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-time

Tom Alder

8 things I've learned while living in Valencia for the past month:

1/ The "slow" culture made me realise how much day-to-day urgency you experience everywhere else.

2/ Europe is the best timezone - 4 hours of deep work before US Eastern gets online.

3/ The city is easy-going and beautiful, but not efficient. Restaurants with lines out the door and empty tables, busses show up 15 mins late (or not at all), 'the system is down' is almost a daily occurence.

4/ I love a siesta but find it nearly impossible to refocus afterwards. Better for marking the transition from work → life.

5/ Meeting people as a digital nomad requires more intentionality than I thought. 

6/ Everywhere you look, you see someone's creative touch. Tiles, balconies, door handles. Everything is decorative, even if in a small way. 

7/ I didn't see a single person on a laptop in a cafe. 

8/ Paella is more than just a regional dish. Everyone is quick to recommend their favourite spot, share tips and rules for ordering it correctly, and tell their Paella-based memories. People worship it here (rightly so!)

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The team at beehiiv just showed me what they're launching next week.

I've analysed hundreds of product releases.

This one I'm gonna join live.

Most companies make tweaks and add tiny features.

beehiiv have been quietly building something that got me absolutely hyped.

Tyler Denk 🐝 and team have cracked something fundamental about how creators grow and monetise.

I can't share specifics (NDA), but here's what I can say:
If you're building a creator/media business in 2025, you should join us at the launch event!

Register here → https://lnkd.in/gh3tKmCZ

People always ask "How did you decide when to quit your job and go all-in?"

3 months after launching Strategy Breakdowns I told my boss I was leaving.

This was my napkin math:

The business was making just under $3k/mo.
~$2.2k from newsletter sponsorship, rest from affiliate revenue.

→ I was publishing 1 newsletter every 2 weeks
→ If I ran them weekly, that'd 2x sponsorship + 1.5x affiliate revenue

→ I had 1 sponsor per newsletter
→ If I had 2, that'd 2x sponsorship revenue again

→ I had 20k subscribers
→ If I grew to 50k, that'd 2x sponsorship + 1.5x affiliate revenue again

Q: If I quit my job, would the extra 40hrs per week be enough to publish 1 extra newsletter every 2wks, sell 4x as many ads, and speed-run an extra 30k subs by reinvesting all revenue into subscriber growth?

Once I laid out all the inputs, it became an easy 'yes'.

I could probably hit $10k/mo within a month or 2, even factoring some contingency if I couldn't sell 100% of my ad inventory.

Then if I kept growing the newsletter, and added new ways to monetise, I figured it wouldn't be too much drama to get to $20k/mo.

Quitting a high-paying tech job for a $3k/mo newsletter = crazy, risky, scary
Quitting a high-paying tech job for a (soon-to-be) $20k/mo newsletter = makes sense

Same business. 
Different frame.

Don't be afraid to math it out.
Goes a long way in building up conviction.

—

👉 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 100,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Meta, Atlassian, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR

Valve makes $50 million per employee.

Microsoft? $18 million.
Apple? $2.4 million.
Meta? $1.9 million.

How does a 350-person gaming company eclipse every tech giant on the planet?

→ They built a 30% tax on PC gaming.

Every game sold on Steam. Every microtransaction. Every indie hit and AAA blockbuster. If it's sold on their platform, Valve takes 30%.

They do develop games themselves, but vast majority of their revenue comes from infrastructure, maintenance, and collecting.

What makes it even more remarkable:

Zero traditional management mechanisms.

Valve operates with a completely flat hierarchy. No managers assigning work. No executives approving projects.

Instead they pioneered several radical workplace practices like choose-your-own team, and peer-reviewed bonuses.

Your colleagues (not your boss) determine your compensation based on your contributions. The entire company votes on your impact.

The result:
336 employees shared $444 million in total compensation in 2021. That's an average of $1.3 million per person.

And the company is on track for $17 billion in revenue in 2025.

They proved something most large corporations forget:
You don't need more people. You need the right structure (business model + organisational model).

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📖 If you liked this post, you’ll definitely enjoy my newsletter article Why Valve has no managers!

Take a look here: https://lnkd.in/gyDPxJQ5

Imagine you are a marketing manager working for Coca Cola in 1971.

