Here are the 11 Growth Mentors of March

1. Amale Ghalbouni

Describe yourself

I am passionate about building human centred experiences, and help test, learn and grow business based on solid customer and data insights

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

I’m passionate about helping build meaningful and customer centric businesses and experiences

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

A growth mindset for me is an open and collaborative approach to try new things, learn and fail and get better over time.

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

Customer centricity – in building products, testing, and scaling.

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

QR codes – they’ve mostly been ignored for a couple of decades, but are coming into their own with COVID!

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2. Chris Nightingale

Describe yourself

A driven digital marketing manager with over 6 years of full time agency and in-house experience across B2C & B2B clients. I have an extensive background in all aspects of marketing, fully certified across key online advertising platforms and a strategic digital thinker.

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

Want to help smaller businesses and individuals thrive and have access to the same pool of knowledge as high-end/multi-million pound companies.

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

Having the ambition, determination and desire to grow – searching for pockets of success as well as grasping low hanging fruits with two hands!

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

Automation and AI – I’m a big fan of utilising technology and helping others learn how to shape it.

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

Google Ads Scripting!

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3. Dimitris Lianoudakis

Describe yourself

I am a firm believer that luck is a result of your continuous efforts. My “luck” has allowed me to experience working in other countries, interacting with diverse cultures and continuously reminding me how of much more I don’t know. I’m a SaaS and eCommerce fanatic with an analyst mindset. I’ve been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and can’t imagine doin anything else.

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

I am a strong believer that your successes are a result of a selection of powerful interactions.

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

For me, a growth mindset is a challenge you set for yourself. It’s a mental deal you make with yourself to agree to pivot your focus and re-evaluate what’s important to you. It requires both discipline and commitment and there is no room for doubt or shame.

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

Experimenting. Moving away from the “trust your gut” model to the “let’s see what the experiment shows” is a monumental leap in decision making. It allows you to vet the data first, evaluate and pivot if needed, almost all in the same day. It adds a layer of complexity by allowing multiple stakeholders to challenge the results and ultimately your decision.

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

My team and I were developing an analytics platform for our users and partners. We knew there were great insights to share from our user-generated data, but given our industry we did not want to expose any user stats. We came up with the idea of community reports. A set of reports that aggregated user data from different cohorts (like size of company, ARR, etc) which upheld our users’ privacy and became an invaluable source for partners and customers to better understand where they stood vs someone of their similar size. Basically comparable to an industry benchmark. That was a win/win/win. The best type of outcome.

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4. Jordan Crawford

Describe yourself

I grew Zinc.com (YC W14) from 1 to 100M in 2 years. I help early stage B2B companies with scrappy growth strategies. I advise companies that have raised tens of millions of dollars and have helped 10+ companies get into YCombinator. I’d be delighted to help you!

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

I get high off of helping people realize their potential.

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

Learning to destroy your habits and listen to feedback that makes you feel uncomfortable and makes you question even your fundamental beliefs.

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

Early stage growth.

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

I worked with a company that owed me some equity. They delayed my vesting by a year. I was being stonewalled. Instead of fighting the founder, I asked for his advice on an unrelated topic. This appealed to his desire to be helpful and, he both fixed the problem without me mentioning it again and provided me advice that was useful.

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5. Jossie Haines

Describe yourself

I am currently the Sr Director of Platform & Web Engineering, as well as Head of diversity, equity & inclusion at Tile. I’m on a mission to keep women in tech. My superpower is using empathetic leadership to build inclusive engineering teams that enable all team members to thrive, as well as building amazing products that delight diverse customer bases.

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

I want to use my unique combination of technology and DEI skills to help tech companies build inclusive cultures and amazing technology that will fulfill the needs of our diverse world.

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

A growth mindset is about being on a continuous learning journey. It’s a willingness to be uncomfortable to expand your knowledge, and realizing mistakes are just stepping stones in the learning journey.

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

If I could only mentor someone on one topic, it would be effective and fair engineering leadership and management. Only through this foundation can we build amazing teams where the leaders are truly multipliers and empowering all their team members no matter what their background.

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

When working at Zynga, I helped design the central storage service which used a simple inbox style mechanism to prevent a huge problem we had with our cooperative quests where our most active users would have the worst performance.

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6. Keiko Asakura

Describe yourself

A start-up marketing guru. Helping newly entered IT companies to establish their market presence in Japan and other APAC regions through integrated marketing, go-to marketing, brand marketing, product marketing, lead generation and sales enablement. Extensive experience in bridging between HQ and local in-country business to integrate and localize its existing resources effectively. Let’s talk and build the smart roadmap to get us where we want to go.

