Here are the 23 Growth Mentors of July

1. Katya Sivkova

Describe yourself

Hey, I’m Katya – B2B Marketing strategist. For over 6 years I’ve been helping fast-growing tech companies to develop their marketing strategy, to launch large-scale marketing initiatives and run demand generation & ABM campaigns.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

For over 6 years I’ve been helping fast-growing tech companies to develop their marketing strategy, I would like to give back to the community.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

“What is Growth for me?

• Growth meaning self-development: building new skills, challenging myself to get better and helping people around me to succeed.
• Growth meaning change: never accepting the status quo, looking for new ways of doing business and finding new opportunities.
• Growth meaning progress: experimenting and continuously improving marketing tactics & overall strategy.”

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Demand generation, as B2B marketing is going through a tremendous transformation now and you don’t want to miss that train.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

After an account-mapping exercise with a Sales team at a scale-up I worked for, I had a hit list of about 100 companies to focus my marketing efforts on. The sales cycle was 9-12 months, so, we had to play a strategic game and leverage all the resources we had. By building a smart account-based marketing campaign, I managed to increase the engagement with key accounts by 42% and generated a sales pipeline for the sales team with 33% new customer revenue.

View Growthmentor Profile

2. Salem Smith

Describe yourself

“I love building products for to solve customer problems that further drive happiness. For 11 years, I’ve been lucky to have worked on many products across verticals, still used today.

My career has spanned being an early PM at Huawei launching big platforms, Chief of Product at Rocket Internet tripling user base, revenue, scaling teams and taking org to IPO. Currently Head of Product at TheCuralate where I help drive strategy and Monetization for 6 verticals.”

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

There are a host of talented and passionate people who are intrigued about solving real people problems and I want to help find and fit them in the craft.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Largely a mental model that imagines, orchestrates and executes flywheels, network effects and levers that deepen customer obsession and tightens feedback loops for development of key metrics across products.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Strategy. Because I have built over a dozen successful products from scratch where I led strategy vis-a-vis growth. This is a strong forte for me and I have seen the highs and lows in strategy. What could go right and wrong, across 4 distinct market territories.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

We had gone from trying to form a new market on a whiteboard to stepping into an incredibly fiercely competitive market. The tech scene felt different in the pandemic, a totally different dynamic as compared to 2020 [pre-pandemic], but it turned out to be a much better one for the product org I was lucky to lead.

As with all product teams, there was a core thesis of how to build a differentiator in the product vertical we chose, and we started on quite early. All sorts — good and bad — were ongoing in fintech / lending at the time, but we were focused on our goal and flexible on the vision.

We launched a fintech product in Asia, where our Market risk [demand] was fairly proven, execution [strategy] was well understood, but the hard part was in the delivery of value against existing competition. I am sharing these important lessons and recommendations we learnt with you, to show how we reached $210K MRR from 0$ in just 5 months.

We knew that our Marketing had to begin before we built the product. We wanted an audience to drive top of mind awareness to all stakeholders about our product before any hard coding starts.

Next, the success of your launch day is heavily dependent on your preparation level, weeks/months out. We leveraged a product aggregator [ imagine product hunt] and recruited a list of beta users who were happy to support us, we built omni channels to drive engaging conversation about our launch, laced with exclusive content and a carefully crafted posting cadence.

Because we knew our customers [with the largest size/audience] were spread thin online, we launched on multiple channels. This also helped us to know what channel to double down on and which to kill.

Launch was here and we had the ‘regular’ first day boost. Product managers should place laser focus on the following days. We captured and engaged the users permanently with newsletters, trivias, and exclusive content curated by us.

Acquisition might have been achieved [to an extent] but we had to maintain it. One reliable method was SEO. We wanted organic users and we focused on that from day 1 by adding relevant tags to our page – title, meta, h1s, h2s and optimizing the tags with our content. Be patient as SEO takes time to show results. For instance, our organic traffic grew 200% from 5.5K to 16K in 9 weeks.

