Here are the 11 Growth Mentors of September

1. Marissa Rolls

Describe yourself

A CRM nerd, I love harnessing the power of systems such as HubSpot and Salesforce to drive sales. Working as a Sales Exec. at Europes leading eHealth Unicorn and having set up HubSpot during my time at a MedTec startup, I know the challenges business face with their CRM systems and have gained extensive experience in finding solutions for anything from setting up forecasting reports to automated lead gen workflows. I love something that most founders don’t have time or energy to set up effectively so looking forward to help you get it done minus the hassle and hustle.

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

Leveraging a startups CRM system to drive revenue is a passion of mine and would love to help startups navigate their systems to accelerate growth by building better systems for and with them that are tailored to their needs.

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

I believe a growth mindset means you are continuously curious to understand more about the what and why. Challenges don’t stop you from doing things – on the contrary, you see a challenge as place to learn and become a better person for it. It also means you question and reflect on experiences to gain insight for the future, be it learning opportunities or evidence that you did something well and can repeat it.

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

CRM Systems

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

Situation: Startup with sales team of 4 people, no process on how to distribute leads and responsibilities

Problem: Inbound leads that came through by email kept getting lost or not answered as no one knew who the lead owner was

Solution: I created a work around in HubSpot to create tickets out of the emails which were then automatically distributed to the sales reps. The converted tickets then started an automated deal workflow and allowed for tracking which was used in the weekly sales meetings.

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2. Lisa Kennelly

Describe yourself

I’m a marketing and communications professional with experience scaling teams and startups in both the US and Europe. I have experience in growth and marketing strategy, product marketing, e-commerce, user acquisition, community, and more. I’m currently the CMO at Fishbrain in Stockholm, Sweden.

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

I do a lot of growth mentorship already through various programs, and I find it really valuable – always looking for new opportunities to mentor and learn myself.

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

Never being satisfied with the status quo; always looking for the unexplored, untapped, or misjudged opportunity.

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

Scaling marketing within an organization and learning how to advocate for your needs so you can deliver major impact.

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

It may seem obvious now, but 7 years ago I tested paying a popular YouTuber a bit of money to talk about why she used my company’s app. We figured, if word of mouth is the way most people learned about our product, what if we could supercharge it? Especially for a topic that felt taboo – periods and female health – it turned out to be incredibly powerful to have female influencers with huge followings explain publicly why they used a period tracking app.

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3. Dimitris Drakatos

Describe yourself

Formerly at UK fintech unicorn Revolut, since October 2020 I have been leading all the SEO and ASO work at startup Peanut, an app for connecting like-minded women throughout fertility and motherhood.

I am a passionate digital marketer and SEO manager with more than eight years of experience across both inbound and digital marketing. Have been working for several successful companies, like Revolut, scaling their digital presence.

Finally I am one of the co-authors of Mastering in-house SEO 2021 edition and a speaker at several SEO conferences like BrightonSEO & Measurefest.

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

I love SEO and want to help more people succeed using it properly.

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

A growth mindset is the idea of never settle. Going from zero to hero, coming up with new ideas constantly and taking data driven decisions in order to achieve your targets. At the same time a person with a growth mindset is always open and eager to learn more without staying in his/her comfort zone.

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

SEO, ASO, Content Marketing and overall Organic acquisition/growth

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

When I joined Peanut, we started from point 0 in terms of organic traffic. In less than 8 months we moved from ~400 monthly organic visits to more than 1.2M!

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4. Phillip Lanos

Describe yourself

I am a synthesizer. Throw it all on the table and I’ll put together a picture you can look at for next steps.

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

People come to me about podcast 3 times a day because I co host a show on Entrepreneur Magazine and have over 7 years in the podcasting world launching and producing content for podcasting.

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

Leadership, because I’ve been able to interview CEOs for years from all walks of life. I have the experience in real time and tangentially to think of a solution for all occasions.

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

Always be learning.

