In 2025, I got invited to LinkedIn’s HQ in Amsterdam.

Cool experience. Met some great people. But one thing stuck with me that I haven’t talked about publicly.

The core topic of the event? How to use LinkedIn’s advertising tools to boost your personal profile posts.

Two years ago, this wasn’t even an option. Now there’s a little button at the top right corner of every post that says “Boost.” You put in $50, $100, $200 and LinkedIn pushes it to more people.

If you’re building on LinkedIn as a climate tech founder, you need to understand where this is heading.

LinkedIn is moving in the same direction as Facebook

The platform is incentivizing people to pay for reach that used to be free.

And the more people boost, the less organic content gets distributed to make room for it.

That’s why your reach feels like it’s been declining. The platform is shifting its model.

This matters because if you’re investing time building an audience on LinkedIn, you’re building on rented land. And the landlord just raised the rent.

My experience with reach in 2025

My LinkedIn reach barely changed last year. It grew +2.2%.

But my revenue doubled.

The quality of my engagement completely changed. A year ago, I was getting likes from the personal branding crowd. This year? Climate tech founders, VCs, and senior execs started showing up.

Same reach. Different audience. Better business.

Vanity metrics don’t matter. A lesson I keep re-learning myself. Who sees your content and what they do with it matters.

4 simplest ways to deal with this

I’m not a fan of boosting. I’m very much an organic-first person. But I won’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

If you want to experiment with it, do it. But it’ll dilute your organic data. If you publish 10 posts without boosting and 1 with, you can’t compare them the same way. You’ll need to treat boosted content separately when analyzing what resonates.

The core idea behind posting hasn’t changed.

Your content strategy shouldn’t depend on the algorithm being nice to you. It should depend on whether the right 50-100 people see it and whether it starts conversations.

1/ Stop obsessing over impressions. Start looking at who’s viewing your profile after you post. Are they investors? Customers? Partners? If yes, your content is working, even if the numbers look smaller than last year.

2/ Use your posts as conversation starters. The DMs, the replies, the introductions: that’s where LinkedIn converts for founders.

3/ Double down on content analytics. When organic reach shrinks, you can’t afford to keep posting stuff that doesn’t land. Learn to read your own data. What topics does your audience engage with? What formats fall flat? What’s worth doubling down on? Now’s the time to 5x the effort on quality.

4/ Build your email list. You own that. You don’t own your LinkedIn reach. If the algorithm keeps going this direction, having a direct line to your audience is insurance.

In 2026, I don’t care if my reach drops 50%.

I’m tired of likes and impressions dictating my happiness or business success.

I’d rather have 100 climate tech founders see my posts than 10,000 personal branding gurus.

That’s why I’m doubling down on my email list this year. It’s the one channel I actually own.

If LinkedIn wants to become Facebook, fine. But I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket anymore.