, and experimentation. Throughout this evolution, he maintained a clear priority.
“Keeping the interface coherent, consistent, and straightforward became our hallmark,” Mommens states, explaining a quality that has earned Linkody considerable praise, “while also delivering exceptional customer support.”
Growth Through Strategic Marketing Pivots
Marketing an SEO tool in a crowded marketplace requires both persistence and adaptability. Successful entrepreneurs recognize when to abandon unproductive strategies and double down on approaches yielding results—even when those results come from unexpected directions.
When developing Linkody’s marketing strategy, Mommens encountered challenges across all promotional fronts. He quickly determined that search engine marketing (SEM) wouldn’t be feasible given the industry’s competitiveness.
“There were limited profitable keywords in our niche,” he explains. “This realization led me to concentrate on SEO, link building, and content marketing through our company blog.”
Acknowledging his limitations, Mommens made a practical decision about content creation.
“Writing wasn’t my strongest skill, so I hired professional content creators to produce regular blog posts,” he says.
While traffic increased steadily, the results proved disappointing in terms of actual conversions.
“We were essentially generating expenses without corresponding revenue,” Mommens admits, explaining why he eventually discontinued this approach.
However, the blog’s growing authority delivered an unexpected advantage: a steady stream of guest post offers that maintained regular content publication. Though managing these submissions requires significant effort, Mommens continues investing in the platform.
“I sift through numerous proposals and reject approximately 90% of submissions,” he reveals. “But it’s worth it because the blog generates backlinks and enhances our main website’s authority, even if direct customer acquisition remains limited.”
Mommens diversified his marketing approach by developing free SEO tools, beginning with a Backlink Checker offering limited complimentary results. This strategy proved remarkably effective.
“Competitors eventually created similar offerings,” he notes, “prompting us to expand with additional free tools like the Google Index Checker.”
Word-of-mouth recommendations have significantly contributed to Linkody’s growth trajectory.
“Customers frequently mention they discovered Linkody through personal referrals,” Mommens says.
Complementing these organic mentions, Mommens has developed relationships with several brand advocates who regularly promote the tool.
“These partnerships have been invaluable—they highlight our tool and recommend it to their networks,” he explains.
Navigating Future Growth in a Specialized Niche
Strategic vision requires both clarity about current market position and foresight regarding potential opportunities. In the competitive SEO tools sector, knowing when to specialize rather than generalize can mean the difference between sustainable growth and getting lost in a crowded marketplace.
Today, Linkody has reached a stage of maturity and comprehensiveness within its specialized backlink niche. The tool now covers the full spectrum of backlink acquisition and tracking tasks essential for SEO professionals.
“Achieving more rapid growth would require expanding beyond our backlink specialization into becoming a full-spectrum SEO tool,” Mommens explains, discussing potential growth paths. “That’s a direction I’m deliberately avoiding due to the intensely competitive nature of that broader market.”
Instead, Mommens has shifted his focus toward developing something innovative yet still connected to the SEO industry.
“I’ve identified a service gap where few companies currently operate,” he reveals, “and those that do aren’t executing effectively, likely due to the significant technical challenges involved in delivering a proper solution.”
Before embarking on this new venture, Mommens launched a side project called JobboarPlugin.
“I primarily initiated it as a learning opportunity to explore new technologies,” he acknowledges, “though it may have market potential worth pursuing.”
Looking beyond business ambitions, Mommens has personal goals that reflect his values and lifestyle preferences.
“I plan to return to either France or Spain, purchase rural land, develop a food forest, and raise animals,” he shares, outlining his vision for the future.
He also contemplates creating a wellness-focused retreat.
“A yoga, meditation, and rock climbing retreat appeals to me,” Mommens says, explaining the concept’s origins. “It’s influenced by my girlfriend’s expertise as a yoga and meditation instructor combined with my own passion for rock climbing.”
However, he remains practical about the feasibility of such ventures.
“I question whether I could manage this retreat alongside multiple online businesses,” he admits, “unless I ultimately sell my digital ventures.”
The Solopreneur’s Double-Edged Sword
The path of the solo entrepreneur offers unparalleled freedom but demands extraordinary versatility. While corporate executives typically specialize in particular domains, solopreneurs must develop proficiency across numerous business functions—often learning through trial and error rather than formal training.
Running a business single-handedly presents multifaceted challenges that Mommens has experienced firsthand throughout Linkody’s development.
“My workload compares to that of five different professionals,” he explains, detailing the scope of his responsibilities. “I handle product design, user experience, frontend and backend development, and promotional activities.”
This comprehensive responsibility extends to customer interactions as well.
“When users engage with the support chat widget, I’m the one responding to their inquiries,” Mommens points out.
Decision-making in isolation presents another significant hurdle for solo founders.
“While I can consult entrepreneur friends and online communities for advice,” he notes, “this differs substantially from having partners who share both the decision-making process and its consequences.”
This isolation factor helps explain certain investment patterns in the startup ecosystem.
“Venture capitalists and angel investors typically avoid backing solo founders, preferring teams with diverse, complementary skills,” Mommens observes, referencing knowledge gained through personal experience.
