Here are the 6 Growth Mentors of May

1. Adam Wesolowski

Describe yourself

One of the first (if not the first) growth marketer in Poland, founded growth marketing agency acquired by Ladder.io. Currently VP of growth operations at Ladder, startup advisor, and mentor at Google Launchpads all across the globe.

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

Means constant questioning the status quo and finding new ways of improvement. Always challenging yourself and your business thinking about how we can be quicker, faster, and focus on the right things. Thus it means you should be humble, ask questions, and learn from the mistakes (both yours and others).

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

Growth strategy & execution.

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

Working at Ladder we’re challenged with complex problems of our clients every day. However, simple solutions always come after going deep into the data and analyzing funnels – and this is what I love about growth marketing.

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2. Cody Lee

Describe yourself

I’m a proud member of the Summit Partners Peak Performance Group: a free, on-demand resource for the nearly 100 exceptional companies within the Summit Partners portfolio. I assist our portfolio companies with accelerating growth through marketing and digital initiatives—and hope to help you, too.

Previously, I’ve co-founded a marketing consultancy, built a digital marketing practice at an agency, led in-house paid social and paid search teams, and worked as a copywriter on both a freelance and agency capacity.

One of the things I love most is connecting with marketers and entrepreneurs across categories and the globe, sharing my experience as well as best practices learned from the brilliant people who I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with over the years.

I’ve seen a lot—both successes and failures—in SaaS, eCommerce, technology, fintech, healthcare and everything in between, from SMB to enterprise. While every company is unique, there are patterns, processes, frameworks, perspectives and questions that are broadly applicable and immensely valuable.

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

If you’re looking for help with anything growth marketing, I’m confident I can help you think through your challenge, solve it outright or point you in the right direction. And probably even have fun doing it!

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3. Dmitry Vedenyapin

Describe yourself

I am a data-driven and customer-focused leader with software engineering background eager to help organisations build agile processes and engineering culture. I have been in Software Engineering leadership for over 10 years now and looking to contribute to startups and companies.

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

Growth mindset is about building solutions and companies that scale. Right foundation is a key.

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

How to empower product and software engineering teams to focus on outputs, instead of outcomes and stop being a feature factory.

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

Transformed a marketing-tech company from being commercial-driven to customer-centric, getting buy-in from C-level stakeholders and growing annual revenue by 60%

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4. Ferdinand Goetzen

Describe yourself

I’m a growth strategist and public speaker, currently working as the director of marketing & growth at 3D Hubs, an on-demand manufacturing platform tipped to be one of the Netherlands’ next unicorns. I was previously the chief growth officer at Recruitee, one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in Europe, helping them grow over 450% in just 2 years (without funding). Before that, I was the lead trainer & growth marketer at the Growth Tribe Academy, where I helped hundreds of companies -from Pipedrive to ING- develop and execute strategies for growth. I am a regular speaker at global growth and tech events and have been featured as a guest on a number of leading podcasts. I also occasionally write about my work and share insights.

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

To me, a growth mindset is about getting to know your customers and tracking the right data to set smart goals, develop comprehensive strategies for growth and implementing them though campaigns and experiments.

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

Everything growth strategy, from building and leading a team, to developing coherent strategies, tactics and playbooks for growth.

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

Me and my team built a customer-driven automation setup to create a personal nurture experience for our MQLs, not only fully replacing the manual work for 6 people doing business development, but significantly improving our conversions.

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5. Nikolas Baron

Describe yourself

• Early employee at Grammarly: Built SEO team, created data-driven content strategy that still accounts for %90+ of Grammarly’s non-brand SEO traffic
• Founded Sachi (renamed to Graphite), a boutique SEO / growth consulting firm that built out organic acquisition growth engines for growth-stage B2C companies using SEO, acquisition-driven content marketing, and conversion rate optimization
• Currently advising, investing, and working on some startup ideas

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6. Zach Grove

Describe yourself

I was growth hire #1 at Drip, where I helped grow the SaaS from $1M ARR to $15M+ ARR and an 8-figure acquisition by Leadpages.

“T-shaped” marketer with deep expertise in SaaS paid acquisition + well-versed in all other areas of SaaS demand gen.

Currently leading growth at ClickFlow, a funded SEO SaaS.

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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.”