andreas jonsson

CEO @Shield: Get all posts from all your people, all in one dashboard. Stats and analytics for LinkedIn. Learn what works. Get in touch 💬

@TheShieldIndex — LinkedIn benchmarks at www.theshieldindex.com ↗

@Shield — LinkedIn analytics for creators, team, and agencies at www.shieldapp.ai ↗

@bootstrap.university — for founders going from zero to ramen without investors at www.bootstrap.university ↗

CEO, Co-founder

Redefining LinkedIn analytics since 2019.

#shieldapp #weareshield

typical impressions per post on LinkedIn:

0–1,000 followers = 167 impressions
1,000–5,000 followers = 466 impressions
5,000–10,000 followers = 733 impressions
10,000–25,000 followers = 1,121 impressions
25,000–50,000 followers = 2,392 impressions
50,000–100,000 followers = 4,484 impressions

what feels weak may in fact just be normal.

TheShieldIndex

andreas jonsson 🛠

CEO @Shield, @TheShieldIndex (LinkedIn follower benchmarks and more @ theshieldindex.com)

LinkedIn profiles with fewer than 500 followers produced the biggest reach outliers in November.

Small accounts. Biggest outliers. That's right.

When we normalized reach vs follower count, this bracket showed 10,000%+ reach rates. By far the most volatile and most viral distribution across any follower group.

My read: No account is "too small" to produce elite-level reach. Small accounts aren't neglected by the algorithm. If anything, the opposite seems true.

I wonder if smaller accounts are where LinkedIn tests viral distribution mechanics? 

I don't know - what do you think?

www.theshieldindex.com

CEO @Shield, @TheShieldIndex (LinkedIn reach & format benchmarks @ theshieldindex.com) | Founder @bootstrap.university

January 2026 edition live: www.theshieldindex.com

LinkedIn reach benchmarks by The Shield Index

One thing does keep increasing as LinkedIn accounts grow.

Baseline reach.

November and December data shows that while reach rates compress, typical (absolute) reach continues to rise with follower count.

Bigger audience → Higher floor.

My personal view: “More followers” shouldn’t be the goal. It should be the byproduct.

Of consistently good work. 
Done in public. 
Over time.

Across ~100,000 posts in November and December, images quietly dominated LinkedIn distribution.

Not on viral spikes, but on baseline reach.

Images consistently led on typical and strong reach. Nothing flashy, just predictable distribution. Maybe that's why the feed is half-full of them.

Sometimes the system doesn't reward what's exciting, it rewards what it can reliably score.

And right now that seems to be posts with images.

You seeing this?

Big LinkedIn accounts don't lose reach. They lose volatility. 

November & December data show that once profiles crossed roughly 25k followers, typical reach settled around 5-7% and breakout upside narrowed (fewer true viral outliers).

Compare that to sub-500 follower accounts which continued to show multi-thousand % breakout reach. 

My read for larger accounts: Fewer extremes. More predictability. 

Which might explain why LinkedIn growth feels different at scale.

Why are we building TheShieldIndex?

Because "consistency" isn't a strategy. And "post more" is vague AF. You need more than that. And we're bringing it.

1. Real benchmarks
Is your reach actually good for your follower range? Or just coping?

2. Content format momentum
What's gaining traction right now? And what is LinkedIn quietly dialing down?

3. Reach drivers
What is actually moving distribution? Likes? Comments? Reposts? Something else?

No guru takes. Just patterns from real data.

Next Index: Jan 14, 2026. 
Based on 50,000 posts from December.

www.theshieldindex.com ↗

i have not been talking bootstrapping much lately
mostly because i've been bootstrapping
build ship sell, the full thing, end to end
yeah it went well, thanks for asking
despite all the improvements we didn't ship
once more i learned the valuable lesson of creative restraint: what's most valuable is not what you add, but what you take away - especially for day one. the rest comes later.

In December, most people in the 5k-50k follower range saw reach drop.

There was only one follower bracket in December that gained a broad lift in reach, meaning reach was up across typical (median), strong (top 25%), top (top 10%) and breakout (top 1%) reach tiers.

Guess which one.

PS this is what we track in TheShieldIndex: not what to post but what the system is doing

Helping growth-stage founders cut through mental chaos and scale profitably without burning out | Decision Clarity Advisor | 2X Founder | Inner Operating Systems™

I spent 15+ years leading global operations driving efficiency and profitability at enterprise scale.

Then I became a founder. Twice.

And I learned the hard truth: 
Operational expertise alone doesn't cut it in the founder world. The frameworks work. The strategy is sound. But founders can't execute because they're drowning in decision overload, constant pressure, and the mental load of being responsible for everything.

