Founder of StrategyBreakdowns.com

TLDR: Worked in strategy consulting → Joined strategy team at Atlassian → Started writing strategy case studies → People liked them, so I left my job and went full-timeCheck it out → StrategyBreakdowns.comWe partner with companies like Atlassian, Notion, Intercom, Hubspot, Miro, Vanta, Clay, Mixpanel, and Ahrefs to reach 110k+ tech decision-makers. Click here to explore sponsorships → passionfroot.me/strategybreakdowns

Tom Alder

Apple makes $1 billion+ per year selling adaptors:

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👉 P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you'll love my newsletter - a 3-minute breakdown of the strategy playbooks and growth hacks behind the world’s greatest companies.

Join 110,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Meta, Atlassian, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR

The average enterprise employee spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings.

That's almost a full work week. 
Every single month. 
Gone.

And yet - meetings aren't the problem. BAD meetings are the problem.

The best hybrid teams i've seen don't have fewer meetings. 
→ They have better workflows that make every interaction count.

I genuinely think something's shifted in how teams think about productivity.

It used to be about individual output - more hours, more tasks, more hustle.

Now it's about connection quality and output. How seamlessly can 50 people across 12 timezones actually collaborate without losing their minds?

The companies figuring this out are pulling ahead. The ones still optimising for "busy" are falling behind.

--

Zoom is running a free summit on exactly this: how to make collaboration seamless across teams, locations, and timezones.

Feb 24 (EMEA) / Feb 25 (APAC)

If you're leading digital transformation, IT, or workplace strategy at a large org - worth grabbing a spot.

Register here: → https://zm.me/49SCY8r

#ad in partnership with the legends Zoom

Jamming with Rob Hoffman, Lara Acosta, and Tyler Denk 🐝 about our plans for 2026:

A few topics we discussed -

1. The reality of building while traveling the world.
2. Why vlogging is coming back for founders.
3. The timeless psychology of waitlists.
4. The bootstrapped AI SaaS paradigm.
5. Solopreneurship vs small vs big teams.

Honestly so refreshing to get new perspectives on things I’m actively wrestling with.
Also funny to see how the same decisions / problems / strategies resurface in peculiar ways, in such different contexts.

Would highly recommend following what these folks are up to if you haven’t already!

Rob and Lara are building Kleo.
Tyler is building beehiiv.

Incredible businesses powering many of the world's top creators and founders.

Feeling inspired. Let's build.

Every company spent the last 20 years building customer support processes that make people want to hang up.

Press 1 for billing. 
Press 2 for support. 
Press 3 to scream into the void.

Then came the "AI upgrade" - which mostly just replaced the robotic menu with a robotic voice.

Same frustration, different wrapper.

Here's what's actually changing now:
ElevenLabs just shipped Expressive Mode in their Agents platform.

The demo is WILD (video below). 

The agents don't just listen to what you say. 
They detect HOW you say it.

Tone.
Pitch. 
Pacing. 
Humour.
Feelings.

And they respond with the right delivery - using cue cards like [reassuring], [apologetic], and [enthusiastic] to match the moment.

Frustrated caller? The agent shifts to calm de-escalation.
Excited prospect? It matches the energy.
Confused customer? It slows down.

Previously, agent emotion was shaped entirely through voice selection and system prompts. Static. One-size-fits-all.
Now it's dynamic and contextual. Across 70+ languages (up from 32).
The turn-taking is different too. Their new transcription model captures intent and emotional cues so the agent times responses more like a human would.
The result: customers feel helped, not processed.
That's the gap most people miss about voice AI. The technology was never the bottleneck.

The emotional intelligence was.

Link to try below 👇

#ad #ElevenAgentsPartner

Every AI tool you've used in the last 2 years has the same interface:

A text box with a blinking cursor.

Quarterzip threw it away entirely.

Instead of building another chat wrapper, they built an AI that watches your screen share and guides you visually - like having a colleague sit next to you and point at things.

