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Over the past decade, I’ve scaled revenue and client success at three SaaS companies from $3M to $50M+ ARR, delivering 110%+ net revenue retention and top 10% NPS scores (65+).

Today, we help recruiting agency owners & Principals ($5M–$20M billings, 5–20 recruiters) land new clients from LinkedIn by becoming a trusted authority in their market. 

Our clients are busy business owners. They don’t want to be “content creators.” 

They want done-for-you exec content that lands new clients. That’s what we do.

In the past 12 months, we’ve generated $5M+ in client billings from LinkedIn by positioning recruiting agency owners as the go-to authorities in their markets.

Our methodology:
→ Revenue Growth Engine - a 3-step system perfected with 40+ founders & recruiting agencies
→ Content strategy that generates demand for contingent and retained searches (not just likes)
→ Strategic outreach to initiate conversations with your ideal clients
→ All requiring just 1.5 hours per week from busy Principals and owners

Our results:
→ 40+ owners and Principals served
→ $5M+ in client billings generated from inbound leads via LinkedIn
→ 8+ qualified inquiries per month within 90 days (average client result)
→ Doubling client pipelines in under 6 months
→ Clients include 7 and 8-figure recruiting agencies commanding $75K+ fees and securing multi-search mandates

And we're just getting started!

We help recruiting business owners who are:
→ Tired of building trust from scratch and ready for clients who arrive pre-sold
→ Reliant on a referral pipeline that has plateaued and feels unpredictable
→ Ready to turn decades of expertise into an inbound client pipeline

Ready to turn LinkedIn into your #1 growth channel?
→ Book a 25-minute strategy call: 

https://calendly.com/rohan-karunakaran-mbww/1-1-strategy-call

Rohan Karunakaran

One of my highlights of 2025 was spending a week in Sedona in early December.

I'd just wrapped a retreat with the Becoming the Bridge community (great humans!) and made a last min decision to extend my stay.

There’s something about the high desert, red rocks, and mountains that have been around for thousands of years that naturally invite moments of silence and stillness.

And yes — the energy vortex is real !

What was one of your highlights from 2025?

CEO at Frontier Growth Engine | Podcast host at Founder-Led 🎙️

One of my highlights from 2025 was attending a Dr. Joe Dispenza advanced retreat in Nashville. 

It was a fully immersive 7 day experience. 1,500 people. 14-hour days from 6am-8pm. Some days started at 4am. 

A few key takeaways that stayed with me:

1. Most people are living in the past:

Most people are living in a loop where today looks like yesterday. 

If we keep making a copy of a copy of a copy - like an old cassette tape - we’re becoming a cheaper, more diluted version of our true selves. 

To break the loop, we must become greater than the body, the mind, and the environment — all of which are largely conditioned by the past.

“Overcoming is the becoming process.”

The resistance we feel — to get out of bed, go to the gym, or have the hard conversations — is often the past being projected into the future.

The mind predicts an unpleasant experience so the body responds with resistance or avoidance. 

If we can overcome ourselves in those small moments, we step into possibility to a life that feels both more exciting and more peaceful. 

As I wrote in my journal: “If I can overcome myself in the morning, everyone else will be easy” HA!

2. Opening the heart:

The universe only gives us what we feel worthy of receiving. And worthiness comes from an open heart. 

Fear and frustration don’t open the heart. A constantly analytical mind doesn’t open the heart (learned that one the hard way 😄).

There’s nuance here — including practical ways I’ve found to cultivate an open heart — which probably deserves its own post.

The true masters (Jesus, Krishna, Buddha) knew the path: remove anything that stood in the way between them and an unconditionally open heart. 

3. Meditation as remembering:

The world is designed to help us forget our true selves:

• Societal conditioning
• The educational system
• The food we eat

The invisible scripts — when to buy a house, have children, what “success” is supposed to look like, etc, etc. the list is long !

The idea is not to fight against it. But to notice this old software program running and make intentional choices to update it. 

