Here are the 25 Growth Mentors of August 2022

1. Aditya Nair

Describe yourself

Hello, I’m Aditya. I come with a rich experience in driving growth for early stage startups in India. I love driving growth for early stage consumer businesses through the right mix of marketing technology, analytics and experimentation. I think of myself as a generalist growth marketer with experience across all aspects of marketing.

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

Interested in sharing my knowledge with early stage startups – it will also help me keep in touch with what is happening in the startup world.

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

Continuous learning. Focus on improvement. Data over opinions.

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

Growth strategy and execution.

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

Creating an offline referral program where we got restaurants to refer their walk-in customers to Swiggy, a food delivery platform.

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2. Ammarah Ahmed

Describe yourself

Hey, my name is Ammarah, I’m currently the VP of Performance and Growth at Snapp Group. I’ve spent most of my career working in tech companies and start-ups both on the B2B and B2C side across business models (online pharmacy, e-commerce, q-commerce) and have led multiple international teams. I essentially help companies evaluate their business health and come up with action plans for unlocking growth!

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

I’ve been lucky and had the chance to work with some good mentors in a lot of different business models, I want to find a more systematic way of passing on the knowledge and experience.

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

Open to changing your views and always curious to learn from the people around you.

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

Performance and problem solving with data.

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

While working at a q-commerce startup, analyzed the data and figured out that customers that reach their 4th order on the platform, tend to stick around much longer. So worked on an assisted customer journey, hand-holding them till their 4th order. Managed to increase overall retention by over 80%.

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3. Bhagyashree Mudgal

Describe yourself

I’m a marketer with 8+ years of experience and have tried my hands at marketing, PR, events and even media consulting. Majority of my experience lies in tech B2B space but I’ve also worked with major FMCG & travel brands on their media strategy. I get really excited about experimenting and trying new ideas.

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

To share knowledge with people I wish I could have in early years and to still learn from new challenges.

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

Being curious, continuously learning, developing and improving. Not being apprehensive of experimenting with new ideas and calibrating basis those findings.

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

Understanding user behaviour to tailor lifecycle

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

Tweaking user experience (more digital journey for low MRR and human touch points for high MRR users) during trial to increase T2P conversion.

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4. Carolyn Beniuk

Describe yourself

A career consultant who thrives in creating order out of chaos. 10+ years working with businesses from startup to F100; I love helping leaders think outside the box, challenge the norm, and optimize. Need advice on strategy? operations? product? culture? management? growth? I’m here for you.

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

I am a career consultant who loves sharing my knowledge and tackling new problems with others.

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

Having a growth mindset is acknowledging the need and being prepared to lay the foundation for a house. No one likes to think or talk about the unsexy stuff… the foundation. But without it, the whole pretty thing collapses before it even really begins. Building or scaling a business requires a strong foundation of strategy, operations, governance, and platform readiness (among many other things!). And one of the most important aspects of all – culture.

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

Operations – anything from op model to governance, project management, KPIs, business planning, optimization, reporting, management models, etc.
I’ve done it a lot 🙂

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

When advising one of the big banks, they were keen to solve retention issues at their branches. I asked for permission to use anonymized employee data and leveraged google maps API to triangulate branch employee home postal codes with their work postal code. This identified far travelling employees for whom the bank could offer transfers to consider branch locations closer to their home.

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5. Chris Banks

Describe yourself

I’m a technical founder who loves building products that help people realize their full potential. I’m passionate about helping people to solve hard problems and think about things in innovative ways.

I’ve bootstrapped a company from just me sitting at my kitchen table (with a broken ankle) to over forty people working remotely around the world.

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

I love helping other achieve their full potential.

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

Iterate to success.

If my life was a movie, its title would be “A thousand steps to the summit”. It’s hard to remember that lots of small steps eventually add up to a lot of momentum. As long as you keep learning and improving, you’ll achieve your goals. The worst thing is just sitting still.

