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.comWe partner with companies like Atlassian, Notion, Intercom, Hubspot, Miro, Vanta, Clay, Mixpanel, and Ahrefs to reach 110k+ tech decision-makers. Click here to explore sponsorships → passionfroot.me/strategybreakdowns

Tom Alder

Apple makes $1 billion+ per year selling adaptors:

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👉 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 average enterprise employee spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings.

That's almost a full work week. 
Every single month. 
Gone.

And yet - meetings aren't the problem. BAD meetings are the problem.

The best hybrid teams i've seen don't have fewer meetings. 
→ They have better workflows that make every interaction count.

I genuinely think something's shifted in how teams think about productivity.

It used to be about individual output - more hours, more tasks, more hustle.

Now it's about connection quality and output. How seamlessly can 50 people across 12 timezones actually collaborate without losing their minds?

The companies figuring this out are pulling ahead. The ones still optimising for "busy" are falling behind.

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Zoom is running a free summit on exactly this: how to make collaboration seamless across teams, locations, and timezones.

Feb 24 (EMEA) / Feb 25 (APAC)

If you're leading digital transformation, IT, or workplace strategy at a large org - worth grabbing a spot.

Register here: → https://zm.me/49SCY8r

#ad in partnership with the legends Zoom

Jamming with Rob Hoffman, Lara Acosta, and Tyler Denk 🐝 about our plans for 2026:

A few topics we discussed -

1. The reality of building while traveling the world.
2. Why vlogging is coming back for founders.
3. The timeless psychology of waitlists.
4. The bootstrapped AI SaaS paradigm.
5. Solopreneurship vs small vs big teams.

Honestly so refreshing to get new perspectives on things I’m actively wrestling with.
Also funny to see how the same decisions / problems / strategies resurface in peculiar ways, in such different contexts.

Would highly recommend following what these folks are up to if you haven’t already!

Rob and Lara are building Kleo.
Tyler is building beehiiv.

Incredible businesses powering many of the world's top creators and founders.

Feeling inspired. Let's build.

Every company spent the last 20 years building customer support processes that make people want to hang up.

Press 1 for billing. 
Press 2 for support. 
Press 3 to scream into the void.

Then came the "AI upgrade" - which mostly just replaced the robotic menu with a robotic voice.

Same frustration, different wrapper.

Here's what's actually changing now:
ElevenLabs just shipped Expressive Mode in their Agents platform.

The demo is WILD (video below). 

The agents don't just listen to what you say. 
They detect HOW you say it.

Tone.
Pitch. 
Pacing. 
Humour.
Feelings.

And they respond with the right delivery - using cue cards like [reassuring], [apologetic], and [enthusiastic] to match the moment.

Frustrated caller? The agent shifts to calm de-escalation.
Excited prospect? It matches the energy.
Confused customer? It slows down.

Previously, agent emotion was shaped entirely through voice selection and system prompts. Static. One-size-fits-all.
Now it's dynamic and contextual. Across 70+ languages (up from 32).
The turn-taking is different too. Their new transcription model captures intent and emotional cues so the agent times responses more like a human would.
The result: customers feel helped, not processed.
That's the gap most people miss about voice AI. The technology was never the bottleneck.

The emotional intelligence was.

Link to try below 👇

#ad #ElevenAgentsPartner

Every AI tool you've used in the last 2 years has the same interface:

A text box with a blinking cursor.

Quarterzip threw it away entirely.

Instead of building another chat wrapper, they built an AI that watches your screen share and guides you visually - like having a colleague sit next to you and point at things.

No SDK installation. 
No browser extension. 
No IT approval ticket.

Just a picture-in-picture window that sees everything you see. Any tool, any tab, any workflow.

Picture this:
- You’re onboarding to a new tool
- You brace yourself for a barrage of forgettable tooltips and painful ‘educational’ flows
- Instead, you click ‘Start Onboarding’ and you’re prompted to share your screen
- You share, and you’re placed directly in the app, with a helpful AI assistant in the corner that sees everything you see
- It’s trained on the help docs, all past onboarding calls, and can guide you through the journey whilst answering any question you might have along the way

They launched a week ago. Already running hundreds of AI-powered onboarding sessions a day with Apollo and Grab.