No SDK installation. 
No browser extension. 
No IT approval ticket.

Just a picture-in-picture window that sees everything you see. Any tool, any tab, any workflow.

Picture this:
- You’re onboarding to a new tool
- You brace yourself for a barrage of forgettable tooltips and painful ‘educational’ flows
- Instead, you click ‘Start Onboarding’ and you’re prompted to share your screen
- You share, and you’re placed directly in the app, with a helpful AI assistant in the corner that sees everything you see
- It’s trained on the help docs, all past onboarding calls, and can guide you through the journey whilst answering any question you might have along the way

They launched a week ago. Already running hundreds of AI-powered onboarding sessions a day with Apollo and Grab.

And the growth loop is elegant - every person who gets onboarded through Quarterzip sees the brand sitting inside the PIP window.

Product usage drives distribution.

I broke down the full strategy in this week's newsletter (link in the comments)

On July 7th, 2025, I added another SaaS idea to the pile:
A Chrome extension. SimilarWeb for builders. Traffic, revenue signals, founder socials, ads - all in a sidebar you can trigger when you visit any company's website.

A 9-bullet sketch of something I'd personally use a dozen times a day, if it existed.

Nothing came of it. Got buried under many more (half-baked) ideas.

Fast-forward 6 months.
The Figma team reached out about a partnership.
They wanted me to try their new prompt-to-app AI tool, Figma Make.

I mulled over the angle for a while, then realised I had the perfect test case.
Could I take a 6-month-old idea that had never left the notes app and turn it into a fully interactive, clickable product prototype? Without writing a single line of code? Without opening a design tool?

The pipeline I came up with:
→ 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (raw idea, 9 bullet points) 
→ 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 + 𝗪𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗿 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄 (interview to flesh it into a full PRD) 
→ 𝗙𝗶𝗴𝗺𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 (PRD in, interactive prototype out)

One sitting later, I had my answer.
Here’s how it went down (link in the comments 👇)

The worst part of vibe coding isn't building the first version.

It's the edits.

You've got a working prototype. Something looks slightly off. The text is a touch too big. A card needs to move a little further right. The spacing between two elements is wrong.

So you prompt it.
"Make the heading slightly smaller."

It makes it smaller. 
Too small. 
You prompt again.

"Actually a bit bigger than that."

Back and forth. 4 prompts. Eating up credits each time. Two minutes of waiting. For a font size.

This is the part vibe coding we don't talk about.

Like everyone I’ve been trying all the vibe coding tools, and I noticed Bubble solves this in the obvious (yet uncommon) way:

You drag the element. 
You resize it with a handle. 
You click ‘font size’ and type a number. 

Done in 3 seconds.

The AI Agent handles the complex stuff - database structures, workflows, logic. The visual editor handles everything you'd describe to an AI with the words "slightly", "a bit", "just a little" - because those words should never need to go into a prompt.

A product design detail that just make sense when you try it.

Most newsletter sponsors get a terrible ROI.

All because they're advertising to the wrong readers.

Here's the thing about audience quality that most marketers miss:

1/ You need readers who make decisions.

This is the #1 mistake I see. Advertising to e.g. 1 million people containing 1k decision-makers, rather than 100k people containing 50k decision-makers.

71% of Strategy Breakdowns readers have meaningful influence over budget and procurement decisions at their company.

You need to get in front of the actual people who sign off on the tools, platforms, and services their teams use.

2/ Open rate is a proxy for trust.

Industry average open-rate is under 40%. Strategy Breakdowns sits at 55%, while earning the trust of 110,000 readers every week. Our sponsors inherit that trust.

3/ Niche is more efficient than broad.

A 110,000-person list of senior strategy and tech leaders doesn’t just contain *more* decision-makers than 500,000-person general business list - it is also costs less to advertise in. The signal-to-noise ratio is what makes our campaigns so efficient for sponsors looking to allocate their marketing budgets strategically.

4/ The seniority and industry breakdown matters.

