Sean Kelly

Founder & Investor. Building companies at the intersection of health, media & founder performance.

Hey there, I’m Sean. I play at the intersection of investing, media and human performance.

I’m a three-time INC 500 founder & entrepreneur with businesses in eCommerce, SaaS, media and B2B services that have collectively generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Right now, I serve as a General Partner at The Family Fund and am the CEO of Significant Publications, a B2B digital media holding company.

I'm particularly passionate about our brand FounderIV in support of today's founder-athletes. We help today's top entrepreneurs achieve breakout performance in their personal and professional lives.

I co-founded and led multiple other companies, including SnackNation, a health-centric foodservice and brand discovery platform that served 20,000 businesses across the US. 

Under my leadership, SnackNation was honored as one of the country’s Best Workplaces by Inc. Magazine, recognized for Top Company Culture by Entrepreneur Magazine, and certified as a Great Workplace by Great Place to Work®.

Forbes listed me as one of the top 30 leaders under 30 and one of America’s most promising CEOs under 35. Comparably also ranked me among the country’s top 50 small-to-medium sized business CEOs multiple years in a row. 

Outside of the business world, I’m a two-time national medalist in freestyle snowboarding, hold an advisory role at the growth capital firm, Meaningful Partners, have a degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University and am an avid sports fan of all Michigan sports teams (especially the Wolverines).

I currently live in Venice, CA with my wife and college sweetheart, Shannon, and our goldendoodle, Jameson.

Chairman

One of the oldest laws in markets that everyone forgets:

More capital → more competition → higher entry prices → lower returns.

Abundant capital is great for momentum, but it rarely produces the best long-term outcomes.

The most durable venture returns tend to come from non-obvious places—where fewer checks are being written, expectations are lower, and pricing resets ahead of fundamentals.

You can make money following the herd...

But differentiated returns usually accrue to investors willing to underwrite conviction when capital is scarce.

That’s why we at The Family Fund & Founder Community are bullish on Consumer NOW.

Not despite the pullback in capital—but because of it.

Josh Wand Christine Wang Colleen Kang

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.comFor Partnerships Inquiries → passionfroot.me/strategybreakdowns

Tom Alder

This cheeky ad campaign is a masterclass in making people stop and laugh.

Airport billboards plastered with uncomfortably close faces and... features. 

Imagine touching down after 20hrs of international travel and seeing a 20ft nostril.

You'll probably chuckle, jump in an Uber, and remember that nose for weeks.

This is how you win the attention economy in 2026.

—

📌 P.S. I originally came across this campaign because it was going viral and came up on one of my ‘outlier trend’ dashboards. 

Lots of people asked me how I set this up, so I made a free tutorial teaching you exactly how I spot these trending topics / content / products in a few seconds (using free tools): https://lnkd.in/dnxsxJRm

In 2025 I went from $13k/mo to $24k/mo.

In 2026 I'm chasing $50k.

But honestly, my biggest wins were outside of work:

→ Packed up my cosy life in Australia
→ Donated/sold 90% of my physical possessions
→ One-way flight across the world

I've spent the last few months living in: Manhattan. Brooklyn. Barcelona. A tiny beach town called Torredembarra about an hour south of Barca. Valencia. Granada. Madrid. New York again. And now, East London.

2 years ago this was literally a dream I scribbled in a journal. 

Still feels totally surreal when I stop and think about it.

Thank you for reading this past year.

Let's win in 2026.

Anyone in London - hit me up!

—

👉 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 Xbox website in 2004.

Bring back the weird and wonderful web.

—

👉 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

Summer 2009: Airbnb was stuck at $200 per week (!) in revenue… for 8 months straight.

Founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were running out of money and hope.

When they looked at their worst-performing listings, they all had something in common: "The photos sucked."

People were using flip phone cameras or blurry unedited photos. 

Properties were being undervalued because potential guests couldn't properly assess what they were getting.

The solution: doing something that seemed "unscalable".

The founders:

→ Flew from Mountain View to New York
→ Borrowed professional cameras  
→ Personally photographed 24 hosts' apartments

Result: Revenue doubled to $400 in one week.

This wasn't just about prettier pictures. It solved Airbnb's fundamental marketplace trust problem:

• Guests buying an experience they can't return
• From strangers they've never met
• With no way to verify quality beforehand

Professional photos provided instant credibility, visual proof, and increased perceived value.

The strategy didn’t stop there.

It sparked Airbnb's global Photography Program:
→ Network of 2,000+ freelance photographers
→ 35,000 listings shot across 5,000 cities
→ Listings with pro photos earn 2.5x more bookings

The lesson: Sometimes winning means stop coding and start knocking on doors.

—

💡 If you enjoyed this, it originally appeared in my free 3-minute newsletter, 'Strategy Breakdowns'.

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

The value of $1,000 invested 10 years ago:

Amazon (AMZN) → $4,430
Netflix (NFLX) → $5,110
Apple (AAPL) → $8,170
Tesla (TSLA) → $33,630
AMD (AMD) → $123,010
Bitcoin (BTC) → $138,460
Nvidia (NVDA) → $157,870
XRP (Ripple) → $263,160
Dogecoin (DOGE) → $367,590
Ethereum (ETH) → $2,013,020

—

👉 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

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Founder of Strategy Breakdowns

I'm hiring a writer!

But not just a "writer."

A Superwriter.

Here's how to know if that's you:
→ You're subscribed to like 20+ newsletters
→ You compulsively screenshot great emails, ads, charts etc
→ You can write about complex business concepts in a simple and engaging way
→ You use Claude/Perplexity/Deep Research/Zapier/Notion better than anyone you know

The job: Produce the best strategy case studies on the internet.