And the growth loop is elegant - every person who gets onboarded through Quarterzip sees the brand sitting inside the PIP window.

Product usage drives distribution.

I broke down the full strategy in this week's newsletter (link in the comments)

On July 7th, 2025, I added another SaaS idea to the pile:
A Chrome extension. SimilarWeb for builders. Traffic, revenue signals, founder socials, ads - all in a sidebar you can trigger when you visit any company's website.

A 9-bullet sketch of something I'd personally use a dozen times a day, if it existed.

Nothing came of it. Got buried under many more (half-baked) ideas.

Fast-forward 6 months.
The Figma team reached out about a partnership.
They wanted me to try their new prompt-to-app AI tool, Figma Make.

I mulled over the angle for a while, then realised I had the perfect test case.
Could I take a 6-month-old idea that had never left the notes app and turn it into a fully interactive, clickable product prototype? Without writing a single line of code? Without opening a design tool?

The pipeline I came up with:
→ 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (raw idea, 9 bullet points) 
→ 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲 + 𝗪𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗿 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄 (interview to flesh it into a full PRD) 
→ 𝗙𝗶𝗴𝗺𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 (PRD in, interactive prototype out)

One sitting later, I had my answer.
Here’s how it went down (link in the comments 👇)

Most newsletter sponsors get a terrible ROI.

All because they're advertising to the wrong readers.

Here's the thing about audience quality that most marketers miss:

1/ You need readers who make decisions.

This is the #1 mistake I see. Advertising to e.g. 1 million people containing 1k decision-makers, rather than 100k people containing 50k decision-makers.

71% of Strategy Breakdowns readers have meaningful influence over budget and procurement decisions at their company.

You need to get in front of the actual people who sign off on the tools, platforms, and services their teams use.

2/ Open rate is a proxy for trust.

Industry average open-rate is under 40%. Strategy Breakdowns sits at 55%, while earning the trust of 110,000 readers every week. Our sponsors inherit that trust.

3/ Niche is more efficient than broad.

A 110,000-person list of senior strategy and tech leaders doesn’t just contain *more* decision-makers than 500,000-person general business list - it is also costs less to advertise in. The signal-to-noise ratio is what makes our campaigns so efficient for sponsors looking to allocate their marketing budgets strategically.

4/ The seniority and industry breakdown matters.

- 30% Founder / C-level
- 20% VP / Director
- 40% Senior / Manager

Tech, consulting, and finance make up ~80% of our audience. I mean, these are literally the buyers.

5/ One ad isn't a campaign.

The sponsors who see the best results run 4 touchpoints minimum. Decision-makers don't act on first exposure, especially at this seniority level. (Honestly, when was the last time you saw a $100/mo tool for the first time and immediately pulled out a corporate card?) Plus, you need to test, learn, and iterate based on the data from each ad run.

6/ We treat it like a partnership (but actually).

Ad copy collaboration, custom AI tools we’ve built for partners, full 7-day and 14-day performance reports with 100% of the data we have available, ongoing input to optimise the campaign. Nearly every sponsor I work with (Atlassian, Vanta, Clay, Attio, Ahrefs, etc) comes back multiple times. 

Probably the thing I’m most proud of.

We have just 2 slots left before prices go up for Q2.

If your product is built for founders, PMs, engineers, or operators in tech - link to our full media kit in the comments 👇

How many DMs do you send per week on LinkedIn?

Hey 👋 I'm Isaac!

I’m a growth strategist and the founder of Pistachio, a GTM and brand-led growth partner for startups and scaleups. We help teams launch, scale and stand out by turning positioning into pipeline.

Most companies have strong products but fractured go-to-market efforts: sales, marketing and product aren’t aligned. The story isn’t clear. Growth depends too much on short-term tactics. That’s where we step in.

