🐶 Jacco van der Kooij

Do you know a large Midwest family? Well, if you do, then you know me.  I am the youngest of eight, raised in a small farmers'​ village in the Netherlands. If I picked an apple from the wrong tree on my way home from school, my parents would know about it before I got off my bike.

The family name is like a bank account, and my family has put their savings in it for over 50 years.  We are not rich, but the van der Kooij's are known for our hard work, and willingness to help others. So we never needed a lot of money. For my family, our reputation is the most valued asset and trust is the currency we trade in.  Every day.

Fast forward to today, a time where the subscription (SaaS) business model is impacting organizations big and small.   Why?  Because in the subscription business you MUST make a client successful!  You have to earn an honest word-of-mouth reference by exceeding a client's expectation. You have to work hard and build a reputation. I recognize this as these are the norms and values I was raised on, and I know exactly what to do.

Welcome to my village. Pop. 12,000. Established 2005.

Founder

Winning By Design helps customer to design, build and scale their sales efforts.  With offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Antwerp, Shanghai and Sydney we help clients big and small with a process driven approach to sales.  The right process executed by trained professional will help you earn more business from the right customers.

Jacco van der Kooij

OPEN LETTER TO LINKEDIN
The growing need for structure and attribution in the knowledge economy

LinkedIn you are the world’s largest professional knowledge network. You've democratized access, but in doing so, have flattened content, blurred provenance, and eroded trust.

Your algorithm appears optimized for engagement, which inadvertently subsidizes noise and punishes original content. You now operate a system that rewards what spreads rather than what stands up to scrutiny. Popularity passes for truth, and noise drowns out knowledge. The loudest ideas rise the fastest — even when they add the least.

Today, a researcher’s 18-month field study sits beside a pundit’s morning take, a recycled quote, and a viral meme, all formatted the same and indistinguishable as users scroll through their feeds. It feels like click-harvesting, and runs counter to your mission to make professionals more productive and successful.

Traditional media solved this long ago:
+ Harvard Business Review separates research from commentary.
+ The Economist distinguishes data from opinion.
+ Fast Company labels features and essays differently.

They did this for one reason, to help readers understand: What am I consuming, and why should I trust it?

On LinkedIn, there’s no way to tell who uncovered an idea, who interpreted it, or who simply repackaged it. Operating the world’s largest knowledge exchange without structure or attribution overlooks the responsibility that comes with shaping how the world learns and works.

How LinkedIn Can Steward a Layered Knowledge Economy?

1. Structure:  Not all creators serve the same function. 

LinkedIn can establish a taxonomy that helps audiences distinguish between research, reaction, analysis, and amplification. This would restore hierarchy and context to the feed — making expertise visible.

To illustrate what a structure could look like, I’ve drafted an outline of five functional archetypes of the Knowledge Economy— Originators, Pundits, Aggregators, Amplifiers, and Synthesizers — complete with examples from the SaaS and AI industry.

2. Attribution: Establish content-protection and attribution standards.

LinkedIn can establish standards that ensure original insights, data, and frameworks are instantly recognized, cited, and credited — not quietly copied or recycled for click harvesting. In a knowledge economy, provenance is protection.

YouTube was forced to do this by the music industry—introducing attribution systems that ultimately benefited podcasters and creators worldwide. LinkedIn now faces a similar crossroads. In a knowledge economy, provenance is protection.

Today, AI is uniquely suited to solve both of these challenges at scale.

IN CLOSING

LinkedIn’s mission has always been to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. What began as a place to find a role in business has become the place to do business. That evolution carries a new responsibility: to steward knowledge.

Working with customers opened my eyes and changed my life | Being kind and assuming positive intent will help you see the world from a different perspective

Taxonomy for the LinkedIn Knowledge Economy

Do you know the probability you will hit your growth target by the end of 2026?
When we ask Execs sitting on tens to hundreds of millions of funding (and revenue), most have no real answer.

In the past, this didn’t matter — all you needed to know was capacity needed to meet demand. But times have changed.

Good news, today we are able to scientifically instrument growth, not only to give an answer with precision to that question — but also to reveal the patterns underneath it. 

Check the dashboard!!!

The growth rate may still be exponential. Yet the growth state is already decelerating.

The system is adding revenue, but it’s no longer self-reinforcing, the second derivative — the compound rate — has gone negative.

GTM Efficiency is rising for all the wrong reasons. It is now spending $3.38 of commercial energy to produce every $1 of growth. Whoa! cost is compounding faster than growth. At that rate, it will take more than a decade to earn it back. 

Then reality sets in: Probability of hitting target: 22%!

Not because the target is wrong — but because the growth architecture underneath is leaking. Lead quality is dropping. Conversion is inconsistent.
But most of all Loop activation (k-factor) is weak, since most effort is spend on growth through inbound!

The internal physics of the system are fighting the goal, not supporting it.

Here’s the good news: the 3x3 GTM growth analysis shows exactly where to look.
• Enterprise Acquisition: massive untapped opportunity
• SMB Retention: underperforming
• Mid-Market Expansion: sub-optimal

“Yes, Jacco, but… it’s just a dashboard.”

Folks — this isn’t.  It’s a reflection of a new mindset, a multi-threaded model of the growth engine, built on a scientific growth architecture:
• S-curve behavior
• The compound rate
• Growth loop activation
• GTM efficiency
• Probability analysis to hit target 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 months out.
• And identify underutilized GTM motions

This is a different way of seeing growth — and a different way of designing it. Its been a missing layer, causing us to model growth against investor metrics instead! 

Richard Feynman once said: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

Thus, our job is to understand growth, so we may create it.

We now teach this scientific approach to growth through an online class (6 hours) better yet, opt for an annual subscription to the Growth Institute that includes quarterly case-studies.

Let's Grow!

taplio