we help high-ticket B2B brands and investors make & raise more money from the emails they already have.

Nils Liedlich

After speaking with 100s of founders, it seems to me like the biggest risk a founder can take is building a non-aligned business.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again-

1/ Founder starts a company that initially feels exciting
2/ Company prints a lot of money, founder happy
3/ But founder optimizes for max revenue, not their original mission
4/ They keep making good money
5/ But resent the company
6/ By extension they then resent themselves for staying
7/ Which burns them out
8/ Because they’re not building something that’s true to themselves

I’ve seen this story play out in four ways:

a) Founder burns out 
b) Founder radically restructures the company
c) Founder quits/sells company A to build a new one
d) Founder stops working and instead gets a new "hobby" (usually endurance sports or Sanskrit)

I think this is also why when I speak with 20-30y/o founders, they’re often driven but wealth, whereas 40-50 y/o founders tend to start with “How can I serve?” (these are overall tendencies i’m noticing, ofc there are outliers).

I remember reading about “alignment” and “purpose” in self-help leadership books and thinking “that’s corporate bullshit”…

…but now I realize it’s the nr 1 thing. Because if your actions are not in alignment with your thoughts, you start resenting yourself. And if you’re the founder, that’s the biggest risk in the business.

/n

Yesterday, a startup founder who recently raised asked me: “we’re working with a PR agency to announce our beta launch soon - what should our email strategy be before, during, and after launch?”

Without giving away too much, I should mention their product was a B2B SaaS and focused on serving a specific role in enterprises. They wanted to take on ~10 customers at launch.

Their AI interface and algorithms made gave these decision makers two benefits:

1/ Faster access to existing data points

2/ Net new data relevant to the firm

Now, I’ve never raised capital myself, and I’m by no means an expert in startups. But in 2025, we worked with a startup founder who’d raised over $200M, so I was familiar with his advice.

The 1 thing he told me was: “Startups always need to market themselves as having momentum. So always oversubscribe.”

So I proposed to reposition the website for before their launch -

We replaced “book a demo” (signals “we have capacity”) to “join the waitlist” (signals “we’re at capacity”)

Then we qualify all waitlist sign ups through a quick survey

That means that before releasing their product, this startup was:

- Collecting emails of target customers
- Segmenting the leads based on fit & intent

As they’re building momentum on socials, they’ll be able to direct people to the website and build up a “pre-launch list.”

Then during launch, rather than the usual “first come first served” (speed of signup doesn’t say anything about how good of a fit a customer is in my experience)…

…they’ll simply contact the 10 best customers based on the segmentation survey.

After launch, they’ll do a bi-weekly newsletter curating some of the data they have for their target audience.

Then the founder asked me:

“So when/ under which circumstances should I hire you?”

And I told him that “when the math works out”, which in this case, I quantified as:

a) 150-200 decision makers active on the list
b) Getting 10 or so new customers / year from the list

Then, we can come in and improve what you do, and get you more revenue from your emails. The napkin math for me is: “are we’re confident that we’ll make this person 3 times more than they’ll pay us over a year?”

If yes, it’s a fit. If no, not yet.

In the past, we would work with companies to build their email list from scratch- but we stopped doing so because we had less control over the outcomes.

/n

We're hiring our next chapter of Writers - and applications close in 5 days.

Menajem Benchimol from our team here just wrote a great post breaking down exactly how he got himself hired last year... so if you wanna tag along with us in 2026, read his post and use those lessons in applying with us.

more news on what's next soon

Research Analyst at LetterLeverage | Editorial Deep Dives

How to get a job in 2026? Add some flavor and memes in your dms...
(i still owe Nils Liedlich hummus after he hired me)

Here is what I mean:

97% of people follow the same script:

* Click the "easyapply" button on Linkedin or send their resume for 227 roles.
* maybe write a cover letter.
* wait, and wait, and wait until one of them replies with an interview.

And its frustrating because you usually don't get the results you want. 

But if you want to stand out, you need MACCABEAN energy. 

The message you see on the screen is the aftermath of writing a 40 slide deep dive on X topic for FREE. for a potential client he had without guarantees of anything hapenning. 

And it worked because I presented myself with what Mark Manson calls "non-needy" energy and my writing showed I was competent and confident for the role.  Most founders are looking for these qualities.

And I am grateful for being here.

Which leads me to say....

LetterLeverage is growing and hiring two newsletter ghostwriters & one marketing lead.

More details in the job post, tldr here:

Writers:

- Work closely with our clients (anything from creators to billionaires)
- Base pay + upside based on the revenue you own (our writer Julia Gomes recently wrote a post about how she 7X:ed her income the last year)
- Ideally you can join us for our offsite in Asia in Q1 (all expenses provided)

Marketing Lead:

- Work closely with me and our design team to build Letter Leverage's channels 
- I want to learn from and with you
- Base pay + upside based on the leads you bring in 
- Ideally you can join us for our offsite in Asia in Q1 (all expenses provided)

FULL details on the writer role here:

https://lnkd.in/dQKr_3Ys

For the Marketing Lead, we're releasing more info coming days, shoot Nils or Jayana Sanghvi a DM if it sounds interesting to you.