Distribution is key and we decided to build a core loop around it. I moved 75% of our man-hours to focus on distribution and 25% on building. Take note, ensure that you build a structured distribution strategy to achieve clear results and easily catch bugs.

Our 25% was mostly spent talking to customers, listening to them and prioritizing what made sense to our goals, their problems and the market trajectory. It’s fine if you want to use MOSCOW, KANO, RICE, BRICE, etc. But most importantly, listen to the market.

Finally, we continued to share our product’s story everywhere we could, online. Why we built it, other user’s experiences and some feature updates to get customer feelers in real-time. Nobody wants to just see links to your latest blog or your feature announcement.

Finally, take advantage of forums and communities and build trust by providing value selflessly. An example was helping a set of gamers fix some tokenized payments with some of our engineers. Those folks rallied the [online] community when we needed them the most, just a few weeks later.

I hope this helps anyone building in some way. Building a SaaS product is very complex and chaotic but I guarantee that you could use some bits and pieces from our experience to drive some clarity on your teams.

View Growthmentor Profile

3. Doug Lawrence

Describe yourself

I am an international certified mentor that has worked in over 30 different industries as a mentor. I have expanded my mentoring practice to include working in the mental health space as part of the support structure for mental health. I have in excess of 2200 hours of mentoring and have provided training to others to become effective mentors.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I am an international certified mentor and I wish to share my lived experiences with others helping them to learn and grow on a personal and professional basis.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset would be someone who is a visionary and is continuously looking at ways to grow a business from a product and service perspective as well as growing the people that are part of the organization.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Leadership. There is a leadership talent shortage globally and leadership mentoring can help alleviate that issue.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Mentoring vs Termination. I am brought into organizations where they are thinking of terminating an employee. I work with that employee for no more than 5 sessions resulting in a behaviour change and the return of a productive employee to the organization.

View Growthmentor Profile

4. Fay Lodder

Describe yourself

Hi! I’m Fay, a Growth Consultant/ Strategist that looks at growth holistically, asking companies the tough questions to get them closer to their growth ambitions. I helped +50 start-ups, scale ups and corporates gain the right mindset, measurement systems and tools to ensure maximum growth. I am happiest spotting weaknesses in the funnel and defining and executing growth strategies, with a focus on 360 degrees paid campaign strategies.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I want to put my knowledge to more good use by helping others that struggle with their growth strategies, while also further increasing my own coaching skills (p.s. GrowthMentor was highly recommended by Justyna and Daphne!).

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

How to define the right growth strategies.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Being open to fail in order to learn and grow.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

“Problem: For a start up we needed to validate the amount of interest of potential buyers in receiving guidance during the buying journey vs. moving through the catalogue by oneself (due to complexity of product).

Solution: Within 1 week we launched a pop-up on the homepage that was linked to a survey to help users get to the right product based on 3 questions. The high click rate showed us that the interest in personal assistance was huge and we needed to change the product proposition.”

View Growthmentor Profile

5. Abhishek Paryani

Describe yourself

“A brief introduction about myself :

• I started my career with gaming (arcade) and moved into systems that were installed for FEC’s and Casinos. I had training from St. Louis to understand how cash management works with million-dollar businesses. I also successfully launched an ERP and CRM system in house.
• I got my MBA from a reputed uni in UK in strategy and risk management.
• I was the 5th member of a wallet company based out of UAE. Later expanded into Sweden (Umea, Gothenburg), and Australia (Sydney). I worked with fiat and briefly with Stellar as a choice for cryptocurrency to solve multi-currency issues and cross-border points transfers. I integrated our systems with PoS and e-commerce marketplaces such as Shopify and WooCommerce.
• I got my engg degree in Big Data and Machine-Learning from Hong Kong. Wrote my first academic paper with my professor on blockchain.
• I joined a consulting company out of Switzerland. My first project was in Bangkok with the largest bank for wealth management practice transformation. Successfully delivered project in one year (130 business requirements, 3 phases)
• Fast forward to date, I help companies join EMQ’s infrastructure to move money cross border with remittance and B2B options. I also formulate strategy, build D2B product, and manage a team of 6 to integrate and onboard partners.”