- 30% Founder / C-level
- 20% VP / Director
- 40% Senior / Manager

Tech, consulting, and finance make up ~80% of our audience. I mean, these are literally the buyers.

5/ One ad isn't a campaign.

The sponsors who see the best results run 4 touchpoints minimum. Decision-makers don't act on first exposure, especially at this seniority level. (Honestly, when was the last time you saw a $100/mo tool for the first time and immediately pulled out a corporate card?) Plus, you need to test, learn, and iterate based on the data from each ad run.

6/ We treat it like a partnership (but actually).

Ad copy collaboration, custom AI tools we’ve built for partners, full 7-day and 14-day performance reports with 100% of the data we have available, ongoing input to optimise the campaign. Nearly every sponsor I work with (Atlassian, Vanta, Clay, Attio, Ahrefs, etc) comes back multiple times. 

Probably the thing I’m most proud of.

We have just 2 slots left before prices go up for Q2.

If your product is built for founders, PMs, engineers, or operators in tech - link to our full media kit in the comments 👇

How many DMs do you send per week on LinkedIn?

Luke Tobin

Founder of Unusualgroup.com | Follow for posts on Business, Marketing, Investing & AI

Commercial and speaking: sponsorship@luketobin.com

3 exits, different industries, each one bigger than the last. Turned a £100 investment, into an eight-figure agency exit in 5 years. 

I help founders turn self-doubt into leverage, and leverage into exits.

My last business started with £100 and a lot of imposter syndrome. No funding. No safety net. Just a laptop, a tiny runway and lots of grit. Five years later, we sold for eight figures. It was one of the fastest growth-to-exit stories in the UK at that level.

That was exit number three. Before that, I built and sold a hospitality business and an e-commerce brand. Different industries, same scale-to-exit playbook. Build lean. Price for profit. Systemise delivery. Think like a buyer long before you ever meet one.

Now I back other founders and work on fixing what is broken in the agency world.

Current work:

Unusual Group (Founder)
We take minority stakes in agencies and plug them into the capital, infrastructure and operator support they need to grow margins and become exit-ready.

Tobin Capital (Owner) 
I invest in more than 25 brands, including SpaceX, Atom Bank, and Honest Mobile. When I invest, you do not just get capital. You get an operator in your corner on pricing, operations, hiring and exits.

A-Frame Venture Studio (Partner)
We build consumer brands from scratch. Our first brand, Mirth Water, is now live in the United States at drinkmirth.com.

The Success Method Newsletter
Every week, more than 100,000 founders get my breakdown of how to turn self-doubt into an advantage in their business. I share how I structure deals and exits, the pricing moves and margin levers that work in practice.

Book (Q2 2026)
My first book, on how founders can turn doubt into an asset rather than a drag on growth, is coming in Q2 2026 from a major publisher.

In total, I have started seven businesses. Two failed. Three exited. Two, I am still building. The failures taught me more than the exits. Self-doubt never went away. I learned how to use it as a filter to make better decisions in hiring, pricing, partners, and exits. That is what I teach and invest around now.

Today, I share what actually works with more than 800,000 founders across my channels. The playbooks, the red flags, the live deals and the parts of the mental game most people never talk about.

If you are an agency owner or founder who wants to raise, exit or fix your margins in the next 12 to 36 months, send me a DM.

Newsletter (100K plus subscribers): www.luketobin.com/newsletter

DM me about: investments, agency exits, speaking

Investor

The next‑generation personalization AI for e‑commerce.

Success that burns through your mental bandwidth isn’t success.

It’s mismanagement disguised as commitment.

Early in my career, I thought being available meant being valuable.
Every ping got a reply.
Every meeting got a “yes.”
Every spare minute became a catch-up slot.

On paper, it looked like momentum.
In reality, it was erosion.

High performance isn’t about being always on.
It’s about knowing when to switch off so your decisions stay sharp.