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

How to have 100x better ideas. Most people don’t understand how many ideas you need to generate a good idea or how to generate and evaluate those ideas. Consequently, they waste a lot of time and money implementing average ideas.

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

Often the best solution is not to solve the complex problem at all, but to understand why the problem exists in the first place and just make it go away. For example, we were having loads of support issues with people importing documents. We could have spent ages fixing the issues, but the best solution was to ask: can we stop people needing to import documents? By solving that problem instead, we were able to make our users happier and save ourselves a lot of time.

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6. Diego von Sohsten

Describe yourself

I’m a software engineer-turned-product leader. With 13+ years of experience in tech, I’ve led PLG and product management teams in company such as Vidyard and Vendasta. I have mentored dozens of peers in my careers, and I’m looking forward to helping even more now at Growth Mentor! 🙂

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

After 13+ years in tech, I learned that helping others solve problems I’ve encountered recharges me and brings me fulfillment.

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

A growth mindset means, to me, to embrace ambiguity and to reframe “challenges” as “opportunities”.

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

Growth product management

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

In the past, working for a company transitioning to a PLG strategy, I learned that there were major friction points when new users signed up for our free plan: Sales didn’t know when/how to engage them, Marketing was taking 3-5 minutes per lead to do proper attribution, and Product lacked strategy for activating those users. I pitched a portfolio of bets to automate what had to be automated and developed a strategy for Activation and Product Qualified Leads. It went so well that I became the first Growth PM in that org, being promoted to Director of Product (for the 1st time) and leading other Growth PMs in our PLG transformation.

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7. Humberto de Oliveira

Describe yourself

Technology enthusiast for over 15 years, combining a mix of engineering, consulting and product development skills. Career history ranges from management, hands-on coding, cross-functional stakeholders engagement, creative direction and digital strategy for all-scale IT projects.

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

I want to be surrounded by smart, interesting and interested individuals.

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

Mentorship is about growing WITH your mentees. Their success is mine. Encouraging people to achieve what they think it’s impossible it’s what drives my role as a mentor.

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

Measure anything: how to get into the habit of quantifying value in business.

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

In 4 months working on a Sales Engineering team for the first time, I managed to reduce the sales cycle by 5x by abstracting product management concepts and software development frameworks into the process. e.g. User Stories, BDD Scenarios, Business metrics. Those helped customers to focus on understanding what was really valuable to them and how to evaluate the software I’m selling with very concrete steps as opposed to being susceptible to “scope creep”.

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8. Jeremiah Runser

Describe yourself

I’ve got 10+ years in marketing, lead generation, demand generation & brand building. On a mission to approach B2B marketing like B2C. Passionate about making complicated things simple.

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

I enjoy helping people scale and grow companies with a targeted, strategic approach.

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

With enough hard work, experience, setbacks and feedback, personal and professional growth can be achieved.

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

Marketing—I have the most breadth of knowledge on the subject and expertise in a few facets as well.

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

My current companies SaaS product is used in an industry that is primarily gaining attention through word of mouth. I came up with a multi-channel review strategy to reduce the need for references from customers and empower prospects to perform their own analysis before they ever speak to an account executive.

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9. Joe Worthey

Describe yourself

People are now accustomed to seeking out solutions to their problems with technology. I believe the winning growth strategy capitalizes on that curiosity while creating new demand by educating your next customer. My experience at Brandfolder, Smartsheet, TUNE, and Microsoft gave me the insatiable desire to compel people into action.

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

You learn by teaching.

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

Curiosity drives improvement. Just like our customers seek out a better way to work and better outcomes, if we embrace that same mindset we will be relevant and compelling enough to attract customers exponentially.

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

Foundationally, relevancy and value drive conversion. Compounded by marketing and product led customer success, you have a viral growth machine.

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

I believe we must constantly push the limits of our reporting and analytics tools. We need deeper insights around what is driving our most important metrics. Recently I’ve been deploying formulas, reports and dashboard in Salesforce to automate the tracking and identification of some key trends that are driving our process and strategy forward.