It starts with awareness. 

Meditation is the act of remembering. Of tuning out the noise so we can tune into the intelligence whispering within us.

From a neuroscience perspective, this often corresponds with shifting from high-beta analytical brainwave patterns into slower, more coherent alpha and theta states — states associated with calm focus, creativity, emotional regulation, and heart-brain coherence.

The result - the mind becomes an instrument of the heart:

• Decisions feel clean
• Work feels more easeful
• We feel more regulated, present and grounded

The ultimate goal: 

“Get so good doing it with your eyes closed, you can do it with your eyes open.” 

There were many more takeaways, including a breakthrough experience I had. 

It might be a little “woo” for LinkedIn, so let me know in the comments if you want a Part 2 👇

B2B lags B2C by ~10 years.

Had a great conversation with Will Leatherman and he said it perfectly:

"If B2C’s creator era kicked off in 2014… B2B is right on schedule"

And the playbook is already written:

2016 → B2C social goes mainstream
2019 → Personal brands disproportionately outperform corporate brands
2020s → Distribution > product

Now the same shift is hitting B2B.

Founders & CEOs are becoming the face of their products & services.

Those who start now will be 2–3 years ahead by the time everyone else catches on.

I thought I was decent at discovery calls.

Then I role-played with the author of Gap Selling.

He dismantled my process in 10 minutes.

3 takeaways that completely changed how I run discovery:

1. Product-centric vs. help-centric selling:

Most founders (myself included) jump to the pitch too quickly. 

“Aha — they mentioned a problem. Let me tell them about our solution.”

Keenan . calls this product-centric selling.

Help-centric selling is different.

It goes deep on:
→ What are you trying to do?
→ What’s preventing you from doing it today?
→ What is that costing you?
→ How long has this been going on?
→ Is it actually worth changing?

If you’re not uncovering those, and gettting them to emotionally feel and articulate the pain of their current state, the pitch — and the decision — won’t have real stakes. And will likely fall flat.

2. Get them to quantify the gap

Keenan’s rule: define everything.

“Onboarding takes too long.” How long?

“We’re losing revenue.” How much?

Most founders hear a problem and move on.

But vague problems don’t create urgency. Numbers do.

When they say “$700K is at risk”  it becomes real.

3. Not going deep on consequences

This one got me.

Keenan didn’t stop at the surface issue.

He kept asking: 
→ What happens if referrals dry up next quarter? 
→ What's it costing you to spend 20 hours a week on outbound that goes nowhere? 
→ If you're spending 5 calls just to build trust — is that the best use of your time?

By the end, "I should probably invest more in thought leadership" became a $500K pipeline gap.

He wasn't manufacturing fear. He was helping me connect what I already knew.

Selling isn't about pitching features — it's about the cost of inaction.

Founder-led sellers - Which is harder for you: finding the pain or getting the prospect to quantify it?

Agency > Intelligence.

Garry Tan (Y Combinator CEO) and Andrej Karpathy (former Tesla AI Director) are both saying it:

When AI puts world-class intelligence on tap for $20/month, the bottleneck is no longer knowing.

It's acting.

For founders building movements, this means:

Good product + great distribution > Excellent product + weak distribution.

Product still matters. But distribution is the multiplier. And there's a crowded graveyard of "technically superior" products that never found their market. 

George Mack has a framework for this - the "Jail Cell Test":

"You wake up in a 3rd world jail cell. You’re only allowed to call one person you know to get you out. Who do you call?"

You don't call the person with the the most intelligence or credentials. You call the person with agency.

The one who improvises. Who finds the gap in the fence. Who happens to life instead of waiting for life to happen to them.

I see brilliant founders failing this test every day.

They have the expertise. The track record. The intelligence.

But they're Person A in the image - stuck on the island, spelling "HELP" in the sand with sticks:

• Waiting for referrals
• Waiting to be "discovered"
• Waiting for some future moment before they share what they know

Person B used the same sticks to build a raft.