To make your most important decisions, you might have access to things like:
• Sales info
• Customer surveys
• Financial metrics

IF you spend a few days (possibly weeks) digging around the company for them. Remember, no computers back then.

Now, imagine you had instant access to:

→ The 5x highest performing newspaper/billboard/bus-stop ads out of the 10,000’s of ads Pepsi Co are running globally.

→ Real-time dashboards showing the number of daily, weekly, and monthly walk-ins for a McDonalds store that you’re doing a deal with.

→ A system that tracks every soft drink consumer in the world, showing you exactly what magazine they are most likely to get their beverage news from, and accurate trend data showing you a spike in conversations about “sugar-free”.

All entirely for free, fully self-serve, without ever needing to contact any Pepsi staff, McDonalds partners, or magazine analysts.

That is the world we live in.

But most people don't fully appreciate this. 

Every internet user and interaction leaves digital footprints. These footprints (if you know where to find them) reveal insights that make traditional ‘strategy theory’ feel like guesswork.

Not leveraging an 'information advantage' for your most important decisions, projects, products etc today is like voluntarily boxing yourself into a cubicle at Coca Cola HQ in 1971.

My vote: let’s use the tools available to us!

That's why I created 'Websites & Traffic' - a training that transforms you into a modern data-driven strategist.

If you want to skyrocket your persuasiveness, impact, and progression (but you’re looking for a modern-day approach that doesn’t involve slugging through more abstract ‘strategy theory’), this is for you! 

→ https://lnkd.in/gcWA7dyd

Why change fails. Brilliant. 

Source: Lippitt-Knoster Model - The 5 Components of Organisational Change.

Amazon website from every year since 1997, in chronological order.

—

👉 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 100,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Meta, Atlassian, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR

The Amazon website every year since 1998

AI NEWS: Fyxer AI ($1→25m ARR in 12mo) just dropped the biggest upgrade to their core product since launch.

Here's everything you need to know:

Fyxer's core product "Drafts" lives inside Gmail/Outlook, and it auto-drafts email replies in your voice for you to review, edit (if needed), and send.

They just released "Drafts 2.0" with a wall-to-wall revamp of product improvements:
→ better context searching (remembers past conversations to reply how you would)
→ dynamic tone detection (adapts to who you're emailing - client, manager, colleague etc)
→ smarter call scheduling (handles time zones automatically and finds times that suit everyone)

The result: users are now sending *twice* as many email drafts without edits.

Check out the draft it wrote below.

For anyone spending an hour+ on email: this is one of the apps that actually saves me tangible time + focus on a daily basis. 


For the product-led-growth nerds - onboarding is slick too. Starts working in 30 seconds with Gmail or Outlook signup. Automatically learns your voice. Zero setup or learning curve.

I love startups like this - simple idea with perfect execution.


Oh and I convinced the Fyxer team to give my readers a special signup offer https://lnkd.in/gsuYEPQP (Partner link)

This is how you print $$$ by running ads in newsletters:

(And no, it's not generic copy + CTA to 'sign up now')

I've run 100s of ads in my 100k reader newsletter.

Worked with the best growth marketers in the world at companies like Atlassian, Clay, Vanta etc and I think I might have the highest renewal rate in the industry.

Here is the no-fluff playbook for getting results from newsletter ads:

1/ Less is more.
Longer ad copy (and longer sentences) ALWAYS perform worse. This may seem counterintuitive, I know it's tempting to write paragraphs about your product, but the quicker readers can internalise your message the more likely they'll read it in full. Aim for ~3 sentences / bullets total.

2/ Scannable format
Our best performing ads have the following characteristics:
- Start with a catchy, intriguing, spicy headline in *bold*
- Short punchy lines/lists with line breaks for breathing room
- Button with unique CTA ("Show me my security score", "I want the free playbook")

3/ Specific objectives.
Don't assume the newsletter knows what you want. People default to impressions/clicks, but every time I dig deeper there's a more important goal: "I want our founding story going viral", "I want a pretty report with data and community screenshots to share with my boss (my promotion is coming up)", "I want to run an isolated test to see if a waitlist/free trial/free plan works for us". 

4/ Don't just run 1 ad. 
I'm not saying this because more ads = more spend. There are 3 reasons you NEED to test with multiple ads: a) it takes multiple touchpoints for decision-makers to take action (when was the last time you saw a brand for the first time and 30s later you're on a $99/mo plan?), b) you test multiple angles to learn what resonates, c) most newsletters do bundle discounts so its cheaper per ad/open/click. 1 ad = throwing money away.