Despite these challenges, Mommens emphasizes the liberating aspects of complete autonomy.
“I find tremendous fulfillment in exercising total control over my business and accepting full responsibility for my decisions,” he says.
Mommens also highlights a practical difficulty with a widely advocated business methodology.
“The lean startup approach fundamentally depends on customer input to guide product development,” he explains, “but most users simply lack time to provide detailed feedback.”
He frames this observation with a pointed question: “When was the last time you offered feedback for any of the numerous tools you use daily?”
This simple query underscores the gap between theoretical business methodologies and their practical implementation—a reality that solo founders must confront daily.
Weathering Competitive Storms in SEO
Success in the digital tools marketplace requires not just technical expertise but also the ability to thrive in environments defined by relentless competition and algorithmic unpredictability. For providers of SEO software, this reality creates a unique circular challenge—they must excel at the very practices their products help others implement.
The predominant challenge Mommens confronts is the extraordinarily competitive nature of the SEO industry. The market continually sees new tools entering the space, creating a constantly evolving competitive field.
“I’m not just competing against other software companies,” Mommens explains, “but also against top SEO practitioners for organic traffic—professionals who have mastered the very techniques my tool helps implement.”
This competitive environment is compounded by the inherent risk of depending primarily on Google for traffic generation. Mommens recently experienced this vulnerability firsthand.
“Linkody suffered a significant traffic decline,” he says, describing a recent setback. “Through careful SEO analysis—utilizing my own Linkody tool—I identified a likely cause.”
The investigation revealed a specific potential trigger for the traffic drop.
“We lost two exceptionally powerful backlinks, one from Fox News and another from a major national portal, just before the traffic decline occurred,” Mommens notes.
While drawing definitive conclusions about algorithmic impacts remains challenging, Mommens maintains a pragmatic perspective on SEO causation.
“It’s impossible to prove direct causation—a fundamental truth of working with Google’s algorithms that is often misrepresented by SEO ‘experts,’” he states. “But I strongly suspect these lost links triggered the decline.”
In response, he’s taken proactive measures to address the situation.
“I’ve initiated a focused link-building campaign to compensate for these losses,” Mommens explains. “I’m outsourcing this specialized work to ensure quality results.”
Despite these setbacks and the persistent challenges of operating in such a competitive sector, Mommens’ experience with Linkody illustrates how a focused, specialized tool can establish a sustainable position even in crowded markets.
“My journey from a three-week MVP to a mature product earning significant annual revenue demonstrates that with persistence, strategic focus, and continuous improvement, independent entrepreneurs can build successful businesses,” he reflects. “This is true even in industries dominated by larger, more resource-rich competitors.”
By maintaining his specialization rather than expanding into the broader SEO tool market, Mommens has created a defensible niche for Linkody while simultaneously exploring new opportunities that leverage his technical expertise and industry knowledge.
“This balanced approach to growth,” Mommens says, “combined with my clear-eyed assessment of both business challenges and personal aspirations, positions me to continue evolving both my ventures and my lifestyle in alignment with my values.”
Success Factors: Why Did Linkody Succeed?
- Identifying a specific market gap – Mommens recognized an unaddressed need in the SEO tools market for monitoring specific backlinks, rather than just providing general reports about gained or lost links.
- Specialization over generalization – By maintaining a focused specialization in backlink management rather than expanding into the broader, more competitive general SEO tools market, Linkody established a defensible niche.
- Technical adaptability – Despite his background in backend development with Perl and Java, Mommens strategically learned PHP and the Symfony framework to support faster web development.
- Rapid MVP development – The initial version of Linkody went from concept to launch in just three weeks, allowing quick market testing.
- Financial planning – Mommens built adequate savings to provide runway until the business could sustain him, enabling the critical transition from employment to full-time entrepreneurship.
- Marketing flexibility – When content marketing didn’t generate sufficient conversions, Mommens pivoted to other strategies like developing free SEO tools and cultivating brand advocates.
- User-centered design – Maintaining a coherent, consistent, and straightforward interface earned Linkody considerable praise from users.
- Exceptional customer support – Mommens personally handles customer interactions, ensuring quality service.
- Learning from failure – His earlier failed startup taught him valuable lessons about business partnerships and helped him identify the opportunity for Linkody.
- Resilience and persistence – Despite setbacks like traffic declines and the challenges of being a solopreneur, Mommens maintained his commitment to improving the product and responding to market changes.
- Lean startup principles – Continuously enhancing the product through user feedback, competitive analysis, and experimentation allowed for efficient resource allocation.
- Strategic outsourcing – Recognizing his limitations (like writing skills), Mommens hired professionals for specific tasks while maintaining control of core business functions.
Key Lessons to Learn
- Solve a specific problem – Mommens succeeded by identifying and addressing a precise gap in the market: the ability to manually add and monitor specific backlinks daily.
- Embrace focused specialization – Rather than competing broadly against resource-rich competitors, Linkody maintained a defensible position by excelling in a specialized niche.