At Pistachio, we combine:
Brand strategy → defining your positioning, narrative, and messaging so you win trust and convert more buyers.
GTM blueprints → ICP definition, value prop, channels, packaging, sequencing.
Content systems → newsletters, CRM, LinkedIn and amplification to operationalise GTM and compound growth.
Growth ops → automation and reporting systems to scale without chaos.

Before founding Pistachio, I led growth at The Daily Aus (scaled to 180,000 subs in 10 months) and Mamamia (grew subscriptions to 30,000+ members and $170k+ MRR). Since then, I’ve worked with teams at BuzzFeed, Clay and many more to build GTM systems that turn brand trust into business results.

I also write Brand Chemistry, a newsletter about building trust and driving compounding growth.

🚀 Ready to align your story, GTM and growth engine? Let’s chat! check out my Featured section to get started.

Isaac Peiris

I see way too many “I made 6-figures in a week” posts

But not as much “I’ve struggled doing xyz”

In the past few months I’ve:
→ Had to let go my first contractor
→ Lost 2 clients in the span of a week
→ Felt like I’m sprinting just to stay in the same spot
→ Dealt with the chicken-and-egg of revenue vs hiring
→ Struggled to scale systems from freelancer to agency

But I think that’s the reality of running a business.

Being forced to do things you’ve never done.
Being thrown in the deep end with no idea.
Being faced with make or break decisions.

Most of us don’t know what we’re doing.

We’re just figuring it out as we go.

Founder @ Pistachio | Content-led growth for B2B brands

Most companies build policies around control.

Ritz-Carlton built theirs around trust… and a $2,000 rule.

Every employee can spend up to $2,000 per guest to solve a problem or create a moment.

No manager approval needed.

That's how you get stories like staff flying across the country to return a forgotten laptop. Or employees diving into the ocean to retrieve a guest's camera.

But these moments do something bigger than solving problems.

They create the Halo Effect.

When customers experience something exceptional in one area, they assume everything else is exceptional too.

The food tastes better. The beds feel more comfortable.
The entire brand feels premium.

This same psychology shows up in unexpected places.

Starbucks didn't win on coffee quality.
In blind taste tests, they often lose.

They won on atmosphere:
the music, the smell, writing your name on the cup.

The experience made the coffee feel better.

Most brands obsess over campaigns and messaging.
The smart ones obsess over moments.

Because customers don't judge your brand logically.

One exceptional touchpoint can elevate perception of everything else.

What's the one detail in your customer experience that could create a halo for everything else?

It doesn't need to be big.

Sometimes it's the speed of your reply, the warmth in your follow-up, or how you handle the smallest request.

P.S. Wrote more about this in Brand Chemistry if you want the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/dWRNvvKJ

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I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

In 1983, Ritz-Carlton gave every employee the power to spend $2000 without approval and it changed luxury hospitality forever

Just getting started in business?

Here are 6 lessons I wish I'd known before I started:


1. Clarity comes from action, not planning

I spent months overthinking my strategy before launching anything but the real insights came after I hit publish and saw what resonated. You can't think your way to clarity.

2. Your personal brand is an asset

Building my presence on LinkedIn opened doors, created opportunities and became a competitive advantage for Pistachio and Brand Chemistry. Invest in it early.

3. No one is watching (at first)

I was terrified of posting early on. Truth is, nobody cared 🤷‍♂️ That anonymity is a gift, so use it to experiment, fail and find your voice before the audience grows.

4. Offers matter more than content

I spent months perfecting content when I should've been building clear offers. Content brings attention but offers turn that attention into revenue.

5. You don't need to look big to win

I used to think I needed a huge team and polished brand to compete but that's not true. Scrappy, focused execution beats corporate polish every time, so start small and stay lean.

6. Momentum beats perfection

Waiting for perfect kills progress, so I learned to ship fast, gather feedback and iterate. Imperfect action creates momentum, and momentum creates results.

Growth comes from building while you're still figuring it out.

What's one thing you wish you knew when you started?