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10. John-Malefakis

Describe yourself

I have 13 Years of experience in digital performance marketing; Facebook Ads and Google Search, Display, Video Ads. I currently lead Amplifyd, a team of 20 performance marketeers.

• Facebook Premium partner
• Google Premier partner and also accredited by Google as International Growth Expert partners
• Current spend management of $3M /month
• Coding skills and custom script production, making reporting, campaign optimisation and tracking integrations smarter
• Big Brands I’ve worked with: Sky, DFS, Staples, Everest, Bose, Europcar, Avis, Flybe, Travelodge and quite a few more.
• Scale ups I’ve helped grow: Remitly, Marley Spoon, Dinnerly, SumUp, FairMoney, Zoe, spotawheel, Quiqup, International Andrology, Kings Education, Advisable, Carbon, Stasher, BetLion and more

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

To help with free consultations and increase networking efforts at the same time.

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

Growth mindset is all about the focus of marketing efforts across efficient new user acquisition mechanisms.
Putting the right tools and technology in place that allows the deployment and measurement of new user acquisition campaigns, aimed at driving profitable leads / sales.

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

My experience lies heavily in the performance marketing area and analytics.

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

The objective was to build and grow a multilingual & global Lead gen PPC program for a b2b business.

To achieve that, a custom script was built that was able to automate keyword combinations and generate thousands of search Ads with relevant Ad headlines and descriptions – increasing search query to Ad relevance.

Keywords were allocated to the right campaigns, according to intent signals and funnel stages and pushed to Google – increasing budget and bidding control.

On-site scripts then run which took each single keyword combination used by people clicking on the Ads, and injected the keyword in the headline if the landing pages – increasing ad to landing page relevancy.

Each lead was stored in the customers CRM system and scored accordingly. Scripts where then uploading these scores back to Google Ads in order for the algorithms to optimize against the right leads – increasing the Cost per SQL efficiencies and the average size of the opportunities.

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11. Kasey Bayne

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Kasey. Passionate about marketing, tech, and helping businesses grow, I’m an experienced marketing leader and consultant. With over a decade of marketing experience, I’ve spent time building marketing and sales channels at FreshBooks, Olark Live Chat, and other companies across Canada and the US, focusing on building the best possible customer experience. When not at the office, I’m most often training for my next half marathon in gorgeous Vancouver, outside with a good book, or off to the airport for my next travel adventure.

Get in touch! Always happy to talk at [email protected]

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

I love growth, marketing, and startup life, and would love to share my experience with others and help them solve interesting problems.

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

Growth to me is about more than just the numbers – it’s about experimentation, learning, and really understanding the value you bring to customers. From site visits and leads, through to sales and revenue, growth is the engine behind the business that allows us to solve problems, help customers, and be successful.

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

I love metrics! Understanding analytics, where to find them, what to watch for, and then what to do what that info – nerding out on that is my favourite thing to do!

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

I joined a company as the first marketer, with no metrics or plan to work from or even reference. A brand new product (selling to data scientists!), I was able to put together baseline analytics, understand our customer, create a content strategy and get leads flowing until they overwhelmed our team! A good problem to have, and helping the business expand like that felt damn good!

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12. Konstantin Valiotti

Describe yourself

I am experienced in both traditional product management and growth product management, and my experiences span across both B2B and B2C products. The most important part in solving problems for me is structuring, because that is an entry-point towards all of the other work going forward. In the mentoring sessions I try to not only provide expertise on certain methods, but rather try to frame a problem and help you find a way to resolve it through analytical problem solving.

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

I’m already mentoring people on PM, Growth & UXR, as well as advise a few companies on finding PM-fit and growth.

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

Growth mindset is the mindset where you identify key growth levers first, and then hypothesize on ways to solve them.

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

Problem solving. I think that if you are skilled in framing problems and approaching them analytically, anything within product space can be achieved.