- Be willing to pivot when necessary – When content marketing didn’t generate sufficient conversions, Mommens adjusted his strategy toward free tools and brand advocates.
- Financial planning is crucial – Building adequate savings provided the runway needed to transition from employment to entrepreneurship.
- Learn from failure – Mommens’ unsuccessful first startup taught him important lessons about partnerships and led him to identify the opportunity for Linkody.
- Technical adaptability creates opportunities – Learning new programming languages and frameworks enabled Mommens to develop his vision faster.
- Speed to market matters – Creating an MVP in just three weeks allowed for quick market testing and validation.
- The solopreneur path requires versatility – Operating alone means handling multiple professional roles simultaneously, from development to marketing to customer support.
- Deliberate growth can be sustainable – Despite not experiencing explosive growth, Linkody’s steady expansion created a sustainable business.
- Balance business goals with personal values – Mommens maintained alignment between his business development and his broader life aspirations.
- Recognize the limitations of business methodologies – The lean startup approach faces practical challenges, like the difficulty of securing meaningful user feedback.
- Resilience in competitive environments – The SEO industry’s competitive nature requires constant adaptation and the ability to weather algorithm-related setbacks.
- Side projects can lead to new opportunities – JobboarPlugin, initially a learning opportunity, showed potential market value.
- User experience is a competitive advantage – Maintaining a coherent, consistent interface helped differentiate Linkody from competitors.
Opportunity Matrix
Founder Background
- Backend developer with experience in Perl and Java
- Worked at Echo Interactive (acquired by France Telecom)
- Participated in developing one of the early internet search engines
- Experience across various companies in different countries
- Self-taught PHP and Symfony framework to build Linkody
- Outdoor enthusiast (climbing, hiking, cycling, ice skating)
Problem Identification
- Difficulty verifying if link exchange partners maintained agreed-upon links
- Existing tools only offered general reports about gained/lost links
- No tools allowed users to manually add specific links and monitor them daily
- Gap in the backlink management segment of the SEO tools market
Market Opportunity
- Specialized niche within the broader SEO tools market
- Two primary user segments: SEO agencies and small-to-medium businesses
- Backlink management critical for SEO success but underserved by existing solutions
- Opportunity for a focused tool rather than a comprehensive SEO suite
Competitive Landscape
- Highly competitive SEO industry with constant new entrants
- Competing against both other software companies and top SEO practitioners
- Larger competitors focusing on comprehensive SEO solutions
- Few specialized backlink management tools at Linkody’s launch
Market Research
- Identified through personal experience with link exchanges
- Validated by initial MVP’s unexpected positive reception
- Confirmed through continuous user feedback after launch
- Monitored competitor offerings to maintain differentiation
Business Model
- SaaS (Software as a Service) with paid subscription options
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of approximately $140,000
- Hundreds of customers across agency and SMB segments
- Focus on specialized functionality rather than expansion into full-spectrum SEO tools
Initial Capital
- Self-funded/bootstrapped
- No external investors (VCs typically avoid solo founders)
- Personal savings provided runway until business became self-sustaining
- Development during employment gap, then evenings/weekends
Product/Service Development
- Initial MVP developed in just three weeks
- Design assistance from a friend (who later founded Lovehabibi)
- Learned new technologies (PHP, Symfony) to enable faster web development
- Continuous enhancement through user feedback and competitive analysis
- Focus on maintaining a coherent, consistent, and straightforward interface
Marketing Strategy
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) deemed unviable due to competition
- SEO, link building, and content marketing through company blog
- Hired professional content creators (later discontinued due to poor conversion)
- Guest post offers maintained blog content with minimal investment
- Developed free SEO tools (Backlink Checker, Google Index Checker)
- Word-of-mouth recommendations and brand advocates
- Cultivated relationships with influencers who recommend the tool
Milestones
- Initial MVP launch after three-week development period
- First paid subscriptions
- Transition from employment to full-time focus on Linkody
- Development of free tools to drive customer acquisition
- Achievement of sustainable revenue (~$140,000 ARR)
- Comprehensive coverage of backlink management needs
Scalability
- Limited by specialization in backlink management niche
- Deliberately avoiding expansion into full-spectrum SEO tools
- Exploring new ventures within the SEO industry where few companies operate
- Side project (JobboarPlugin) with potential market value
- Challenges of scaling as a solopreneur handling multiple roles
Potential Risks and Challenges
- Dependency on Google for traffic generation
- Vulnerability to algorithm changes (experienced traffic decline)
- Lost powerful backlinks can significantly impact visibility
- Extremely competitive SEO market with constant new entrants
- Limited resources as a solo founder compared to larger competitors
- Difficulty securing meaningful user feedback despite lean startup approach
- Isolation in decision-making without partners sharing responsibility
Key Performance Indicators/Metrics
- Annual Recurring Revenue (~$140,000)
- Customer base (hundreds of users)
- Website traffic metrics
- Conversion rates from free tools to paid subscriptions
- Customer retention rates
- Backlink profile quality and quantity
- Word-of-mouth referral frequency
- Guest post submissions and quality
- Customer support satisfaction