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

8 things I've learned while living in Valencia for the past month:

1/ The "slow" culture made me realise how much day-to-day urgency you experience everywhere else.

2/ Europe is the best timezone - 4 hours of deep work before US Eastern gets online.

3/ The city is easy-going and beautiful, but not efficient. Restaurants with lines out the door and empty tables, busses show up 15 mins late (or not at all), 'the system is down' is almost a daily occurence.

4/ I love a siesta but find it nearly impossible to refocus afterwards. Better for marking the transition from work → life.

5/ Meeting people as a digital nomad requires more intentionality than I thought. 

6/ Everywhere you look, you see someone's creative touch. Tiles, balconies, door handles. Everything is decorative, even if in a small way. 

7/ I didn't see a single person on a laptop in a cafe. 

8/ Paella is more than just a regional dish. Everyone is quick to recommend their favourite spot, share tips and rules for ordering it correctly, and tell their Paella-based memories. People worship it here (rightly so!)

—

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The team at beehiiv just showed me what they're launching next week.

I've analysed hundreds of product releases.

This one I'm gonna join live.

Most companies make tweaks and add tiny features.

beehiiv have been quietly building something that got me absolutely hyped.

Tyler Denk 🐝 and team have cracked something fundamental about how creators grow and monetise.

I can't share specifics (NDA), but here's what I can say:
If you're building a creator/media business in 2025, you should join us at the launch event!

Register here → https://lnkd.in/gh3tKmCZ

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).

—

📖 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

Imagine you are a marketing manager working for Coca Cola in 1971.

To make your most important decisions, you might have access to things like:
• Sales info
• Customer surveys
• Financial metrics

IF you spend a few days (possibly weeks) digging around the company for them. Remember, no computers back then.

Now, imagine you had instant access to:

→ The 5x highest performing newspaper/billboard/bus-stop ads out of the 10,000’s of ads Pepsi Co are running globally.

→ Real-time dashboards showing the number of daily, weekly, and monthly walk-ins for a McDonalds store that you’re doing a deal with.

→ A system that tracks every soft drink consumer in the world, showing you exactly what magazine they are most likely to get their beverage news from, and accurate trend data showing you a spike in conversations about “sugar-free”.

All entirely for free, fully self-serve, without ever needing to contact any Pepsi staff, McDonalds partners, or magazine analysts.

That is the world we live in.

But most people don't fully appreciate this. 

Every internet user and interaction leaves digital footprints. These footprints (if you know where to find them) reveal insights that make traditional ‘strategy theory’ feel like guesswork.

Not leveraging an 'information advantage' for your most important decisions, projects, products etc today is like voluntarily boxing yourself into a cubicle at Coca Cola HQ in 1971.

My vote: let’s use the tools available to us!

That's why I created 'Websites & Traffic' - a training that transforms you into a modern data-driven strategist.

If you want to skyrocket your persuasiveness, impact, and progression (but you’re looking for a modern-day approach that doesn’t involve slugging through more abstract ‘strategy theory’), this is for you! 

→ https://lnkd.in/gcWA7dyd

POV: You launched something and 1500+ people show up at once.

No paid ads. 
No viral post. 
Just an organic launch email.

Here's what the hype is all about:

Yesterday I launched 'Websites & Traffic'.

It's a training bundle for strategic professionals who need to back up their ideas with persuasive data. 

In just 5 days, you'll master 28 specific tactical skills that let you reverse-engineer any company's digital strategy - whether that's:
- Your #1 competitor
- A potential customer you're trying to close
- The market leader in your space
- Your highest-risk vendor
- Or simply a company whose strategy you want to learn from.

This isn't old school 'competitive analysis'.

These data-driven strategy skills are must-haves in today's age for just about any strategic use case:
- Preparing for customer interviews
- Increasing your own company's reach
- Analysing any player in your market
- Evaluating partnership opportunities
- Researching prospects before sales calls
- Investigating a trend you want to capitalise on

It works even if you've never heard of SimilarWeb, don't know what a UTM parameter is, and think "organic traffic" just means the line at the farmers market.

If you want to walk into your next big meeting as 'the person who always has the data', check it out → https://lnkd.in/gcWA7dyd

Why change fails. Brilliant. 

Source: Lippitt-Knoster Model - The 5 Components of Organisational Change.

Amazon website from every year since 1997, in chronological order.

—

👉 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

The Amazon website every year since 1998

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)

This is how you print $$$ by running ads in newsletters:

(And no, it's not generic copy + CTA to 'sign up now')

I've run 100s of ads in my 100k reader newsletter.

Worked with the best growth marketers in the world at companies like Atlassian, Clay, Vanta etc and I think I might have the highest renewal rate in the industry.

Here is the no-fluff playbook for getting results from newsletter ads:

1/ Less is more.
Longer ad copy (and longer sentences) ALWAYS perform worse. This may seem counterintuitive, I know it's tempting to write paragraphs about your product, but the quicker readers can internalise your message the more likely they'll read it in full. Aim for ~3 sentences / bullets total.

2/ Scannable format
Our best performing ads have the following characteristics:
- Start with a catchy, intriguing, spicy headline in *bold*
- Short punchy lines/lists with line breaks for breathing room
- Button with unique CTA ("Show me my security score", "I want the free playbook")

3/ Specific objectives.
Don't assume the newsletter knows what you want. People default to impressions/clicks, but every time I dig deeper there's a more important goal: "I want our founding story going viral", "I want a pretty report with data and community screenshots to share with my boss (my promotion is coming up)", "I want to run an isolated test to see if a waitlist/free trial/free plan works for us". 