Start with 1-2 breakdowns per week.

As a Superwriter, a core part of your role *from Day 1* is building systems, templates, automations, and agents for research, curation, creation, editing, visuals etc.

Note: This role is *not* for you if you don’t know how to (or don’t want to) work with AI/automation to improve your output (more engaging writing, more thorough research, faster graphics, etc)

What you'll get:
- Front-row seat to a fast-growing internet media business
- Work directly with me - I'll teach you everything I know about writing, audience building, sponsorships, and anything else you're interested in
- Freedom to follow your curiosity and shape the role over time
- Access to pro versions of best-in-class tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Notion, Canva, Wispr Flow etc)
- Write + build things that reach hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of people in tech
- Fully remote, work from anywhere in the world

If this sounds like you: Job Description + Application in the comments 👇
If this sounds like someone you know: Tag them!

110,803 people read my weekly strategy essays, but I have 2 HUGE problems:

1. They aren't good enough
2. Not enough people read them

So...
✏️ I'm hiring a writer to produce the best strategy case studies on the internet!

→ I don't care about your CV.
→ I care about your screenshots folder.
+ the newsletters / YouTubers / books in your content diet.
+ how many hours you've spent using Deep Research / Claude Code / Nano Banana.

Important note: this isn't an ordinary 'Writer' role.
I'm looking for a 'Superwriter'.

You won't just write. You'll build systems.
AI research workflows. Notion Templates. Infographics. Charts. Surveys.

Exceptionally high quality bar + thinks in leverage.

This starts at 1-2 articles per week. Will grow into much more.
Fully remote. Work from anywhere.
Reach millions of tech founders + leaders each month.

If this sounds like you: Job Description + Application in the comments 👇
If this sounds like someone you know: Tag them!

Steve Jobs tried his best to acquire Dropbox, but couldn’t (and ended up launching a competitor instead).

In 2009, he made them an offer most startups dream about:

9-figure acquisition.
Plug into Apple’s ecosystem.
Direct access to Apple’s users.
Validation from a Silicon Valley icon.

But Dropbox’s founders declined. 

Jobs doubled down, saying it was "a feature, not a product."
He threatened that if they didn’t agree to an acquisition, Apple would “kill” Dropbox by launching their own storage product:
→ iCloud

But he was wrong.

iCloud was a huge success, but wasn’t enough to stop Dropbox’s historic run:

In just 7 months, Dropbox had accumulated 100,000 users.
Within 18 months, 500,000.
By October 2009, they'd crossed 2 million users.

A single mechanism was driving over one-third of all new signups:
→ Their iconic referral program 
(”Invite your friend to receive an extra 10gb of free storage”)

It was so effective that within 6 months, it was generating 2.8 million referral invitations monthly.
1 invitation sent every single second (!)

The trajectory from there went exponential:
→ 50 million users by 2011
→ 100 million users by 2012
→ 500 million users by 2016

In 2017, Dropbox hit a milestone faster than any other software company in the past: $1 billion in ARR.
The referral architecture powering Dropbox's growth combined behavioural psychology, network effects, and incentive design.
There’s something every builder can learn from what is arguably the most successful customer acquisition program in SaaS history, so I've deconstructed the 3x underlying principles into a free guide. 

🎁 Here’s the guide → https://lnkd.in/gc9-ih8J

Happy Monday. I got in a heated debate over the weekend. Help me settle this:

I've been daydreaming about redesigning the Strategy Breakdowns website for at least a year. 

Picture this:
→ An infinite canvas. Every article as a card in a grid. 
→ A new interactive way for readers to explore the archive. 

But it’s always sat in the embarrassingly long “maybe one day” pile.

Recently I came across a tool that let me prototype it in an evening.

It only took about 2 minutes of "aha" moments and "oh damn that's cool" design decisions for me to realise i had to turn my rainy-night-in into a breakdown.

The tool is called Alloy - it captures your existing product and lets you vibe on top of it

Most tools are fighting over hobbyists and side projects, so Alloy carved out its own niche: professional product teams prototyping on existing apps

Lots of clever product-led-growth mechanics and smart user psychology baked into this tool. 

✏️ Check out the full breakdown on your new favourite vibe-coding tool: https://lnkd.in/dudG8b6G  and here’s the interactive prototype I made: https://lnkd.in/dVy8zaX3

i can't stop thinking about how all software looks the same now

in the early 2000s, winamp let users completely redesign the interface

→ alien heads
→ video game themes
→ animated creations

it sparked one of the internet's first user-generated design communities

there's actually a museum preserving 100,000+ skins from that era (link below)

somewhere along the way, we lost something special:
→ the ability to add personality into the tools we use every day

my secret wish is that AI brings back the 'customisation layer'

software that feels yours

—

👉 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

Software looks the same 

40 years of enterprise software in one chart:

Ownership → subscription → consumption → autonomous 

We're entering an unrecognisable era.
The winners of the next decade will be defined by AI GTM, outcome-based pricing, and the merging of software and services.

We hear a lot about the ‘one-person unicorn’.
A single operator building a billion-dollar company with new business models unlocked by AI.

Im curious - what do you think that business actually *looks* like?
Whats the product? How is it marketed? How does the company operate?

Something I’ve been wondering a lot about lately. Keen to hear your thoughts 💭

—

👉 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

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The Battle

Sean Kelly

Tom Alder

Followers

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Performance ScoreSean Kelly's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Sean Kelly

Tom Alder

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);}Sean Kelly's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreTom Alder's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreSean Kelly's LinkedIn Performance