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

FinTech in most countries is like walking through a maze. I hope I can be the mentor that lays green illuminated lights so the founders/teams can follow along to reach for an exit (i.e IPO, buyout, super growth).

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

It’s not just about growing users, customers, or topline. It’s about profits, sustainability and inclusion.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

FinTech strategies: Pivoting is hard if you dont find your product-market fit. What are the most likely options based on your already existing capabilities ? That’s where mentorship comes in.

Describe an out-of-the-box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

“The wallet company I worked for, had two strategies for getting users into the funnel. Setup a physical camp and get users to experience the wallet features curated by our well trained promoters/ambassadors. Or get them onboarded through FB/Twitter and other social media channels.

Without any surprise, the users we onboarded via physical camps had shown better LTV. We understood why: the ambassadors walked them through 360 degree features, gave them a sense of security and had a face to the app. This is an important lesson. The CAC is higher but the LTV is higher too. We soon started to have a highly curated onboarding journey on the app, video tutorials by our own staff, and voice chat for anyone who wanted to speak with our staff for onboarding issues.”

View Growthmentor Profile

6. Kuba Serafinowski

Describe yourself

I’m a lazy problem solver, so I don’t like to repeat tedious tasks. This, plus my curiosity about human nature led me to marketing and technology. I strategize and scale user and customer acquisition processes.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I like problem solving and want to get some variety in addition to my in-house 9-5.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Growth mindset means always learning and bettering yourself and your offering. It needs to be driven by customer and user needs in order to succeed.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Organic traffic acquisition and anticipating user and customer needs.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

“When tasked with forecasting organic traffic growth for a brand new domain I used a new approach applying machine learning and using past data to quickly create possible scenarios. Given this was my first, I was quite happy with myself when the real data was following my forecast closely.”

View Growthmentor Profile

7. Meredith Jacobson

Describe yourself

I’m a Boston native who built my career in Los Angeles and New York before returning home in 2018. As a result, my career evolved in ways I never would have imagined. In the booming influencer marketing industry, I went from working in startups to a global agency and the juxtaposition of those experiences revealed the opportunity to build a consulting company for the businesses “in-between.” I spent the first year of my business networking and defining my offering, the second year gaining momentum, and the third scaling. I’m a firm believer in the power of community and I’m most passionate about facilitating mutually beneficial connections.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

I would be nowhere without the guidance and generosity of my mentors, so I find it important and rewarding to give back to those who are trying to find their way.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset means that a company has iterated and figured out an offering that provides value to its customer, and is ready to take it to the next level.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Choosing a role that is going to be a good fit for them.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

In influencer marketing, problems aren’t particularly complex. It’s just about building relationships, being respectful and knowing how to properly manage expectations with both the paying brand client and the influencers/reps who are paid talent.

View Growthmentor Profile

8. Nicole Chin

Describe yourself

I have nearly a decade of experience in strategy consulting and technology. My career path was a rather unconventional one– rendering me to eventually become an engineered generalist. Currently, I head Marketing Technology (Growth) in a $100m edtech company.

In just one sentence, why do you want to become a growth mentor?

Mentoring has also helped me grown as an individual as it’s a two-way relationship.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset to me is the foundation for someone to take action for their own self-improvement. It also signifies an effort to control our ego. It’s impossible to learn what we think we already know, just like how we don’t know what we don’t know.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Growth and Marketing. I always had an interest in marketing because marketing is all about people. In addition, I am business-oriented and thus I also enjoy solving problems related to growth.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

This happens often in leadership as complex problems often gets escalated and often times need to be zoomed out from ground level, so this is basically my job. A recent example would be how I managed to provide a solution to my team to launch a product with a hands-on “hacky” solution (well, let’s just call it an MVP) despite not given the engineering resource that was required.