5/ Keep a swipe-file.
Seems obvious but not enough people do this. Collate your highest-performing social posts. Your competitors' best FB ads. Your best-converting landing page. Leverage these for your ad copy - don't ever start from scratch.

6/ You want partnership, not just sponsorship.
If your 'partner' isn't actively helping you tighten your copy, learn from the data, leverage their high-performing assets, investing their own money + time + resources into ensuring you win, you need to run.

7/ Backend funnels are magic.
This might be the most important alpha of all. The sponsors that are ripping right now do some variation of: run ads to a lead magnet/webinar → capture email → survey to segment (optional) → email nurture with education + social proof + objection-handling → sales handoff to book a demo/whiteglove/welcome offer. 1 person can build this in 1 day with AI, and it gets >10x better results per ad.

I have just 3 ad slots in my newsletter left this year, then I'm increasing prices for '26. 

If you're targeting strategy nerds (founders, PMs, devs), DM me!

5 unconventional tactics I learned at Atlassian (your company should copy these):

1. Everyone reads customer feedback (literally everyone)

Every week, every employee gets an automated email with 3 randomly selected verbatim quotes from customers. Bug reports, success stories, feature requests.

Over time you start spotting patterns. You develop intuition for customer sentiment. When you're proposing something, you can back it up with qualitative data you rememeber reading.

2. No PowerPoint allowed, only memos

Good writing is good thinking. You can disguise terrible ideas with pretty slides.

Every idea, every meeting, every project, every roadmap lives as a Confluence page. Writing out your ideas forces you to get specific about what you actually want to say (and why it matters). 

3. Every team has visible KPIs

Based on your team and role, you always knew exactly what metric mattered most. OKRs aren't perfect, but they create MASSIVE clarity of direction.

You also always knew what your KPI was driving at the division or company level (ie. what it "rolled up" to). Month commentary from owners explaining movements makes it easy to tell what matters to teams across the whole company. 

4. Open by default

Jira boards and Confluence pages have full organisational sharing permissions toggled on by default. This is a small but hugely significant product design choice.

Unless you actively close it off, everyone in the company can find, read, and comment on your work. Google Docs and Word don't do this – which means every new doc feels "yours" instead of "ours." 

5. Roll out to employees first

When I worked there, Atlassian had over 10,000 employees. That's a pretty sizable testing ground, and every mature product team would roll out changes to Atlassians first (who were using these tools every day).

This lets you catch bugs and bulletproofs ideas before paying customers see them, and creates a friendly space for candid feedback.

The pattern: make transparency and feedback the default (not the exception) for every product, decision, and idea.

Happy building.

—

👉 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 100,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Meta, Atlassian, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR

Helping small businesses gain traction through brand, model and operations optimization. 

The Bill Kerr

How to build culture by a founder (me) whose company has 90% engagement—80% is considered excellent.  

I will start from the beginning. 

1/ When starting a company, set the foundation. 

Whether you are a solo founder or a team, you should figure out what you stand for and do it on day one. Here is how to do it:

- Google '200 brand values Liza Furze.' This is the most comprehensive list of values on the internet. 
- Spend 10 minutes with music on, working individually to choose every value that you align with. Go fast, trust your gut. You should have 20-30 values.
- Take 20 minutes and compare notes. 
- Put 10 more minutes on the clock and then score each value from 1-10, 10 being the highest. Again, move quickly so it comes from the gut.
- Add your scores, and cull until you find 3-4 (maximum 5) values that you agree on. Easy because the scoring should take care of it. 

2/ Humanize your values.

Empathy, communication, speed, etc. Humans don't connect with words; they connect with stories. So give them mini-stories. 

For us, an example is the value of integrity. So our full value is: 

'Driven by integrity. Build strong relationships with everyone you meet through honesty, integrity, and trust.' 

More life, more meaning. 

3/ Hire people who will live by these words. And hold yourself to account. 

Your first hires—and how you present yourself—will set in motion a chain of events that will form your early culture. 

If you are a dickhead, or you hire dickheads, your culture will erode before it's really even built. 

As long as this all goes well, proceed with the next step...

4/ Reset your values as a team ~2 years or 30 people in.