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

I’ve had to approach a situation where I could both impact a product metric (CR% to signup) as well as impact the funnel downstream. I have tied the normal signup process with seamless and interactive experience of how certain functionality (related to the signup fields!) will work within the product, so I was able to create wow experience in a moment that typically decreases the ‘hype’ level of visitor.

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13. Marcelo Leopoldino

Describe yourself

I’m an entrepreneurship enthusiast that loves solving problems through technology, creativity, and data. My learning journey started 10+ years ago with SEO and since then I’ve explored different applications of technology to build, optimize and grow digital companies.

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

I love sharing knowledge and being in touch with other entrepreneurs.

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

To see everything as an experiment that can be measured and improved.

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

SEO & Digital Analytics, that’s what I’ve most experience with (10+ years).

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

While working in an agency for an airline company as a client, I decided to optimize informational pages that weren’t receiving much traffic for conversational queries, as voice search and AI assistants were on the rise and we wanted to take the most out of it.

We mapped search intents and digital behavior throughout the traveler’s journey, implemented structured data markup and deep-linking to the pages, and integrated email notifications with digital assistants.

After that, when asking Siri or Google Now things like “How much luggage can I carry on my flight?”, the client website was highlighted as the top answer, and passengers started to receive notifications from their personal assistants about the traffic before their flights. Everything without media investment.

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14. Mario Araujo

Describe yourself

I’m a growth generalist experienced in SaaS and B2B. In the last 4 years, I have been primarily involved in growing products through viral and organic channels.

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

Share experiences and learn.

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

Ability to learn what it takes, to do what it takes with relentless focus and drive.

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

Product-led growth. Something I do every day.

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

We’ve launched a product-led growth motion from 0 in a 10b company. In two years we’ve grown from 1 to 80 people in growth, influencing millions in ARR.

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15. Mitul Ruparelia

Describe yourself

I am a Chief Revenue Officer, Board Advisor and Operating Partner with 20+ years of experience in successfully transforming scale-ups and underperforming businesses to deliver exponential revenue and margin growth.

Focusing on B2B software, services and hardware, I have built and led global businesses and GTM teams targeting customers in telecommunications, government, financial services, public sector and aviation.

Having transformed a series of small, mid-size and large B2B technology businesses, I founded Citius Partners to bring my first-hand experience and world-class accelerated scale and field execution strategies to help even more businesses excel in a global and dynamic market.

Before founding Citius Partners, I led sales in EMEA & India at Vision-Box (private equity-backed) where, during the pandemic, I focused and drove the business on top-line revenue growth whilst selling into both Government Agencies & Aviation Companies.

Prior experience includes leadership roles with Siteimprove (private equity-backed), BlackBerry, SAP and Sybase 365, where I enabled the key, strategic defining turnaround of BlackBerry from a hardware to an enterprise software company and innovated to overcome and differentiate Sybase 365 (later acquired by SAP) within the Telco and Mobility industry.

Some key achievements:

• Built and led global GTM teams of 70+ people in Sales (inc. Inside Sales), Channel, Pre-Sales, SDRs, Marketing, and Professional Services;
• Closed €87M+ in net-new business in Aviation and Border Control during the pandemic with reduced investment and support;
• Built an enterprise software partner ecosystem of 600+ resellers in BlackBerry and expanded into Middle East, Africa and India, delivering 73% ($168M per year) of the revenue in EMEA, and with 43% being net-new business;
• Designed and sold cloud solutions and services to Telco’s globally that drove $150M+ in recurring revenues, which transformed the business unit from $40M to $350M in 4 years;

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

Having transformed a series of small, mid-size and large B2B technology businesses, I founded my own consulting business to bring my first-hand experience and world-class accelerated scale and field execution strategies to help even more businesses excel in a global and dynamic market.

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

It is the will, determination, and positive attitude to seek growth at every opportunity or challenge.