---

INSIDER advice:

Here are some steps I suggest you take to increase your chances:

* Reverse engineer a potential customer they might want to work with. Collect learnings, and summarize those learnings for them on how to land this potential client.
* Make a list of ideas that would help the company generate more revenue.
* Make a list, or resume, of your failures.
* Record a Loom of why you want to work here.
* Give them feedback on their interview process.
* Do some work for them for free.


Good luck!

The other day, I jokingly told my writers I’d fire them if they use any of these 13 AI patterns:

Here are the 13 phrases that scream “I let ChatGPT write this”:
(eliminate these from your content!)

1/ “No X. No Y. Just Z.”

“No fluff. No theory. Just actionable insights.” 

“No gimmicks. No shortcuts. Just results.”

Every AI-generated post contains this at least one time. It’s like the robot equivalent of “In today’s digital landscape...”

2/ “It’s not just about X. It’s about Y.”

“It’s not just about the money. It’s about the freedom.” 

“It’s not just about followers. It’s about engagement.”

Claude’s favorite transition. I see this 47 times a day on LinkedIn.

3/ “The game has changed” and “game-changer” and “supercharge”

“This AI tool is a complete game-changer for productivity.” 

“Here’s how to supercharge your content strategy.” 

“The marketing game has changed forever.”

If I had a dollar for every time AI used these phrases, I’d have enough to buy OpenAI.

4/ Overuse of “Real”“Just real strategy, real experiments, and real business growth backed by real experts.” 

“Real entrepreneurs doing real work for real results.”

“No shallow networking. Just real conversations with real people”

We get it. You’re very real. Very authentic. Very AI.

5/ “If you’re serious... let’s [CTA]”

“If you’re serious about scaling, let’s chat.” 

“If you’re serious about results, DM me now.”

Every ChatGPT CTA ends with this exact pitch structure.

6/ Signing off emails with “To your success”

I’ve gotten emails from three 8-fig founders using this - instantly gives away they wrote the whole email with AI and didn’t bother reviewing.

7/ “Not because of X. But because of Y”

“I didn’t succeed because of luck. But because of persistence.” 

“This won’t work because of the strategy. But because of execution.”

The robot’s attempt at being profound. Usually followed by something obvious.

8/ Using arrows everywhere → for formatting

→ 300% growth
→ More leads than ever
→ Start today

9/ “The best part? Want access?”

“The best part? It’s completely free.” 

“Want access? Link in comments.”

Short questions as hooks. Very 2023 AI energy.

10/ “Enter:”“Enter: my secret framework.” 

“Enter: the solution you’ve been waiting for.”

11/ “And here’s the kicker”

“And here’s the kicker - it only takes 5 minutes.” 

“Here’s the kicker - most people get this wrong.”

12/ “Stopped in my tracks.”

“Yesterday, my mentor told me something that stopped in my tracks:”

Sounds like it’s a world phenomenon. 

Everybody hears something shocking all the time.

13/ “X changed everything.”

“The strategy that changed everything.”

Really? Is it SO GOOD it changed every single thing for you?

(continue in the comments):

Hi, I’m Abdussalam 👋🏽
A Web Designer & Webflow Developer helping brands bring bold ideas to life through beautiful, functional websites.

I specialize in building high-converting websites for creative agencies, AI startups, SaaS companies, and entrepreneurs—combining clean design with seamless Webflow development.

With years of experience and a focus on visual storytelling, performance, and responsiveness, I help businesses stand out online and drive real results.

Here’s what you get when we work together:
✔ Custom Website Design tailored to your brand
✔ Full Webflow Development—from scratch or migration
✔ Advanced interactions (GSAP, Finsweet, custom code)
✔ Seamless Webflow CMS integration
✔ Pixel-perfect Figma to Webflow conversion

🔥 Whether you need a full site, landing page, or MVP—I’m here to bring your vision to life. Let’s build something great together.

🎨 Portfolio: www.abdussalampopoola.com
📬 Let’s connect: contact@abdussalampopoola.com

Abdussalam Popoola

This past weekend was a productive one at Encode Club.

Had the opportunity to work with Abdelaziz Zizou Brahmi and Aiman at the hyper liquid hackathon.

Learnt a lot from this project and collaborating with a team, web3 is quite an interesting field.

Giving a shoutout to Sipho Yawe , Keanu Czirjak & Alex Pivovarov for the great work with their pitches and projects.

Y’all inspire me to be better.
Excited for the next hackathons this year.

10/10 weekend
Still recovering my brain cells 😂

Forward Deployed Engineer, Thrad | CS @ UoC | Design Engineer

No alternative text description for this image

I recently completed Making It Big by Olufemi Peter Otedola CON 

And it’s definitely an interesting read.

Here’s my review:

Was at Granola's design engineering meetup last night.

Inspired by the speakers:

Seungmee Lee shared how she uses shadows, colors and gradients to make the web more playful.

Studio Dr. M.A. Baytaş shared how music plays a role in crafting interactions.

Alexey Taktarov shared demoes and his principles to building a less static and more collaborative web experience.

Inspiring to say the least.
Thanks for hosting this Tikhon Belousko & Shreman Shrestha

Life advice i can't stop thinking about.
Be undeniable.

taplio

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