View Growthmentor Profile

9. Denise Noroes

Describe yourself

“I believe that empowering women-led business is key to a sustainable and more balanced future.

Let share knowledge and experiences on how to use performance marketing to increase growth to sustainable products and companies with social causes towards empowering girls and women.”

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

I believe that marketing and business are powerful tools to boost ideas and honest causes.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Performance Marketing

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Launching a startup in another country (as a marketeer, not a founder).

View Growthmentor Profile

10. Andreea Popa

Describe yourself

“Hi! I’m Andreea. I started my career as a digital marketer and had an entire journey through various types of online marketing for about eight years.

Whether I was working with big companies or startups, I was the person that was building systems for dashboards and for analyzing the data.

I started noticing a pattern. Most businesses collect data (or sometimes not even that), but they don’t always use it to expand their business.

About one year ago I launched my own project – KPIs Studio. Its mission is to help people better track, interpret, and understand their data.”

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I want to make it easier for people to grasp their marketing and business data in a more comprehensive and timely way.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

“The growth mindset is about being a bit of a rebel, and going against the stream.

Trying instead of assuming it will not work.

Risking instead of always choosing the safe way.

Iterating instead of setting and forgetting.”

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

KPIs. Fortunately, KPIs are quite a wide topic.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

One of my clients needed a way to pull data only from specific pages on their website. And they needed this for two timeframes: after 30 days and after 60 days of publishing a content piece.

They were doing this manually and it required a lot of effort from the team.

I put together a looped search-and-filter system using the Google Analytics Sheets add-on. With this, I managed to help them automate the entire process and save a lot of the team’s time.”

View Growthmentor Profile

11. Bhuvan Arora

Describe yourself

Hey, I am Bhuvan — Product Lead at Elastic. I have a background in Software Development and have built successful products from the ground up. I am a problem solver at heart keeping the user at the core of all decisions.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Over the years, I have learned various skills from Software Development to Product Management online, following in the footsteps of others who have done it before. Mentors played a key role in the process for me guiding in that journey and grooming my experiences. Now, I want to pay it back to the community by helping others in their unique journey.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Understanding the power of compounding. Doing hard things first and building on top of those wins until the growth engine powers itself.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Product Management with the focus on user experience and using engineering to build a moat.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

At a social media SaaS analytics startup, users were complaining that they could not get deep enough insights into their social media posts. While dogfooding, I realized that the analytics dashboard was too slow to load. I hypothesized that social media marketers, being busy folks did not want to wait too long for insights leading to the perception of shallow insights. I went ahead and improved the web loading speed through platform optimizations reducing load times by 60%. The feedback was extremely positive and customers mentioned being able to get deeper insights into their posts.

View Growthmentor Profile

12. Ryan Paul Gibson

Describe yourself

“Howdy, I’m Ryan.

I have 20 years of marketing miles. I’ve been a director, responsible for the odd million dollar budget…but also supervised bootstrapped budgets at startups.

I’ve worked with dozens of entrepreneurs, founders and businesses of all shapes & sizes. I took a small detour working as a TV & Radio reporter. I’m most passionate about Customer Research, Content, Thought Leadership and Brand Story.”

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I have found that early-stage companies really struggle with conducting qualitative customer research to help map out the buying journey and guide marketing decisions. And when your working with a limited budget or resources, having these insights is a major advantage. I’d like to pass on my experience and process so they can use it in their roles.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Growth can’t happen without having a strong grasp of why and how your customers are ACTUALLY buying. Unlock that and unlock growth.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

How to map out a customer’s actual buying journey, from the first time they recognized a problem, to the time they purchased a solution – using 1:1 customer interviews.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

I helped get a non-profit get millions of unique views internationally using free google ads.