• Narrating the struggle while they build
• Recruiting before they have a finished product
• Treating distribution as a force multiplier, not a marketing chore

Same resources. Different agency. Different outcomes.

The gap in 2026 isn't knowledge. It's nerve.

High agency for your movement means turning your expertise into trusted distribution - not waiting for permission that isn't coming.

Start building the raft.

What's one move you've been over-analyzing that you could execute today?

Image credit: George Mack

DeepMake

DeepMake is powered by the latest open source generative AI models to make content creation fast and easy. Users can unleash their creativity and bring the impossible to life with a few clicks using text-to-image generation, image-to-image generation, super-resolution enhancement, smart segmentation and other AI tools. Backed by Open Core Ventures.

Chief Executive Officer

Vext Technologies

Vext is powering LLM pipeline-building and offers a “Zapier for AI’ platform for users who want to lego-block their LLM at speed and scale. With Vext, customers can easily and rapidly develop custom AI applications tailored to their unique business needs and data.

Advisor

Angel Investor and Advisor

Angel investor and adviser for early stage AI, Fintech, SaaS and Climate companies.
Devyce (YC S22), Berry (YC W23), Miliopay (YC W23), JustPaid (YC W23), Freetrade, Connect Earth, Alacrity, Vextapp

Expert Community member @ Founders at the University of Cambridge

Angel Investor

GoCardless

Global Head of Strategy and Business Operations
Leading the execution of our global strategy across all BUs.
Product-market-fit and product launches in new and existing markets. Go-to-market strategy.
Customer insight and Voice of Customer.
Corporate development and M&A.

Director of Strategy & Business Operations

Launched GoCardless in North America and scaled the team, operations and customer acquisition.
Created and executed the go-to-market strategy for the US.
Product-market-fit analysis and iteration.

Senior Manager, Strategy & Business Operations

Partnered with the CRO on sales operations, market segmentation and sales enablement.

Sales Strategy & Operations

1UP - Online Sports Competitions

• Short-form video social media platform for P2P sports competitions ("TikTok for sports")
• Member of the 2017 THINK Accelerator programme in Sweden (thinkaccelerate.com) 
• Innovative advertising model for sports brands through sponsorship of online competitions created by users and brands
• Global user base across multiple sports with revenue generation from brands, events and venues
• Created a global network of amateur and professional athletes as ambassadors 
• Partnered with international sports brands, venues and events

Co-Founder

Jefferies

Investment Banking, Mergers & Acquisitions 

• Advised clients on international corporate mergers, sales and acquisitions ($10m-$3bn+)
• Advised FTSE 100 and S&P 500 companies, PE, sovereign wealth funds and governments
• Strategic recommendations on potential investments, partnerships and opportunities
• Transactions in Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia
• Lead on buy-side and sell-side transactions: managing team, client, external advisors
• Complex transaction design - asset type, jurisdiction, counter parties and market conditions
• Strategic recommendations based on market knowledge and counter party discussions 
• IPOs, private placements, equity and bond issues, liaising with regulators and exchanges
• Financial, investment and valuation modelling for companies, assets and mergers
• Conducting and co-ordinating due diligence 
• Complex deal structuring and commercial agreement terms
• Value negotiations, corporate legal agreements and transaction agreements

Vice President

Schlumberger

Engineer

Scaling DeepMake AI into a leading provider of the latest generative AI functionality for video creators, content editing professionals and VFX studios. A past co-founder and angel investor and advisor to early-stage companies in AI, Fintech, SaaS and Climate verticals, including multiple YC companies. Expertise in strategy, go-to-market strategy, commercialization, market entry and product-market-fit gained in senior leadership roles.

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The Battle

Rohan Karunakaran

Nima Mehdian

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taplio

The Battle

Rohan Karunakaran

Nima Mehdian

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Rohan Karunakaran's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRohan Karunakaran's LinkedIn Performance