I got my ass kicked mentally in my first venture. Rebuilt myself. Found what actually works. 

Then specialized in SaaS operations - working on churn reduction, profitability improvement, and operational efficiency. I was featured by Custify as a contributor to their 2025 Customer Success Forecast, where I emphasized that value delivery and linking customer outcomes to revenue will transform CS into a key growth driver.

Here's what I learned: 
You can't fix founder bottlenecks with operational systems alone. And you can't fix them with mindset work alone. You need both.

That's what I install.

The Operational Side:
- Decision systems that cut founder load by 50%
- Efficiency frameworks for growth-stage chaos
- Operational discipline that drives profitability

The Founder Psychology Side:
- Decision confidence when stakes are high
- Mental systems to handle pressure without burning out
- The grit to execute when it's hard

Most ops consultants give you the systems but don't address why you can't execute them. 
Most coaches give you mindset work but no operational rigor.

I do both because I've lived both.

I work with growth-stage founders/CEO who are:
- The bottleneck in their business
- Drowning in decisions with weak execution
- Need to improve margins and efficiency
- Want to scale past themselves

If that's you, let's talk. 
Enterprise methodology. Founder empathy. Real outcomes.

Anil Karakkattuu

72% of founders are struggling with something they'll never post about on LinkedIn.


It's their mental health.

Your LinkedIn feed is full of wins.
Funding rounds. New hires. Revenue milestones.

Research shows 72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues - depression affects 30%, ADHD 29%, anxiety 27%

That's nearly 3 out of 4 founders.

Here's what's actually happening behind the wins:
→ You're carrying weight nobody sees.
→ You wake up in panic.
→ You smile in investor meetings while panicking inside.
→ You tell your team "everything's great" while your mental health is crumbling.

50% of CEOs feel lonely in their role, and 61% believe it hinders their performance. 

You're carrying weight nobody sees.

Founders think they need to project strength.
So they hide the struggle.
→ They don't tell their co-founder they're anxious.
→ They don't tell their team they're burned out.
→ They don't tell anyone they're barely sleeping.

The business grows. The isolation grows faster.

Here's what makes it harder:
You can't turn off your founder brain.
It runs on weekends. During family dinners. When you should be resting.
The same intensity that builds companies won't let you rest.
And when you're always "on," you burn out faster.

And the worst part?
Most founders never ask for help. They think it makes them weak.
So they suffer alone.

But here's the truth:
Your mental state runs your business.
→ When you're anxious, your decisions get reactive.
→ When you're burned out, your judgment fails.
→ When you're isolated, your blind spots multiply.

The real cost:
→ Worse decisions under chronic stress
→ Your team feels your anxiety even when you hide it
→ Relationships outside work fall apart
→ Growth stalls because you're not operating clearly

All because you thought you had to carry it alone.

The strongest thing you can do is admit you need support.

Products can pivot. Markets can shift. Strategies can evolve.

But you? 
You’re irreplaceable.

Your business needs you healthy more than it needs you hustling.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

Helping $1M–$20M software founders stop being the bottleneck and scale profit without scaling their hours | Ex-Oracle/Infosys Operations Leader → 2X Founder | Ops Systems + Founder Psychology

42% of startups fail because they never find product-market fit.
Because founders make build decisions before validation decisions.

Build decision = we are committing resources to solve this problem.
Validation decision = we are confirming this problem actually exists.

Most founders skip validation entirely.
They fall in love with a solution before proving there's a problem worth solving.

They see a gap in the market.
They build a product to fill it.
They launch.
And...
They realize nobody wanted it.
They are out of runway.

The mistake:
Founders solve their own problems and assume others have them too.
Example,
- I hate this workflow, so my target market must hate it.
- This frustrates me, so there's market demand.
Classic founder bias. Zero validation.

Founders who fail at PMF spend their time perfecting a solution.
Founders who achieve PMF spend their time validating the problem.
The difference isn't the product.
It's whether they confirmed demand before building.

Validation decisions come first:
- Does this problem exist for enough people?
- Is it painful enough they'll change behavior?
- Will they pay to solve it?

Build decisions come second:
- We've confirmed the problem is real
- Now we solve it

If you're building right now without having answers to the three validation questions mentioned above, you are guessing.

Validate first. Build second.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

Every decision you delay is a decision you have already made.
You have decided to lose.

Most founders think delaying a decision buys them time to get it right.
It doesn't.
It just guarantees you get it wrong.

Decision delay costs compound in five ways:
1. Operational bleed
You're still spending money.
But you're not creating value.
The team sits idle. The inefficient process continues. 
The broken system keeps burning cash.