The same exact process as before, but in a group setting. 

Make it an event. Get a guest speaker, give the team some homework on their favorite value-driven brands. Should last around four hours total, maybe less. 

Throughout the event, make sure to have ample space to let people share why they chose what they chose. It's powerful.

Your values are not what the founders think; they are the sum total of the organization. This exercise, done right, will make people feel like they are now at *their* company. Which they are.

5/ Join every final culture call for as long as you can. 

Pitch for the first 25% of the final interview with candidates. If their eyes don't light up, or if you feel any vibes that don't align with what you stand for, do not hire. 

6/ Start every onboarding week with a 'Brand history' session. 

Tell people the entire history of the company, warts and all. Ups and downs, fun facts. Let them know there is a reason this all exists. 

And then let them know the next pages will be written by them. 

Do this and you have the foundation for a great culture. 

And remember ... culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Bill Kerr

🌎 Helping companies hire global talent at Athyna 📚 201,240 founders, investors, and leaders read my newsletter Open Source CEO

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The reason the left has been losing ground culturally is a natural pushback on the 'boy-that-cried-wolfism.'

Sydney Sweeney does a jeans ad saying she has good jeans.

And all of a sudden, she's a MAGA, white supremacist. 

Perhaps the ad was referring to the fact that she is, actually, just a beautiful woman. 

If you call someone a racist, sexist, misogynist, transphobe, every chance you get, your words lose meaning. 

There are real battles to fight right now.

We need to do better.

My friend Tyler Denk 🐝 and the team at beehiiv showed me what they are cooking for this season's winter release...

It gave me real OpenAI 'oh shit they just killed company x' vibes.

If you are building media as a creator, or leading a comms strategy through your startup, you don't want to miss this.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gh3tKmCZ

When you close that three cloud engineers for your client in less than two weeks.

The bull case for burning shit tonnes of money for a very long time.

🌎 Helping companies hire global talent at Athyna 📚 201,240 founders, investors, and leaders read my newsletter Open Source CE

Most brands are boring as hell. Some do well, others are strong ... and then there is PostHog.

Brand works very similarly to NPS. 

If your brand is a 1-6, your brand is a negative indicator. 7-8 it is neutral. And if it's a 9-10, people will talk about you. 

PostHog does this better than anyone in tech. 

From their designs (like this movie poster), to their hedgehogs (shoutout Lottie Coxon), to founder memes from 🦔 james hawkins. 

The company is walking pattern interrupt of the best kind. 

We should all be like PostHog.

POV: When another Fortune 500 comes to you hire their cloud engineers.

OpenAI is coming for your chats. Group messages in ChatGPT are now piloting in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan.

For all my 90s bretheren. This ones for you.

If you sit somewhere in the cultural and political middle, there are only two podcasts you need to listen to in order to be fairly well-informed. 

Centre left Ezra Klein, and moderate right Ross Douthat.

Ezra's recent topics include: 

Fuentes and the Groypers.
Trump's rural power base.
AI apocalypse. 
The new paramilitary force. 
MAHA's strange influence.

Ross, on the other hand: 

Machines are harming us. 
Liberal feminism.
What Palantir sees. 
Theocracy in the U.S. 
Hasan Piker.
Trump v academia.
Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and more.

As a liberal, I align more with Ezra's views, but man, does Ross find some fascinating guests. 

The New York Times is literally crushing it with these two.

This week I tried Cor's new Obi 2.0, the most human-like AI onboarding agent on the market, and it was wild. 

It's as if you have a friendly human walking you though every step.

Indistinguishable. It's wild.

With Obi 2.0, we are introducing AI video calls to help you:

1/ Deploy Obi anywhere with just a link
2/ Engage users across key touchpoints throughout their lifecycle
3/ Fully replicate human-led training calls at any scale
4/ Get detailed visual feedback from meeting recordings

Software companies spend about 20 percent of revenue ($300 to $400 billion dollars) on R&D, but roughly 80 percent of software features are rarely or never used. 

This changes today. 

Check out Cor for yourself at the link below. 

www.getcor.ai

Larger and larger companies are coming to us to help build out their Brazil strategy at the moment.

Ray Kurzweil created this slide in the year 2000. 

How do you think we are tracking?

Ahead, on track, behind?

Founders! Let's do a quick market check. How are things going for you so far this year?

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The Bill Kerr

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