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Hey 👋 I’m Isaac Peiris
I run an agency helping brands scale through content.
My goal is to share tips and insights to help you grow.
Hit my name + follow + 🔔

Dove just proved that showing your 1-star reviews might be smarter than hiding them.

They asked Reddit users to review their hair mask with complete honesty.
Then plastered the results across New York billboards.

Including gems like "Kinda smells like expired hotel shampoo."

This is the trust paradox playing out in real time.

When consumers assume every brand cherry-picks feedback, radical transparency becomes your biggest differentiator.

I think what makes this work is pretty simple:

→ Negative reviews prove you're not filtering
→ They make the positive reviews actually believable
→ They set realistic expectations the product can exceed

But there's a catch.

This only works because it’s a direct channel.

Try running "smells hella bad" through paid social and watch your account rep have a breakdown.

But direct media gives you the freedom to be brutally honest.

When you control the relationship with your audience, you can have real conversations. When you rent attention, you play by someone else's rules.

Authenticity doesn't mean being perfect.

You just need to be real enough that people believe you when you say something works.

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I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Dove Turns Brutally Honest Reddit Reviews Into an Unfiltered Campaign

Your marketing sucks.

And you're probably trying harder than you should have to…

You're spending on tactics, testing channels and still not growing.

The hard truth is that the foundation was never built.

I've seen this across startups, agencies and SaaS teams.

Smart people, real budgets, genuine effort.
but the strategy underneath is shaky, so they keep trying to fix things with tactics.

They test channels. Post inconsistently.
Tweak messaging. Launch campaigns.

And then wonder why nothing converts.

Tactics on a broken strategy just make the problem bigger.

What really works is simpler than most teams want to admit:

→ Who exactly is your ICP
(not just job titles)

→ What’s your value proposition
(why you instead of anyone else)

→ What messaging resonates
(words customers actually respond to)

→ What’s your GTM motion
(sales-led, product-led, partner-led)

Once those are clear, tactics start working.
Before that, you're just experimenting.

So before your next campaign, get honest about three things:

Who exactly is this for?
What pain are we solving?
And why us?

If those answers aren’t obvious yet, the problem probably isn’t your marketing.

It’s the foundation underneath it.

Strategy is a decision you make, not a document you write.

The moment you stop trying to be everything to everyone, marketing gets easier.

Apple didn't just sponsor the halftime show.

They turned 128 million viewers into a global content engine.

Most brands would have run a polished recap ad.

Apple handed iPhone 17 Pros to 23 creators across 15 locations and 11 time zones.

They captured Bad Bunny fans watching the show in Puerto Rico, Tokyo, São Paulo, Madrid…

Not staged reactions. Not influencer scripts.
Just people experiencing the moment.

The result?
↳ "The Day the World Danced"

Within 24 hours, it generated 4 billion social views and a 137% increase year over year.

But here's what matters more than the numbers.

Apple designed the moment so people could create it with them.

They built the infrastructure for participation at scale.

They connected the performance to their 10-year "Shot on iPhone" platform, using a song about wishing you'd taken more photos so every frame proved the product while feeling like pure culture.

This is what scaled content looks like in 2026.

Attention doesn't scale the way participation does.

If your audience can't see themselves inside the story, they won't help you spread it.

The smartest brands aren't asking "How do we get more reach?"

They're asking "How do we design this so people want to carry it forward?"

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I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

The joys of living in Australia with a mostly US audience 🙃

The first banner ad got a 78% click rate.
Now it's under 1%.

Generic AI content is heading the same way.

Every channel follows the same pattern.

Early adopters win because it's new, then everyone piles in, quality drops and audiences tune out.

Banner ads in 1994. Email marketing in the 2000s.
Now AI content is in its gold rush phase.

Here's how every channel dies:

1. Novelty (something new catches attention)
2. Oversaturation (everyone piles in)
3. Quality decline (speed beats substance)
4. Pattern recognition (audiences tune out)

I think AI content is in phase two right now.

