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

We built the first Founderland in 10 weeks.

And almost died.

This past year we gave ourselves 6 months and built an external team to do it and it still wasn’t enough time.

So for next year’s event we decided to make the build a year-round affair…

And are focused on making Founderland a brand that lives throughout the year, not just as once-every-October event.

It’s funny to see how random ideas become full-time jobs lol

Took a quick trip to NYC this week to discuss Founderland ‘26 with one of our top partners J.P. Morgan  

The verdict?

It’s going to be big. 

Perhaps not as big as JPM’s new $3B global HQ at 270 Park Ave (most spectacular office I’ve been in w/ a Warhol or Jasper Johns around every corner)…

But still pretty big and lots of fun with a yuge amount of deals commenced (misspelling intentional)

Thanks for the tour Michael Conte you’re a legend and friend.

And glad to see you’re carrying Ancient Crunch Inc. MASA chips in all of your shops!

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Current health travel stack:

Zoomed off to NYC, Philly and Austin this week.

Back to back meetings all day, late dinners and sports games at night, and planes trains and automobiles like we all know.

Seems like 1/2 of the people I’ve met have a cold.

Here’s what I take on the road to feel good while away…

and do my best to arrive home feeling not-dead to the fam. Works most of the time ;)

 - Sinus rinse bottle filled with filtered water, betadine and salt/baking soda (use after every flight, likely illness prevention tactic #1)

- Zinc acetate lozenges if I’m feeling worn down or fatigued

- KetoneIQ every morning when I wake up to get that cognitive boost

- Momentous whey protein, plant protein, and creatine (10g) + Supergut fiber blended 1-2x per day to supplement diet

- Momentous Sleep pack + medical mouth tape + sleep mask every night

- Metal shaker bottle that doesn’t get gross

- Some type of hydration packets 2x/day minimum (right now using Dry Water)

- WIP 100mg energy pouches for a little boost early in the day usually before workout

- Another ~20 or so supplements in my vitamin case that I pre-fill for each day prior to the week

Sure, sleep/nutrition/exercise are essential and the most  important…but it’s near impossible to not sacrifice them a bit while playing the part of road warrior…so at least for me, travel supplementation is key.

Momentous Ketone-IQ DryWater Supergut

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

"IKEA has opened in Brighton, the quintessential British seaside town."

Inside jokes = great marketing.

"Step out your front door, sit on a bench or look out your car window, there are presents left for you everywhere. It’s just part of life that every Brighton local deals with.” 

Wonderful example of what I call "If you know, you know" ("IYKYK") marketing. 

Show you understand your customer by speaking directly to something only they would understand.

—

👉 P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you'll love my newsletter - a 3-minute breakdown of the marketing strategies and growth playbooks behind the world’s greatest companies.

Join 100,000+ strategy nerds from companies like Google, Apple, Nike, and Netflix: https://lnkd.in/g2FWfXGR

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

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)

Productivity is the new flex.

This viral campaign just capitalised on it perfectly.

Fyxer's '2025 Unboxed' campaign = Spotify Wrapped for email.

It shows users how many hours they saved this year using their AI email drafter, and assigns them an 'email persona' like "Inbox Ringmaster" or "Clock Whisperer"

My favourite part - every organic share isn't just "look at my quirky email habits" it's "look how much time this tool gave me back".

They embedded their value prop into the flex itself.

Textbook virality design: make the shareable moment social proof for the product benefit.

Think sending a Loom, booking via a Calendly link, or accessing a Notion template. 

The result: every user who shares their "Fyxer unboxed" is running an ad that says "this tool gave me back [X] hours".

Genius.

Full data roundup here - pretty interesting: https://lnkd.in/dpuZPrwW

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

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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

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