That’s a very cool idea! It’s great you went with it and made a piece about it. I’ve started running LinkedIn ads myself for my business and maybe you could have tried something along the lines of targeting “people following:” and picking influencers that you know are working in the industry or company pages like Complex etc.
Also I wonder if LinkedIn, like Facebook, takes a bit of time adjusting to your target audience, as in the more your ad runs the more it adjusts to the audience to become more and more effective. So maybe putting less daily budget but running it longer might help.
Anyway, those are just suggestions for your next release if you want to run the concept back! Also I just copped your Journal EP so I guess that’s that long-tail LinkedIn conversion curve working out for you :)