2. Market windows close
Opportunities don't wait.
While you're debating, competitors are shipping.
Customers are making decisions. Partnerships are forming.
By the time you decide, the window is shut.

3. Value erodes
The longer you wait, the less it's worth.
Market conditions shift. Customer needs evolve. 
Your solution becomes less relevant.
The breakthrough feature you're debating was needed months ago. Now it's just obvious.

4. Risk multiplies
Delay doesn't reduce risk. It increases it.
You're now exposed to more market volatility, more competitive moves, more uncertainty.
The "safe" choice of waiting often becomes the riskiest.

5. Culture of paralysis
Your team watches. They see decisions don't get made.
So they stop proposing ideas. They stop taking initiative.
They learn that moving fast gets punished, not rewarded.

Every day you delay a decision, you're not just pushing the timeline back.
You're losing deals, bleeding talent, and teaching your organization to be slow.

Founders delay because they want more certainty.
But certainty doesn't come from waiting.
It comes from having a decision framework that lets you move fast with confidence.

If decisions are stalling in your business, the problem isn't that you need more data.
It's that you don't have a system for making decisions without perfect information.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

Most founders are addicted to crisis mode. 
And it's killing their company.

- You're good at emergencies.
- You feel needed when everything's on fire.
- You swoop in. You solve it. Everyone cheers.

Here's what's happening:
Your calendar is wall-to-wall emergencies.
- Customer escalation. 
- Product bug. 
- Team conflict. 
- Investor fire drill.
You handle it. The crisis ends.

Then next week, same problem. Different customer.
You think you're holding the company together.
You are. That's the problem.

You built the business brick by brick.
You know it better than anyone.
But as it grows, knowing every brick becomes the bottleneck.
You need a map, not a memory.

Without it, you're solving the same fire every week:
- The pricing question that should've been documented.
- The scope call that should've had clear owners.
- The customer exception that should've had a process.
You keep fixing what breaks instead of building what lasts.

If your calendar is a graveyard of emergencies, something's missing:
1. Decision clarity - who decides what without you
2. Ownership boundaries - where your team can act alone
3. Operating rhythm - when decisions get made, not when they explode
4. Management skill - people who can solve without escalating

A company that needs saving every week was never taught to stand.
And the person who keeps saving it is the one preventing it from learning.

Here's what you need to do:
- Stop being the best firefighter.
- Start being the worst one to call.
- Make yourself bad at emergencies by making emergencies impossible.
- Document the decision. Set the boundary. Build the rhythm. Train the manager.

The goal isn't to solve faster.
It's to solve once.
Then make sure it never needs solving again.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

When your mood is running your startup
It costs you more than you think.

When you're stressed and burned out, you're not making the same decisions you'd make when you're rested.
You're making worse ones.
And those decisions hit your profit margins directly.

88% of founders agree that excessive stress results in bad decision-making .
When you're exhausted, your risk tolerance breaks.
You either become reckless or paralyzed.

Reckless founders over-commit. 
- They say yes to deals that don't make sense. 
- They hire too fast. 
- They spend on things the business can't afford yet.
Why? 
Because decision fatigue makes everything feel urgent.

Paralyzed founders freeze. 
- They avoid hard calls. 
- They delay firing underperformers. 
- They sit on decisions that should take a day.
Why? 
Because cognitive overload from juggling multiple roles leads to decision fatigue where even small choices feel overwhelming 

Both patterns destroy profit margins.
Over-commitment burns cash on the wrong things.
Paralysis lets problems compound until they're expensive to fix.

Here's the hidden cost:
- Your best people see your judgment slipping before you do.
- They watch your decisions become erratic.
- They see strategic priorities shift week to week.
- And they start looking for the exit.

When that happens:
- You lose top talent (the people who keep margins healthy)
- You make reactive hires (expensive replacements who take months to onboard)
- You waste time redoing work (because tired decisions were wrong the first time)
- You miss revenue opportunities (because you couldn't think clearly when they appeared)

All of this hits the bottom line.

The brutal truth about stress and profit:
Prolonged stress negatively affects creativity, problem-solving, and focus - performance and decision-making suffer long before you identify problems as burnout

Your margins are shrinking because your judgment is compromised.
Not once in a while. Every single day.
Most founders think they just need to push harder.
But pushing harder when you're already burned out doesn't improve decisions.
It makes them worse.
Faster bad decisions don't help your business.

What actually protects profit margins:
Clear head. Consistent judgment. Strategic thinking.
You can't have any of those when you're running on fumes.