View Growthmentor Profile

13. Claude Beaupre

Describe yourself

I am a Marketing Advisor at OMERS Ventures, one of Canada’s largest venture capital firms. I’m responsible for advising disruptive tech companies and coaching their marketing team on how to leverage, measure and optimize performance products and brand assets. I’ve created 50+ marketing initiatives for the likes of Google, Manulife, General Motors and a number of Travel companies. I’m a generalist, having worked across every marketing channel, both traditional and digital. I’m also deeply knowledgeable when it comes to performance marketing, brand development, thought leadership and marketing analytics.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I’m passionate about supporting disruptive tech companies find their footing, unlock funding dollars and exponentially grow their business with unique growth strategies.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset means taking a step back and recognizing any and all possible avenues to growing a business. It means being deeply engrained in the audience’s mindset to help recognize the motivators that will help increase conversions.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Brand development is a topic I’m deeply passionate about and experienced in — both from a strategic long term view and short term acquisition lens.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

I advised a startup offering services to new graduates who needed help finding their first job. I had the idea that, instead of spending money on marketing, invest it in creating a high paying and desirable summer internship where candidate could write their own title and job description. This approach would be posted on typical job board for students, driving engagement to the site, creating a viral job posting!

View Growthmentor Profile

14. Anna Dibner

Describe yourself

Seasoned marketer with more than 15 years of experience of building brands, shaping the value propositions and driving relevance across the user journeys.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

The willingness to share the years of experience in brand building, proposition development and growth hacking.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

“Hi there! I am a seasoned marketer with more than 15 years of experience in building the Brands, shaping the value propositions and transforming the product relevance across the user journey. I love hunting for the new painpoints and finding the most creative solutions to address them. Passionate storyteller and innovator. Can’t wait to share my expertise with you!”

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Shaping the value propositions.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Finding the “next big things”. Just had this “damn, I’m good at it” moment yesterday on a plane while reading the industry deep dive on the trends that I predicted and made the leading insight platforms for my innovation strategy.”

View Growthmentor Profile

15. Alex Membrillo

Describe yourself

No nonsense and lively, I will get straight to the point with mentees and use their time wisely. I want people to succeed and avoid the costly mistakes I’ve made. In return, I would ask that mentees listen to advice and implement suggestions and return with results 90 days later.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Help business owners avoid the nonsense I went through.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Good is never good enough.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Entrepreneurship and how to grow through sales & marketing.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

I got ranked #1 for Healthcare Marketing Agency using nothing but contractors from Upwork.com. Good marketing doesn’t have to be expensive.

View Growthmentor Profile

16. Yohnathan Carletti

Describe yourself

I have more than 13 years in tech, more than half of those in Product. I love tech and my biggest passion is looking for opportunities to change the world in a positive way with it. Nature and outdoors are my place of work.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I want to share my knowledge. Its said that the best way to learn is to teach.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset is looking at all challenges with the perspective of taking advantage of it. When a problem arises you transform it into an opportunity. Growth is everywhere, its elusive but is there. The trick is to know how to capture it and expose it.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Team development and growth. I think the only way to actually achieve any endeavor goals is with a very well grounded and healthy team. The right skills are optimal, but a real cohesion between the company, the team goals and the individuals is what really puts the fuel in your rocket ship.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

“I thought about an internal tooling platform that allowed to configure in a very simple user friendly way all the configurations for all the features of this company app. It was a new plug and play platform that allow the company to manage itself in a more efficient way, and allow it to grow faster and exponentially by reducing debt. It was a very straightforward solution that also removed silos across the company.”