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

Go-to-market + growth strategy. The famous words of Tony Robbins are, “if you are not growing, you are dying”. If your operating in a growing market, and your business is year on year flat or stagnating then it is imperative that you have a strategy to stem the decline and drive growth.

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

Mobile 365 was a private equity-backed business that was generating $40M ARR, by selling mobile messaging and interconnectivity services to telcos and enterprises across the globe.

The business was operating in a competitive market, which eroded growth and margin. To lead and differentiate, I designed a unique solution that enabled mobile operators to fully outsource their messaging business to our platform. The first customer, T-Mobile UK (now part of BT) delivered $15M in ARR within 12 months of going live.

As the lead sales and technical authority with P&L accountability, I took the solution to other tier 1 mobile operators, which generated $150M in ARR.

This solution alone helped take the business from $40M to $350M ARR with 13 consecutive quarters of growth. The business was later acquired by Sybase, and then again later by SAP for $5.8B)

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16. Nick Allen

Describe yourself

I’m Nick Allen, Ex Head of Marketing at FileInvite (employee no.3 from $200k ARR to $2M) and Cupla. I work with startups looking to scale up from initial PMF by generating sustainable demand, through relentless campaigns and optimisation.

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

To give back and help others gain the skills to solve challenging problems.

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

Constantly questioning what can we cull to focus on needle moving activities. Having the discipline to show up each day afresh looking to solve the biggest problems that will get growth rolling.

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

Building sustainable demand and growth. We can all fluke a home run, but how do you consistently hit it out of the park.

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

Using voicedrop (automated dialler) software to leave voicemails for 1000 brokers at breakfast before a conference. Our booth has queues around the block.

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17. Ophir Gadot

Describe yourself

4x startup founder, father of 2, beach bum, passionate about building great things!

I help companies, startup founders and brands grow & make an impact with meaningful actions that move the needle.

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

Love startups and genuinely care about helping other founders thrive.

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

As Churchill said it best – “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”

Growth mindset and success are synonyms to me as nobody was born successful, so to become successful someone has to embrace the journey and the failures that are on his journey to reach success and growth.

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

I can help mentoring by sharing my experience and knowledge on everything entrepreneurship, bootstrapping and building a business from scratch.

Scaling, marketing, team management and more.

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

That’s a hard one, I have a couple of examples:

• I turned competitor of ours to upsell within our app that enhanced our solution. I’ve managed to turn mad clients into raving brand ambassadors
• We were lacking on content, and needed UGC bad, what I had in mind (which I saw all our competitors copying down the road) is to send an email to all our returning customers asking them to post an image of them on our socials for a $20 gift card, within 2 days we had more than 200 great pieces of content that enabled us to make a strong push on all our marketing channels.

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18. Rachel Zlatar

Describe yourself

I am an active member of the global startup ecosystem having worked with incubators, accelerators, angel groups, VC firms and tech conferences across 18 countries and 4 continents. I have supported international startups directly with their business expansion plans, innovative marketing strategies, fundraising and B2B partnerships into Canada through the LatAm Startups-Startup Visa program. I work across a wide variety of industries including, fintech, Web3, blockchain, prop-tech, medical devices, travel & tourism.

Reach out to me with anything: business plan development, marketing strategies, global expansion, B2B partnerships.

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

Excited to bring my global experience to a wider audience of startups & founders!

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

Go beyond borders, completely flip everything you thought you knew about how the world works upside-down…maybe even live in the jungle for a few months.

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

Strategic Partnerships-How/where to find the people and resources you need to grow your business.

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

One of my hotel clients was looking for a solution to bring more B2B sales in their global coliving/coworking properties. I created the “coworkation” program for startups & corporates to host all-inclusive work retreats for their staff and fill our rooms!

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19. Robert Gelb

Describe yourself

Hey there, I’m Rob – former CEO of HeySummit (virtual events), founder of Kindaba (private social network for families). I’m currently working on my next venture that’s under wraps for the next few months. I love building teams that prioritise experimental and problem-led growth. I can help most with fundraising and mindset (angel and VC), considering lifetime deals (LTDs), partnerships, building a team (hiring & firing), co-founder challenges, and building a remote company with an engaged culture. I know what it’s like to be in the fire and happy to talk all things founder mindset.