If your decision-making feels off:
It's not a discipline problem.
It's a state problem.
And state drives everything.
Your mood. Your risk tolerance. Your judgment.
Fix the state. Fix the decisions. Fix the margins.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

One constraint that instantly improves your strategic decisions: 
Never make them when you're already mentally exhausted.

Your afternoon brain isn't the same as your morning brain.

Research on over 1,100 decisions revealed something shocking:
- Decision-makers granted favorable outcomes 65% of the time early in the day.
- By late afternoon, that dropped to nearly 0%.
- After a break? Back up to 65%.

Same decision-makers. Same types of decisions. 
The only variable was time of day.

Your pricing calls are no different.
Morning: You closed the partnership deal.
Afternoon: You agreed to custom terms that gutted your margin structure.
Same day. Same founder. Different decision quality.

This is why growth stalls even when you're working long days.
You're making decisions all day.
But the ones that compound get the exhausted version of you.

Ask yourself three questions this week:
1. Which 3-5 decisions actually move ARR, margin, or key people?
2. When do those decisions usually happen on your calendar - fresh or depleted?
3. How many high-stakes calls are you making in your "end of day" slot?

Then follow these 3 step:
1. Block your strategic decisions for your sharpest hours.
Pick one consistent window when your brain works best.
For some founders that's early morning. For others it's mid-morning after coffee.
Whatever time works for you - protect it.
Every decision that affects trajectory gets decided then.
Pricing. Positioning. Key hires. Market direction.

2. After your mental peak? Only execution decisions.
Things that don't compound. Things that can be reversed.
Save your best thinking for decisions that multiply.

3. Protect your peak hours.
No status meetings. No Slack. No inbox.
That's when you solve the problems that scale revenue.

Try this for one week and track what happens.
Better calls. Faster. More clarity.
Because you're using your best thinking when it matters.

Decision quality isn't about working longer.
It's about deciding when you're sharp, not when you're spent.

If you're making strategic decisions during your low-energy hours, you're doing it wrong.
Those decisions deserve your peak brain power.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

A 30-day roadmap delay doesn't just push things back a month.
It kills deals that were ready to close.

Here's what most founders miss:
They see a delayed feature as "we'll ship it next month."
But they don't see what's dying while they wait.

The real cost isn't the delay.
It's the expansion deal that falls through.

Your customer was ready to upgrade. 
- More seats. 
- Higher tier. 
- Bigger contract.
They asked for one feature to make it happen.
You said "it's coming in 30 days."
30 days becomes 60. Then 90.
By the time you ship it? They've moved on.

Here's what actually happens while you're late:
- They build a workaround with another tool.
- They stop talking about your product in internal meetings.
- They lose momentum to expand.
And when renewal comes? They downgrade instead.

This is the cascade most founders don't calculate:
One delayed feature doesn't cost you one month.

It costs you: 
- The expansion they were ready to sign
- The internal champion who stops advocating
- The referrals that never happen
- The trust that doesn't come back
All gone. Because you missed the window.

Here's what founders get wrong:
They think customers will wait because the relationship is good.
But customers have problems to solve today. Not next quarter.
Miss their moment, and they find another way.

The brutal truth about timing:
Customers have a window when they're ready to expand.
Miss that window, and it closes.
You can't reopen it by finally shipping the feature.
The momentum is gone.

When your roadmap slips:
- You're not just delaying revenue.
- You're losing the customer's willingness to wait.
- You're losing their belief that you'll deliver.
- You're losing deals that were already won.
And once that trust breaks, you can't patch it with a feature.

Stop thinking "when will we ship this?"
Start thinking "what are we losing while we don't have it?"
That number is way bigger than you think.

Delay isn't just a timeline issue.
It's a revenue destroyer.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

Stop debating, start deciding 
A 3-question check before every meeting.

Most meetings are just debate disguised as progress.
People talk. Ideas fly. Everyone nods.
Then you walk out with "we'll circle back on this."

Here's what actually needed to happen:
Before the meeting even started, someone should have answered three questions:
1. What decision are we making?
2. By when does it need to be made?
3. Who owns the final call?
If you can't answer these, don't have the meeting.

Here's what kills velocity in startups:
Meetings where everyone talks but nobody decides.
The process of making and remaking decisions wastes an insane amount of time.
WHEN a decision is made is much more important than WHAT decision is made. 
You think you're being collaborative, but you're actually being slow.

The pattern I see:
Founders gather the team. 
Everyone shares their opinion. The discussion goes in circles.
Then the founder says "let's think about this and revisit next week."
Next week comes. Same discussion. Still no decision.
Two weeks of work just disappeared into meeting debt.

What's actually happening:
Leaders are reluctant to make the final call when there are good arguments and emotions on both sides, but people are enormously relieved when you grab the baton and accept responsibility for a decision. 

