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.

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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

📩 For collaborations or LinkedIn growth support → DM me or email paul_akira_storm@icloud.com
⸻

🌍 WHO I AM

I’m Paul Storm, CMO & Co-Founder of Digital Storm Weekly — one of the fastest-growing AI newsletters worldwide, with 1.3M+ LinkedIn followers and 530,000+ subscribers.

I help founders, creators, and tech leaders build magnetic LinkedIn brands that turn visibility into influence, leads, and opportunity.

⸻

🚀 WHAT I DO

✔️ Daily LinkedIn content in your authentic voice
✔️ Carousels, visuals & authority-driven formats
✔️ Full content calendar and seamless scheduling
✔️ Profile optimization that builds trust & drives conversions
✔️ More reach, more leads, more inbound opportunities

We’ve worked with global brands like NVIDIA, Huawei, and BlackBerry to amplify their growth and authority.

⸻

🎯 WHO I HELP

You’re building something big. But LinkedIn feels like a burden.

❌ Don’t know what to post
❌ Too busy to stay consistent
❌ No system to turn visibility into growth
❌ Your brand deserves attention — but your time is limited

That’s where I come in.

⸻

💡 WHY IT WORKS

This isn’t “posting for the sake of posting.”
It’s high-performance brand positioning designed to scale your presence, pipeline, and reputation.

With Digital Storm Weekly, we’ve built one of the largest AI-driven growth platforms — read by decision-makers at Apple, Meta, Google, and Microsoft.
I know how to turn visibility into authority, clients, and long-term impact.

⸻

✨ Want to grow without burning out?
DM me “GROW” or email digitalstormweekly@gmail.com
.

Let’s make LinkedIn your biggest growth asset.

Paul Storm

>>Artificial Intelligence and energy are fundamentally interconnected

That was the most obvious takeaway from Dr. Sultan Al Jaber's keynote address and the launch of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2026.

AI is advancing at a rate quicker than any industrial system we have previously developed.
- Every model.
- Every data center.
- Every autonomous system ultimately runs on electrons.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀.
Computing is not the barrier. 
Algorithms are not a bottleneck.
𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀.

The UAE is taking a unique approach to this through Masdar. 
Not as an environmental constraint. 
However, this is a systems engineering problem.

𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱.
For AI operations that operate continuously without interruption. 
For societies in which digital infrastructure is as vital as water or transportation networks.

This represents the transition from intermittent generation to intelligent energy systems. 
Systems that resemble AI itself.
Continuous. Predictable. Scalable.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗮𝗯𝘀.
It will be determined who can power intelligence at scale without disrupting grids or economies.

𝗦𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Are we still talking about AI like it floats in the cloud
Or are we finally ready to admit that 𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆?

𝗔𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲.

----
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👉 Found this helpful? Share it! ♻️

Founder of one of the largest AI newsletters with ​>550,000+ readers.

>> Harvard just removed the velvet rope.

Let that sink in.

The same AI education once reserved for a 200000 dollar degree
- is now online
- free
- complete
- and unfiltered.

This is not marketing content.
Not a teaser.
Not highlights.

It is the real curriculum.
Full lectures.
Full frameworks.

The exact mental models shaping the next generation of leaders.
Here is the uncomfortable truth most people miss.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲.

Harvard did not lower the bar.
They removed the gatekeeper.

Six open tracks now cover what the market quietly expects leaders to understand
1️⃣ Generative AI strategy
2️⃣ Machine learning logic
3️⃣ Data science foundations
4️⃣ Computational thinking for executives
5️⃣ Edge AI
6️⃣ High dimensional analysis

This is not about becoming an engineer.
It is about not becoming irrelevant.

Knowledge is no longer scarce.
Execution is.

Harvard opened the door.
𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵

Find the links below:

1️⃣ Generative AI for Leaders
Strategy and policy from the Harvard Kennedy School
🔗 https://lnkd.in/drpQDwMk
2️⃣ CS50 AI with Python
How intelligent systems actually think
🔗 https://lnkd.in/dRWVXa6m
3️⃣ Data Science Machine Learning
Build a real recommendation engine
🔗 https://lnkd.in/d9STFdNm
4️⃣ CS50 for Business
Computational thinking for executives
🔗 https://lnkd.in/dpKPt-sV
5️⃣ Fundamentals of TinyML
AI on tiny edge devices
🔗 https://lnkd.in/dgfyBhkC
6️⃣ High Dimensional Data Analysis
When Excel breaks
🔗 https://lnkd.in/dXSt3JKj

𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲
Courses 3, 5, and 6 are free via Audit This Course


----
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>> Let’s accept this … 

It can feel overwhelming to use AI tools when there are so many…

The truth? 

AI is already replacing repetitive work faster than most teams can adapt.

The real problem isn’t too many tools, it’s not choosing the right ones. 
 
That’s why this AI Cheatsheet exists, to show you exactly which tools save hours of busywork every single day. 

It breaks down the best options across every category that matters for modern work.

➔  Here’s what it covers:

 - AI Chatbots
 - AI Presentation
 - AI Coding Assistance
 - AI Email Assistance
 - AI Image Assistance
 - AI Spreadsheet
 - AI Meeting Notes
 - AI Writing Generation
 - AI Scheduling
 - AI Video Generation
 - AI Graphic Design
 - AI Data Visualization

 
➔  Here’s what to master first:

 - Automate your admin work with AI schedulers
 - Write, design, and present faster with AI copilots
 - Turn ideas into visuals, videos, or insights in minutes
 - Focus on strategy, let AI handle execution

So, are you still doing manual work AI could finish in seconds?

----
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☑ Follow me Paul Storm  

👉 Found this helpful? Share it! ♻️

🚀 Build real apps faster than ever
Abacus AI Deep Agent turns plain English into production ready software
Frontend backend database business logic
All connected. All deployable.

🔗 Try Abacus AI Deep Agent
https://lnkd.in/daDgYXmz

🧠 Used by founders teams and builders who care about speed not demos

taplio

The Battle

Tom Alder

Paul Storm

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