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

I’m most proud when I see others succeed and just like I’ve been the beneficiary of mentorship in the past, I think it’s critical to help others grow and develop.

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

A growth mindset is the result of when your curiosity doesn’t care about how it appears to others. That natural curiosity drives you to always want to improve out of an excitement to learn. To have a growth mindset is to also be coachable – that is, being open to radical self-reflection and feedback because that drive to improve is more powerful than ego or arrogance, and keeps you humble and hungry for more knowledge.

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

Founder mindset: decision-making, and approach to teams, problems, and money.

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

I needed to fundraise but had no network, and none of the early stage seed and pre-seed investors were replying to emails or taking my calls.

I decided to instead reach out to Series A investors to ask their advice. I told them I was way too early for them, but maybe in a year or so, we’d be ready and I wanted to know what good looks like.

9/10 of those investors took my call and were super helpful. And that call allowed them to get to know me and my business. By the end most asked if they could be helpful, and so I asked which three early stage investors did they think were the best in the space? When they told me who, I asked them for intros.

I ended up successfully doing a round with one of those intros, started building my network and have since helped many of those investors find great deal flow and connected other unconnected founders to those new networks. It’s a great tactic that is grounded in growth mindset, and prioritises authenticity. Since then so many founders have told me it’s worked for them after I explained how I did it.

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20. Sam Smith

Describe yourself

Hi, I’m Sam. I’m an Innovation Program Manager at Netflix and an entrepreneur. I have 11 years experience managing complex software initiatives. Before joining Netflix, I ran a few companies; two mobile app design and development agencies—one of which was my own—and a start up incubated at CBS. I’m planner, communication junkie, and problem solver at heart.

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

To help people be successful.

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

A growth mindset is about expansion rather than an exclusively linear, upward projection. It’s a way of thinking that prioritizes exploring and creating possibilities. It means being focused on your intentions instead of being attached to a specific way of achieving the desired outcome and taking action consistent with your goals. Then, reflecting and consistently improving. To me, it needs to be a practice as well as a mindset.

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

Communication. Especially for “hard conversations” or when there are stakes involved (e.g. pitches, interviews, asking for money, giving business partners or colleagues constructive feedback, etc.). Aside from innate brilliance, integrity, and consistent action, I believe a person’s ability to communicate strategically and effectively is one of the most impactful contributors to success (or lack thereof). Communication influences perception, has the power to build or break trust, and is the foundation of every thriving and toxic relationship.

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

Problem: Past project I worked on for a new, high-visibility feature required implementing designs that were not well vetted. It necessitated ~2000 new assets, had numerous contract and legal considerations, as well as a very aggressive target launch date.

Solution: Rather than immediately jumping into production and implementation which would have been very expensive but typical especially due to the time constraints, I instead timeboxed discovery efforts to pattern-match across different variables in order to first establish the “least common denominators,” identify and remove problems proactively rather than uncover them unexpectedly during implementation, ran multiple concurrent stress tests to determine the most efficient solutions, and piloted a few programmatic and algorithmic approaches while parallel pathing the manual work needed to get us to completion. This enabled us to not only meet our target dates at less cost, but also set us up to be able to scale more effectively.

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21. Sardar Azimov

Describe yourself

I’m the founder of Skief Labs, a digital innovation lab focused on growth. We focus on data, tools and growth strategies to help our clients scale their lead generation.

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

Help startups scale with growth marketing.

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

I see a growth mindset as a way to constantly search and try new growth ideas and tactics, whereas they are business or personal related.

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

Scaling lead generation with cold outreach. I have over 10 years of experience in successfully helping my clients generate new revenue streams.

