Hello experiMENTAList, it’s Sundar 👋

I’m a former Head of Marketing Science at Uber where I optimized $1Bn+ in spend across Brand, Performance, and Lifecycle.

Now, I’m sharing the same playbooks top Consumer Techs use to prove, optimize, and scale Marketing ROI with you!

Thank you for being a valuable part of this growing community of 2.6K+ marketing leaders from Uber, DoorDash, Google, Spotify, and many more.

Now let’s step into the lab!

PS: If you know a colleague or friend that might benefit from this newsletter, send them here.

It’s the first week of the year and let’s be honest… none of us are really ready to be back (including myself), so I’m not going to throw an in depth playbook at you today.

Instead, I’ll share a brief look back at 2025 and the top 10 articles of 2025 in case you’re still on vacation and want to read more 🙂

I’ll also quickly touch on what I expect 2026 to look like for experiMENTAL.

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2025 was a fantastic year after an abysmal 2024.

First, I welcomed my daughter who is just the cutest thing in the world.

Second, professionally, 2025 confirmed that the corporate life is not for me and that I am going to spend the next few years making the creator life work. I live in the Netherlands, my cost basis is quite low so I don’t need to set ludicrously large goals. I just need to show up consistently and authentically (PS if you’re in Amsterdam and want to say hi, let me know!).

Third, I also confirmed that I love writing. This newsletter has been a huge source of inspiration and happiness for me and I’m glad I kept at it consistently. I wrote almost one a week. Nuts!

Anyway, without further ado, here are the top 10 most popular articles (by open rate):

First, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Time is absolutely flying and I can’t believe we’re already in 2026.

Second, in case you missed it, experiMENTAL is now completely free! I got rid of the paid tier, so now everyone has access to the archive of 50+ articles in addition to the ones I’ll be writing this year.

Here’s why:

When I launched the paid offering, I wanted to learn one thing: would people pay for my content. The answer is yes! Many of you became paid subscribers, but this is where the business side of business comes up.

My paid subscribers weren’t growing fast enough for it to be a sustainable business model any time soon.

In addition, having a paid offering put a lot more pressure on each week for me to deliver content and with two kids, that has proven way more challenging than I anticipated.

Third, the distribution game has changed. LinkedIn is not the same high volume (go viral) place it once was which means I have to adapt my strategy. The algorithm now focuses on serving to the relevant audience which is great but at a much lower volume. Gotta adapt to the times.

Finally, having a paid offering gave away a lot my flexibility. I could no longer use my newsletter as a way to introduce consulting or my potential course (still working on it) so it limited my optionality. In the early stages of building a content business, optionality is key.

A special shoutout to everyone that became a paid subscriber. Your support was a huge confidence boost and meant everything to me. Seriously, thank you.

So, what does 2026 look like for me?

If my 2025 word of the year was CLARITY then my word of the year for 2026 is AUTHENTICITY. If you read some of my early work, you’ll know that I like to keep things very informal and light. I felt like I lost a bit of that when I went paid and I went down a rabbit hole of “how to write better”. Fuck that. I’m going to be writing how I want to because honestly that’s what you’ve all told me you like.

But, I’m also going to be showing up as myself more on LinkedIn as well as TikTok (new), Instagram (new) and X (trying to kickstart again). Oh, I’ll also be more present on Youtube through my podcast. Expect to see A LOT more of me.

In addition, by rolling back my free tier, I gain back a lot of flexibility to explore different avenues. I LOVE teaching so naturally the idea of a cohort based course seems perfect and might be something I look into as well.

“This sounds like you’re going to be doing a shit ton”

Yes, yes it does, but I’m not because here’s my priority:

Everything else I mentioned above is a nice to have but will be dropped if / when I don’t have time because I’ve also pulled my son out of day care on Wednesdays and Fridays so I can spend more time with him before he starts school in September. I can’t wait to hang out more with that little rascal.

I’ll be off on vacation next week in sunny Tenerife, but will talk to you all the week after.

That’s it for this week!

Stay experiMENTAL,

Sundar