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

Prior to my joining a team at a co-working space as a consultant they were managing all work as tasks and were reactionary. Once I pushed them to join Notion.so and gave them a template to manage notes as a brain dump, and developed a framework that worked within their culture to determine what is a task and what is a project we began to get shit done.

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5. Franck Rossini

Describe yourself

After 20 years of digital marketing experience in some innovative businesses such as Spotify, MySpace or Sybel (Podcasts Service) I’d like to get some new inspiration from new ventures but also to help those businesses to benefit from my experience in growing a business. I am data driven but I also like to listen to my gut feeling before taking any decision.

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

Make connections with interesting new businesses that could benefit from my large experience in scaling up small or larger companies.

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

A growth mindset for me is the ability to develop challenging yourself or others. To adapt in front of innovation with a will to improve. Even if you have certainty you need to be able to be open minded to still grow.

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

Subscription models and app user growth. Because I had a large experience in this area with the opportunity to understand the complexity of these subjects with the ability to overcome some complex challenges.

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

Couple of years ago I had to launch a podcast startup called Sybel in France. In a place where the GAFA all had their services, I managed to put Sybel in the podcast map, with a real positioning angle. The marketing strategy I did work on, was soon put into operations to then see strong results. Some of them where, being top 3 in the app stores when typing podcasts, getting a significant amount of PR, and having been ably to generate 1M + users within 9 months thanks to some interesting way of using content as an acquisition channel for instance.

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6. Richard Anning

Describe yourself

Worked with all types of businesses powering profitable growth through data driven strategies & optimisation programmes. A lifelong student of decision making.

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

I like coaching and learning from others, also it is a good way to interact with the start-up community.

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

Focusing on a goal, waking up each day trying to optimise towards that goal and learning from your mistakes.

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

Understand what is driving performance and what is holding them back.

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

Created an automated Sales, Attribution & Retention Report in Google Sheets that also pulled in customer feedback. It was used company wide as the basis of growth conversations. Now there are many Apps that can do it but was “out of box” at the time!

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7. John Kutay

Describe yourself

I am the Head of Growth at an B2B software company called Striim. I started my career as a software engineer after studying computer science in college. I then moved into product management. To solve the problem of ‘low sample sizes’ in my product analysis, I set out to create what became our the first Growth team at the company. 18 months later we have 5x revenue/ROI on our campaigns and a team of 5 including a product manager, two engineers, a data analyst, and a growth marketer. I also helped put together our strategic roadmap and investor presentation that eventually led to our $50 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs. I’m also active in the LA music industry – writing and producing songs with over a million spotify streams in the last year.

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

I want to help other startup founders and growth practitioners build and execute their strategy.

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

Growth means clearly defining your customer’s needs, building a strategy to better serve those use cases at scale. To execute with a growth mindset, you must constantly ship, measure, learn, and iterate. Challenge all assumptions and constantly learn.

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

Building their growth strategy

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

We had low conversions on our marketing website and generally poor leads being passed to sales. The only conversion points were relatively high friction as well. To solve that, we built a website focussed on personalization and incremental qualification with ‘good friction’ that collected info on the visitor’s use case. Not only did the # conversions on our website increase; the rate at which those leads converted to deals also increased.

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8. Tatiana Dmytruk

Describe yourself

My focus and passion are consumer apps. I’ve been running performance marketing for multiple tech products including US-based unicorns. User acquisition challenges and scaling issues is what I deal with every day. I’m always happy to share experience and some tactics, in order to help brands to get to the next level of scale. I’m originally from Ukraine, based in Chicago.

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

It’s exciting to share experience and see your impact on brands’ growth.

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

Keeping a constant focus on the goal, leveraging the best available resources + creative thinking, and leaving your ego behind the door.

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

How brands can continue thriving in the post-IDFA environment. Don’t let hyperinflated Facebook numbers dictate your marketing decisions. When the advertising landscape shifts, your most important arm in user acquisition (paid media) needs to be stronger than ever. There’re ways.

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

My own frameworks are out of the box. I have a trained eye to identify both issues and opportunities early on. Sometimes it’s a matter of speed.