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

I had a start-up client who wanted to launch a new co-working concept for whom we needed to come up and execute a growth & acquisition strategy with a cost of customer acquisition of $50 or less. After 3 months of campaigns, we were able to achieve the expected outcome with a cost per client of $40.

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22. Simon Mills

Describe yourself

I’m a B2C Growth Marketer focused on user acquisition across North America. I’ve been fortunate enough to lead or work on some incredible teams at a number of high growth startups spanning multiple industries (edtech, fintech, healthtech, pharmacy and more).

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

My career is the product of many people volunteering their time to help me become a better marketer and learn the skills I needed to be successful and I want to do the same for others.

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

Someone with a growth mindset is someone who is curious, is always looking to learn new things, and is always pushing themselves to be better both personally and professionally.

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

The importance of channel diversification and experimentation. Being able to run effective experiments, quickly identify what works and what doesn’t is a core skill of any growth professional today. Its what allows you to build a defensible and sustainable channel mix at scale. The industry is changing very quickly and what worked today won’t necessarily work tomorrow.

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

An online pharmacy client I was working with was struggling on Facebook. CPAs were really high, conversion rates were very low. After doing a deep dive into the full funnel, the data showed that people were falling off post-landing page, pre-purchase.

This made sense to an extent given that Facebook traffic tends to be lower intent (especially for a pharmacy!), so to increase the “buy in” of users, we implemented a quiz using Unbounce landing pages, (similar to those used by many of the biggest DTC brands such as Hubble Contacts). As a result, we saw a 30% relative increase in conversion rate in that stage in the funnel!

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23. Trey Buchanan

Describe yourself

A B2B advertising leader with experience managing LinkedIn ad campaigns for early stage startups all the way to Fortune 500 firms. He has deep expertise in paid social and B2B advertising, having managed more than $60M in LinkedIn ad spend. Before joining Right Percent as VP of B2B Advertising, Trey was the Head of B2B Paid Social at Metric Theory (Now Media.Monks) where he managed a team of B2B-focused social marketers who specialized in driving LinkedIn ad performance for their clients.

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

To help support startups that are getting into B2B paid media.

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

Always looking for an edge. Testing multiple angles to find what leads to performance improvements and growth. Growing your skillset to make you a better marketer.

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

B2B paid media strategy. So many advertisers and startups get this wrong and come in with poor expectations. The better you understand the opportunity, the better you can communicate it to your company and board.

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

One advertiser was looking for ways to measure the quality of their google search ad groups. Using LinkedIn matched audiences, we created audiences based on traffic from the ad groups that over time allowed us to use the demographics tool, to see the quality of that traffic.

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24. Will Yang

Describe yourself

I love efficiency and optimization. I’m often the early team member brought in to take something from zero to one. I previously scaled a sales, success and marketing team from 1 to 25 and today lead growth at a hypergrowth bootstrapped company.

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

I have a decade of operating experience as a past founder and early-stage startup employee.

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

Constantly challenging yourself to commit to kaizen.

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

How to solve problems quickly and methodically; if you learn this, you can do anything.

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

We needed more backlinks so I built an outreach strategy to book our CEO on 25+ podcasts within 1.5 months. Open rates on the messaging were 75%+ and reply rates were 25%+.

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25. Yoav Farbey

Describe yourself

I am an experienced product manager that is passionate about working with startups with a purpose for good. As a mentor I enjoy collaborating with people, understanding how they like to learn and help them grow on their professional path.

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

I enjoy mentoring, I find collaboration with mentees rewarding & I find it a great opportunity to grow my network.

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

To me growth mindset means working across disciplines to achieve success, with clear business goals and a collective understanding. Whether working with a product or service based starup.

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

Product management is the core discipline I use on a day to day basis. That includes things like roadmap for your product, defining clear business objectives, using data and to build compelling stories, design thinking and much more.

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

Within a large consulting corporation I initiated and launched an application to help consultants run design thinking workshops for clients, and help the company demonstrate its expertise to clients.

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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.