View Growthmentor Profile

17. Camiel Roex

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Camiel, a technical growth marketeer. After having worked with multiple startups, I trained hundreds of people on Growth and coached a dozen high-growth startups. Now I help businesses grow by developing and implementing sustainable growth strategies through consultancy, coaching, mentoring, and execution. I love teaching just as much as I love learning.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Teaching others what I have learned and then learning from them, in turn, is what makes me get up in the morning.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset means not shying away from a challenge, but instead trying to find a way to tackle it by doing things you’ve never done before. This is always a scary phase, but it’s the best feeling when you find inspiration from courses, blogs, articles, videos, or people within your network. You “can’t do something” only as long as you haven’t done it, so just take the first step and you’ll see that learning something new is just a bunch of first steps.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Growth mindset and process. My best moments from teaching Growth were when people with decades of professional experience suddenly felt re-energized and inspired again by this new mindset and way of working.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

At Floryn (an SME moneylender) we had trouble closing out deals since customers would often compare our offer to 3-4 different competitors, and we couldn’t compete with banks on interest rates. So we needed to compete in a different way. I set up a Zapier automation for a custom slide deck with details about the deal pulled from HubSpot, an intro slide with context about why they needed financing, our USPs, etc. I also wrote some JavaScript that made a cost calculation in readable story format, based on the customer’s interest rate and fees. Customers would receive this slide deck in .pdf format, making it easy to share with their internal stakeholders and accountant. This helped our sales team close more deals while saving them time explaining everything on the phone.

View Growthmentor Profile

18. Ranjani Parthasarathy

Describe yourself

I am a growth marketer with 18+ years of experience leading and executing digital marketing strategies and campaigns. I have built and led high performance teams and inculcated a growth mindset within my team. I am passionate about what I do and have experience across multiple industries which has helped me advance my knowledge. I am also a data geek and constantly strive to drive innovation in digital marketing through use of data.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I have 18+ experience in digital marketing and have worked in start ups and helped them with exponential growth. I have built and led high performance growth teams and really keen to use my knowledge to mentor.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

A growth mindset is adopting a mindset of 1. continuous learning 2. adopt an approach of testing a hypothesis, taking calculated risks. Someone with a growth mindset will not be disheartened by failures or look for 100% perfection. Its really about what you are learning every week and how you use this towards delivering growth. Learning is the core KPI.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Performance Marketing as I am passionate about growth and use of data to drive digital marketing forward.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

In one of the companies I worked for, I noticed a drop in quality of customers acquired. To mitigate this, I worked with Data Science to find an AI solution that would use internal and external data to understand what constitutes a good quality and high CLV customer. This was then applied to our acquisition channels driving an 8% incremental growth (of good quality customers).

View Growthmentor Profile

19. Jonathan Baillie Strong

Describe yourself

I’m the founder of Spotlight Podcasting, a B2B podcast production agency based in New York. In addition to helping people launch and produce podcasts, I’m happy to share the systems, workflows and processes we’ve implemented to scale the agency.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

To pay it forward i.e. pass on the benefits I have experienced through mentorship myself and connect with other like-minded individuals.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

The belief that you can overcome any challenge by adopting an approach that prioritizes experimentation, learning and building resilience.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Podcasting! Since 2013 I have helped hundreds of businesses launch successful shows. In particular, I’d like to help people understand how effective interview podcasting is as part of an outreach and relationship building strategy.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Building out multi-step automations for on-boarding and operations that include logic and conditions – making sure that everything runs seamlessly.

View Growthmentor Profile

20. Spiros Maragkoudakis

Describe yourself

“Hi, My name is Spiros. I am an experienced commercial strategist living in London, U.K. I am managing a group of travel agencies in seven countries and my skill set lies with digital marketing (strategy and implementation) , commercial strategy and business development. Finding solutions to complex problems is what I enjoy the most.

Helping others fuels me with energy!”

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

I love helping people to shape their careers path as well as optimising companies performance . I have an extensive experience in digital marketing and commercial strategy and nothing could make me happier than giving my advise to someone who needs help.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Growth mindset to me means to be the best version of your self by improving your skills every day!

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

How to get through all the stages of conceptualising a great idea all the way up to a profitable R.O.I.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

During the pandemic of COVID-19 the travel industry which I love and serve for the last 12 years of my life got on its knees. I had to find a solution for my company in order to get back to profitability by thinking out of the box! I focused on the pains of the clients in the travel industry and not the features of my company. I developed a new concept of the services we offer for easier – instant communication and solution provision for clients which got their flights cancelled by the airlines (due to Covid-19) last minute. This worked out well. Happy customers – Happy company!