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9. Kevin Materi

Describe yourself

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Printfection, a bootstrapped swag management platform which makes sourcing, storing and shipping swag easy. I started Printfection as a B2C company in 2004 while in college, built it to a $1M+ business by the time I graduated, then completely pivoted to become the technology leader in the promotional products industry.

I’m motivated by solving interesting and meaningful problems alongside other passionate people.

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

I’d like to give back to others as well as learn and improve myself at the same time.

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

A growth mindset is an optimistic view of the world and choosing to make that optimistic view a reality. That may take the form of seeing your vision come to life through a company or product. Or by improving yourself or supporting those around you in their growth.

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

Building a company from idea to product/ market fit through initial traction and scaling.

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

Adding a SaaS subscription model to our business. It had never been done before in this industry and was a lot to ask of our customers as they were already paying for the merchandise. As we started testing this, I called all ~100 of our customers to understand their concerns and discuss our reasoning behind the subscription model. We lost a couple of customers however overall it was received extremely well.

This was a great reminder as to how important execution and empathy is in comparison to an idea. I learned so much from our customers during this process, many of whom are still with us 6+ years later. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to make the world a little better for each other. Keeping that in mind has helped guide nearly all of my decisions.

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10. Michał Suski

Describe yourself

Hey, I am Michał Suski, SEO expert and SaaS startup co-founder in the same field. I am passionate about creating content that ranks in Google and making sure it is a streamlined and efficient process. I help agencies and business owners implement this strategy. Besides educating the community I build the tool that addresses the needs of content people. After hosting hundreds of 1:1’s and dozens of webinars I am confident I can help you.

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

I want to give back to the community that I learned a lot from.

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

A growth mindset means that you can change plans accordingly to what has the biggest impact on your goals.

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

Creating a content strategy that’s in synergy with SEO.

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

Knowing which keywords you can rank together by the same piece of content is either a gut feeling or a tedious and long-lasting process.

Keywords and SERPs database are Terabytes of data.

What if we could use basic machine learning and cluster these keywords based on how Google ranks them? It took us a few days from a rough sketch to working prototype that was mind-blowing and brought keyword research to a new level. Now it is the most advanced and accurate standard in the field. It cuts Content Strategy creation from days to minutes.

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11. Paul Boudet

Describe yourself

Bonjour I’m Paul, currently co-founder/CEO of Meetric.app and founder of Urban-Hideout.com. I help startups from the founding stage to Series B grow as fast as they can. I’ve been doing growth for 10 years across San Francisco, NYC, Paris, London and Sydney.

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

A friend of mine spoke to a few coaches on Growthmentor.com – he was telling me about his experience and told me I have the right profile to potentially be a coach and that I should check it out.

I did a bit of research on growth mentor since and I quite like it, specifically:

1. Your people-first approach.
2. You’re not being too ‘salesy’ (in a good way).
3. The high calibre of your coaches.
4. Your flexible pricing model.

I want to become a growth mentor because I love growth, love people, want to give back, get excited by the success of others that I helped. I was a growth consultant previously and I’ve been looking for the opportunity to get back into it while balancing my busy schedule of also being a startup founder and CEO.

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

To me, a growth mindset is about always finding new ways to grow.

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

Customer/User Acquisition

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

Here’s one on SEO: within a few months of executing my content strategy for Meetric.app, I started to see the 80–20 rule in action: 20% of the Meetric blog content was driving 80% of the organic traffic. So I looked at the blog posts driving the 20% and created alternative versions. For example, the post ’20 funny backgrounds for Zoom’ started to drive tons of traffic, so I duplicated it into ’20 funny backgrounds for Google Meet’. This took me only 5 minutes and this extra post is now bringing another thousand visitors per month.

This is from a recent article I wrote on how we grew organic traffic by 1,000% in 6 months: https://ph-boudet.medium.com/how-we-grew-organic-traffic-1-000-in-6-months-89a2defc8714

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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.