Some brands are still seeing wins because their audience hasn't been flooded yet, but oversaturation is already happening.

Most brands are optimising for volume when they should be optimising for value.

They're publishing just to publish.

The ones that win long-term won't be churning out AI posts at scale.

They'll use AI as a tool while keeping human judgement, brand voice and audience understanding at the centre.

What matters is the quality of thinking behind your content.

If you're building a content engine right now, ask yourself:
are you creating something your audience actually wants, or just filling space because you can?

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I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

First banner ad

Kodak invented digital photography in 1975.

Then spent the next 37 years pretending they hadn't.

This wasn't a story about lacking vision.
It was about organisational paralysis.

The engineers built the first digital camera.
Leadership understood the future was digital.

But here's what stopped them:

Their sales team was trained to sell film.
Their factories were built to manufacture it.
Their retail partnerships depended on processing.

That was more than revenue.
70% of profits came from film processing.
It was jobs, bonuses, relationships, expertise.

Every department had a reason to slow down digital.
Because their entire world was built around film.
Not because they were short-sighted.

So digital became a side project.
A "future initiative" with no real power.

By 2000, the gap was too wide.
By 2012, they filed for bankruptcy.

Your biggest competitive threat isn't the market.
It's your own organisational design.

Three things that companies do to overcome this:

1. Incentives aligned with adaptation, not preservation
Make compensation tied to new metrics, not legacy revenue.

2. Small teams with real autonomy
Give them budget, authority, and protection from internal politics.

3. Regular org design reviews
Question your structure before the market does it for you.

Innovation without organisational agility is just expensive R&D.

The question isn't whether you can see the future.
It's whether your company is structured to act on it.

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I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

Liquid Death just launched a $495 Bluetooth urn with Spotify.

Yep… an urn.

It generates your “eternal playlist” based on your listening habits.

Weird? Absolutely.

But that’s exactly why it works.

The moment you hear about it, something happens:

You read about it.
You send it to a friend.
You start thinking about what song would be on your eternal playlist.

And just like that, the campaign is doing its job.

Because the moment is the point. Not the product.

Brands spend their marketing budgets trying to convince people to care.

But Liquid Death does the opposite.

They create ideas that are so strange, bold or entertaining that people want to talk about them.

It’s been their playbook for years!

Coffin-shaped merch. Death-themed humour. Metal aesthetics for canned water.
Absurd collabs, and now... a Spotify urn.

Each campaign pushes the brand deeper into culture.

Will it sell out? Probably.

Will some people hate it? Absolutely.

That’s part of the strategy.

Brands that try to please everyone end up invisible, and the ones that create moments become impossible to ignore.

When a brand has that kind of permission, even the strangest ideas feel on-brand.

That permission is built through years of consistency and a brand identity clear enough that people always know what to expect.

That’s the real lesson:

Sell the moment, not the product.

And now I’m curious 👀

If you had to pick one song for your eternal playlist… what would it be?

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I share #brand and #growth insights daily, follow for more.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

There are two ways to grow: building or betting.

Building means you're putting in the energy. 
↳ You're creating something from scratch, testing it, iterating on it. You're trading time and effort for something that might pay off down the line.

Betting means you're backing what already works.
↳ You're using capital (money, trust, resources) to get leverage without doing all the heavy lifting yourself.

Most people default to one or the other.

But the real skill is knowing how to balance them.

Early stage → you have to build
You need to prove people actually want what you're making.

Got some momentum → start betting
Double down on what's working instead of only focusing on shiny new things.

At scale, you're just allocating resources to the highest return opportunities.

The hard part is knowing when to stop building.

When to stop launching new features.
When to stop saying yes to everything.
When to stop trying to own every channel in-house.

Because every yes costs energy and every no frees up capital to deploy somewhere better.

The key to growth is directing your effort strategically.

And most people keep focus only on building long after they should've started betting.

The Two Ways to Grow: building or betting.

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The Battle

Tom Alder

Isaac Peiris

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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);}Tom Alder's LinkedIn Performance

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