View Growthmentor Profile

21. Samuel Lam

Describe yourself

Every day I live in the world of product, data and technology. Some nights too.

I am currently a Senior Product Manager at a unicorn startup. My expertise comes from building scalable growth in ecommerce / travel industry.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

Share my knowledge on growth / product and learn from mentee’s experience.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Learning endlessly

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Product management and product growth; that’s my forte.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Helping a startup find product-market-fit after a forced pivot.

View Growthmentor Profile

22. Ian Lenny

Describe yourself

I’m a former military officer turned growth professional. I’ve worked as an early stage employee, consultant and entrepreneur. Currently I am a paid acquisition manager at ATTN Labs where I help clients develop their growth strategy and implement their paid acquisition campaigns. If you have questions on paid traffic, analytics, tracking or attribution I would love to help!

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

To refine my craft and pay forward some of the help I’ve received.

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

Being open to assessing information from all sources in order to develop better solutions.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

If I could mentor on just one thing it would be optimizing paid ads performance through correct event tracking. The reason for this is that Incorrect tracking and attribution is the #1 reason for poor performance on ads. Advanced paid ads platforms like Facebook and Google Ads use machine learning algorithms to optimize campaigns. If the event tracking is off it can drastically reduce the performance of paid ads campaigns. When attribution is off it causes marketers to optimize the wrong campaigns. Improving these two issues can reliably increase paid ads performance.

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

While running a number of Facebook ads campaigns, I learned of a feature in the Facebook ads audience creation tool that allowed you to create a recursively optimized audience. In other words an audience that would model the customers who purchased from that audience continuously as sales from that campaign came in. Facebook calls this Campaign Based Lookalikes. The issues was that this type of audience can only be developed programmatically through Facebook’s business SDK. Determined to work through this issue I feverishly read through the Facebook SDK documentation while booking a mentorship session on Codementors (an online learning platform for engineers). After a few tutoring sessions I was able to build working versions of Python and Javscript versions of an automation script to build these auto-optimized audiences for any of my client accounts. This allowed anyone on my team to open up a command line interface and build these audience for any of our accounts in a manner similar to many paid platforms like Madgicx.com.

View Growthmentor Profile

23. Matthew Kay

Describe yourself

After helping grow a niche media brand from nothing to tens of thousands in revenue and hundreds of thousands of YouTube scribers, I got a taste for building things and learning as I go. Coming up with simple solutions to complex problems gets me out of bed in the morning. And solving problems so others can put food in front of their kids and do what they love keeps me at my desk past dinner time on a lot of nights.

In just one sentence, please tell us why you want to become a growth mentor?

–

In your words, what does a growth mindset mean to you?

The world as it is now – you and your company – are not static things that don’t change. Improvement is possible. Better is possible. More is possible. With the right ideas, strategies, and people – and a lot of hard work – many things are possible.

If you could mentor a startup on one topic, what would it be?

Strategy, go to market, opportunities by marketing channel. “Is my extreme focus on X marketing channel worth it?” “Should spend a lot of resources on organic search optimization?”

Describe an out of the box solution to a complex problem that made you proud of yourself?

Had a client looking to drive signups from an email list composed of lots of people 55+. An older demographic. Instead of trying to get people to register online, made the call to action “reply to get signed up” and it worked brilliantly. Client still gives me a high five for thinking of this everytime I see him.

View Growthmentor Profile

Interested in becoming a growth mentor?

What we’re looking for:

• Growth marketers, product managers, and designers, with extraordinary track-records of success
• Inspirational founders that have “been there and done that.”
• Friendly people that take joy in helping other people.
• At least 5 years of demonstrable experience working in growth.
• GrowthMentor is a #givefirst platform. You should be cool with mentoring for free until you have three reviews.