Your team doesn't need more debate.
They need a decision.

If the meeting ends without a decision, It wasn't a meeting. 
It was a conversation. And conversations don't move companies forward.

Here's what changes when you do this:
Meetings get shorter. 
Teams move faster. 
Nobody leaves wondering "what just happened?"

Very few decisions can't be undone. 
Most decisions aren't worth more than 10 minutes of debate. 
Stop treating every choice like it's permanent.
Most decisions are reversible. Make them faster.

The real cost of indecision:
- Your engineering team is blocked waiting for your call on the architecture decision.
- Your sales team can't close deals because pricing isn't finalized.
- Your best people are frustrated because nothing moves without you.
And more like these...

Before your next meeting:
Write down the decision, deadline, and decision-maker.
Send it in the calendar invite.
If you can't? Don't send the invite.

Debate doesn't build startups.
Decisions do.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

Poor decisions are costing your business 40% of its profits.
And most founders have no idea.

You're losing it because of how decisions are being made.

Here's what the data shows:
Poor decision-making doesn't just hurt profits.
It destroys everything: 
→ 39% loss of customers
→ 45% drop in employee retention
→ 59% increase in costs
→ 44% decline in overall effectiveness

One bad decision pattern compounds into total organizational damage.

What's actually causing poor decisions?
According to the research, three things:
→ Bias (84%)
→ Excessive optimism (62%)
→ Overconfidence (62%)

You're making decisions based on what you want to be true, not what is true.

The pattern most founders miss is that, 
They see the symptoms (cash flow, churn, slow velocity etc.).
But they don't connect it back to the root cause.
How decisions are being made.
Who's making them. How long they take. What framework guides them.

Most founders are deciding the same way they did at $1M.
But the complexity at $5M or $10M demands a completely different approach.

The fix isn't working harder.
It's building decision architecture.
A system that removes bias.
A framework that defines who decides what.
A process that makes good decisions repeatable.

If 40% of your profit is disappearing because of how decisions are made, fixing that is the highest ROI move you can make.
Not another marketing campaign.
Not another sales hire.
Fix how decisions happen.

If your business feels stuck, look at how decisions are being made.
That's where growth is hiding.

- Follow me Anil Karakkattuu to cut decision load by half, drive efficiency and grow profitably without burning out.

Most founders think decision overload is a time management problem. 
It's not. It's a decision architecture problem.


Decision architecture = designing who decides what, when, and how in your company.

You don't need to decide faster.
You need to decide which decisions are yours to make.

Here's what I see with every growth-stage founder:
Three types of decisions fill their calendar:
1.Decisions only the founder can make: 
Pricing strategy. Market positioning. Key hires etc.

2. Decisions the team should make: 
Feature priority. Expense approvals etc.

3. Decisions that shouldn't exist: 
Anything you're deciding twice.

Most founders spend 80% of their energy in bucket two and three.
Then wonder why bucket one never gets done.
This is decision leakage.

Your capacity drains into choices your team could make.
By the time a decision that compounds shows up, you've got nothing left.

Weeks ago, your sales lead asked for enterprise pricing.
You said "let me think about it."
You're still thinking.
Meanwhile, you approved refunds, picked features, debated hiring.

Your competitor published pricing last week.
They're closing deals while you're stuck in decision debt.

Decision debt works like technical debt:
The longer you avoid the hard decision, the more small ones pile up.
You can't price enterprise, so you approve one-off discounts.
You can't define decision rights, so everything routes to you.

Here's what fixes this:
1. Stop touching reversible decisions.
Refund under a threshold? Support owns it.
Feature that doesn't change infrastructure? Product owns it.
Hire below director? Manager owns it.
If it can be undone, it doesn't need you.

2. Build frameworks for recurring decisions.
Don't approve expenses on repeat.
Set the spending framework once.
Budget per team. Approval thresholds. Exceptions that escalate.
You're out of that loop.

3. Protect capacity for irreversible decisions.
Pricing that affects every deal.
Positioning that shifts perception.
Leadership hires that change capability.
These compound. These need your sharpest thinking.

Don't make this mistake,
Treating the refund approval and pricing strategy the same.
Both get 10 minutes and a tired brain.
That's backwards.
The refund shouldn't touch your calendar.
The pricing should get your best energy.

Decision architecture creates that separation.
Not by working harder. By designing who decides what.

If your calendar is full but revenue is flat, you have decision leakage.
Map your decisions this week.
- Which are only yours? 
- Which need a framework? 
- Which shouldn't exist?
Then protect your decision energy.

The decision you're avoiding is the one that changes everything.

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