4/ Don't just run 1 ad. 
I'm not saying this because more ads = more spend. There are 3 reasons you NEED to test with multiple ads: a) it takes multiple touchpoints for decision-makers to take action (when was the last time you saw a brand for the first time and 30s later you're on a $99/mo plan?), b) you test multiple angles to learn what resonates, c) most newsletters do bundle discounts so its cheaper per ad/open/click. 1 ad = throwing money away.

5/ Keep a swipe-file.
Seems obvious but not enough people do this. Collate your highest-performing social posts. Your competitors' best FB ads. Your best-converting landing page. Leverage these for your ad copy - don't ever start from scratch.

6/ You want partnership, not just sponsorship.
If your 'partner' isn't actively helping you tighten your copy, learn from the data, leverage their high-performing assets, investing their own money + time + resources into ensuring you win, you need to run.

7/ Backend funnels are magic.
This might be the most important alpha of all. The sponsors that are ripping right now do some variation of: run ads to a lead magnet/webinar → capture email → survey to segment (optional) → email nurture with education + social proof + objection-handling → sales handoff to book a demo/whiteglove/welcome offer. 1 person can build this in 1 day with AI, and it gets >10x better results per ad.

I have just 3 ad slots in my newsletter left this year, then I'm increasing prices for '26. 

If you're targeting strategy nerds (founders, PMs, devs), DM me!

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

📩 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

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed." William H. McRaven

One of the best and most powerful speeches
I've ever heard.

What do you think? Agree???

♻️ Repost this to help others in your network.
And follow Paul Storm for more!

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

Time with your kids is non-refundable.

A confession from a recovering workaholic...

A brilliant resource by my friend Yousif Hussain🔥 

I used to think I could do both:
Be present while checking emails.
Be engaged while thinking about work.

I was wrong.

My 2 and 4-year-old daughters taught me this:
↳ They notice when you're half-there
↳ They see through the "just one minute"
↳ They remember the distracted nods

The hard truth about "quick checks":
Your phone doesn't just steal 2 minutes.
It steals the momentum of connection.
The spark in their eyes when they're mid-story.
The spontaneous "Daddy, guess what?"

The change isn't easy, but it's necessary:
• Now my phone stays in another room
• Work has clear boundaries 
• When I'm with them, I'm fully with them

Yes, sometimes work needs attention.
But I've learned to be honest about it:
"Daddy needs 30 minutes to focus, then we'll play."
They understand more than we think.

I'm still not perfect.
Some evenings, work creeps in.
Some weekends, deadlines loom.
 
But I'm learning:
• The deadlines will wait
• The emails will pause
• Their childhood? It runs on its own clock

Because one day...
They won't wait by the door for you to come home.
They won't ask for "just one more story."
They won't need you to check for monsters.

Make the choice today.
Before it becomes tomorrow's regret.

It's not about being perfect.
It's about being present when it matters most.

How are you balancing work and presence with your kids?

♻️ Repost this to help others in your network.
And follow Paul Storm for more!

🚨 𝐀𝐈 𝐰𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐣𝐨𝐛. 

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥.

Let that sink in.

We’re not entering the future of work—we’re already in it.

AI is reshaping every role, every industry, and every career path.

And the winners?
- Not the coders.
- Not the engineers.
- But the professionals who learn how to use AI to move faster, think bigger, and solve smarter.


🔍 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤:

 • AI is already automating workflows from marketing to finance
 • Prompt engineers are now more valuable than junior analysts
 • AI users produce more with less — and companies notice
 • Hiring managers are searching for AI literacy in resumes
 • McKinsey: 375M+ jobs will shift by 2030 due to AI & automation


💡 𝐒𝐨, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝?

 • 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 → GPT-4, Claude, Midjourney, Excel with AI, Notion AI, etc.
 • 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗔𝗜-𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗹𝗲 → Use it daily. Make it part of your workflow.
 • 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹 → Strategy. Judgment. Empathy. Creativity.

Remember: AI doesn’t replace humans—it replaces tasks.

Those who can orchestrate AI will lead. The rest will watch.

𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐈—𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐝?

👇 Let’s debate this: Is AI a bigger opportunity or threat to your job?
 (Only one answer gets you promoted in the next 3 years.)

p.s. this cool video is from my friend Tim Gray & Breakout Clips - follow him!

♻️ Repost this to help others in your network.
And follow Paul Storm for more!

>> The future of enterprise AI is being built in stadiums.

Not in boardrooms.

Most people look at labs to understand where AI is heading.
But the real breakthroughs?

They’re happening on the gridiron, the court and the track.

In the NFL, Amazon Web Services (AWS) processes billions of tracking data points every season, turning them into live Next Gen Stats like completion probability, pressure prediction and even injury risk.

In Formula 1, AWS simulations helped design a new generation of cars that reduced downforce loss from 50 percent to 15 percent, reshaping how close drivers can race.

On the PGA TOUR, Every Shot Live streams more than 32,000 shots per tournament, generating personalised viewing feeds for millions of fans.

 
This isn’t sports tech.

This is the exact AI architecture businesses will adopt next.

 
- Real time data pipelines.

- Cloud scale analytics.

- Generative models.

- Decision systems that operate in seconds, not in quarterly reports.

 
Next week, DIGITAL STORM weekly will be on the ground in Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent, speaking directly with AWS leaders and partners from F1, the NFL, the NBA, the PGA TOUR and the Bundesliga, exploring how to copy paste the sports AI stack into real enterprises.

If you’re attending and want to benchmark your data strategy against F1 or the NFL, comment LAS VEGAS and let’s meet.

----
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The Battle

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