These are the boundaries that keep my focus intact:

1. Control inputs.
No phone before strategy, no Slack before thinking.

2. Batch reactions.
Email and messages twice a day, everything else waits.

3. Protect transitions.
Five minutes between calls to reset the brain.

4. Create unreachable hours.
Evenings or weekends when nobody gets access.

5. Guard energy like capital.
Spend it where it compounds, not where it’s wasted.

This isn’t self-care.
It’s self-leadership.

Because success that costs your sanity will eventually cost your results.

Which boundary protects your focus the most?

♻️ Repost to help more leaders build sustainable success.
🔔 Follow Luke Tobin for more personal growth insights.

cc Dr. Carolyn Frost (shout out for the image and powerful message)

We are often told to "play it safe".

But, safety doesn't help you grow.

Here's what does:
1. Taking chances on the dreams that scare you.
2. Betting on yourself when no one else will.
3. Choosing courage over comfort, every single time.
4. Believing in the vision only you can see.
5. Acting on what feels like destiny, even if you're unsure.

The truth is:
Every bold move looks unrealistic until someone makes it real.

Why? 
Because the world has always been shaped by people who were willing to look a little “crazy” in pursuit of something bigger.

The innovators. 
The builders. 
The dreamers.

Fear will tell you to wait.
Doubt will tell you you’re not ready.
But growth only happens when you decide to move anyway.

Reminders when chasing your dreams:
If it feels impossible → it’s probably worth the risk.
If people doubt you → you’re likely onto something powerful.
If it feels like destiny → that’s your sign to leap.

At the end of the day, I've learnt that regret weighs heavier than failure.

And the world needs more people who are brave enough,
to follow the dream that feels like destiny.

♻️Repost to help inspire someone in your network.
🔔Follow Luke Tobin for more personal growth tips.

cc Codie A. Sanchez (shout out for the image and powerful reminder!)

Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a month

and underestimate what they can build in a year.

Progress rarely looks exciting while it’s happening.

It’s not dramatic.
It’s repetition, refined.

The truth is, nothing meaningful scales overnight.
It compounds quietly, in systems, skills, and relationships.

In business and in life, I’ve learned:
Momentum isn’t a spark.
It’s friction mastered.

The days that feel slow, repetitive, or unnoticed are usually the ones where foundations are forming.

When growth stalls, I don’t double the effort, I double the focus.

I look for the one action that will compound over time,
not the ten that just make me feel busy.

Because high performance isn’t about speed.

It’s about stamina.
Anyone can start fast.

Few stay consistent long enough for the results to catch up.

💭 What’s one thing you’re quietly building that will pay off next year?

♻️ Repost to remind someone that slow isn’t failure, it’s formation.
🔔 Follow Luke Tobin for more insights on focus and sustainable growth.

cc Justin Wright (shout out for the image and essential reminder!)

The action you're most scared to take is usually the right one.

Deep down, you know what you need to do.

You've been thinking about it for weeks. 

Trying to convince yourself that you need more time, maybe more information, or just a better moment to make that particular move.

But that moment isn't coming.

Some of the best things I've done in business felt completely wrong at the time. 

And there was always a reason; it was too early or felt too risky.  

That feeling of unease is just part of it.

So whatever you've been putting off, make the move.

♻️ Repost if you needed to hear this today. 
🔔 Follow Luke Tobin for more.

cc Justin Welsh (Shout out for the powerful reminder!)

Most founders start the sale process in the wrong place.

Before you think about valuation, you need to answer three questions. 

1. Can someone quickly understand your business? 
2. Are your clients likely to stick around?
3. And if you stepped back, would it still run without you?

If any of those questions make you feel uncomfortable, it's worth paying more attention to that area.

Succeed helps founders get ready, find the right buyer, and manage the whole process, without getting messed around.

Take our free exit assessment:
https://lnkd.in/ey8-zd9G

♻️Repost and save to help other founders in your network.
🔔Follow Luke Tobin for more on agency growth and exit planning.

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Luke Tobin

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The Battle

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Luke Tobin

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tom Alder's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreTom Alder's LinkedIn Performance