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

To share what I have learned over the past 10+ years in doing start-up, growth phase marketing in Japan.

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

Japan Marketing, Go-to Market Strategy.

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

Resourcefulness, do whatever you can, and get on with it.

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

Outsource things that are outside of your expert area.

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7. Lior Vexler

Describe yourself

I’m a product & marketing expert with more than 10 years of experience. I love to learn new skills which give me a 360 view, from marketing to product to even understand code. I’ve worked in big companies, establish and managed a company (local branch of product, development & sales), and created my own entrepreneurship.

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

I love to help people and I’m good at it.

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

1. Strategy – growth mindset means always start with strategy first and know where you aiming for.
2. Open minded – be open-minded and experiment with things, make fewer assumptions and test everything.
3. Agile – be quick to change when things not working.
4. Creativity – growth hacking isn’t just a buzzword, but it could lead to exponential growth.

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

Marketing & User Acquisition – since this is where I see the biggest pain for most of the startups. Many are great product people or developers but they mostly lack a marketing strategy and a clear path of how to execute it.

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

A growth hacking tactic where I posted a challenging task on a freelancer platform and it drew a lot of developers (my target audience) to sign into my platform.

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8. Martin Adams

Describe yourself

I’ve been in the trenches as a Founder/CEO/Investor/Marketer/Commercial lead and so I know how tough it is to grow something that changes the world. But, I also know that creativity and out-of-the-box thinking leads to wildly efficient growth and so I’m keen to pass my hard-fought learnings on. In the last 10 years, I have worked with companies to achieve 5 exits, £40m in investment, and £100m in revenue.

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

To pass on my (hard-fought) learnings and to learn from those I am helping.

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

A growth mindset is when you have the fundamental and unshakeable curiosity to ask ‘Can this be done better?’ and the unquenchable thirst to find out ‘How?’ It’s about testing the conventional logic and yourself to be better with less.

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

Building an organisation with ‘growth’ at its spine, putting (and keeping) growth at the centre of what everyone does in your organisation, managing/motivating/measuring what you learn so you can achieve exponential success quickly.

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

Using bespoke scripts to pull information from a database of investors and their portfolios. This led to us building both (i) a fundraising pipeline, which capitalised the company, and (ii) a commercial pipeline, which generated its first $100k of revenue.

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9. Sarah Conrad

Describe yourself

Hey there, I’m Sarah. I’m a “full stack” marketer and founder with deep experience in product, brand, performance, and growth marketing at world-class brands and startups – Google, YouTube, HBO, Bravo, Culture Trip, BSTEVR. (I even started my own venture during London’s first lockdown…) I love helping startups build, grow, and scale.

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

I love helping startups grow.

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

Just try it! Test, learn, iterate, repeat. Learn as fast as possible, and for a moment (just a moment), break up with perfection.

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

Marketing and it’s important (but often very different) role in all stages of startups. Strategy, tactics, teams – all vary depending on where you are, and where you’re going.

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

For World Refugee Day, we wanted to do to a video (Hey, it’s YouTube) to mark the day and show our support. Instead of doing the traditional, corporate-y video, we brought on incredible YouTube creators to do it better. Here’s the result.

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10. Sunni Sukumar

Describe yourself

I’m a former software engineer who had severe social anxiety yet loved people. So I melded my inner code nerd, heart connector and copy craftsman to become a marketer (now Marketing Director at Prehired). Measuring where leads and sales really come from (it ain’t where babies come from 😉 is often something people ask me for. That and making their ads work better while scaling.

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

I am passionate about mentoring, I have +10 yrs. of experience, and I’m working for 5 organizations at the moment mentoring startups. I just love it!

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

I love the energy of sharing knowledge, since I see someone connect the dots and often learn myself (it’s why I work in education).

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

Ad analytics, since that clarifies so much of what really resonates with the people companies want to serve.

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

Recently, I decided to get past Typeform not having a feature to only redirect qualified applicants submitting forms. Since its feature just redirects everyone, I pass all the important answers in the URL query string to a page I created. That page has my own Javascript logic to show thank you screens to people who don’t qualify… and to redirect people who do qualify to a call-booking page. It’s an example of a test I ran to boost next-stage conversions, which I hoped would reduce overall costs from paid traffic.

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11. Tigh Loughhead

Describe yourself

I’ve been in MarTech and dragging companies into digital transformation for my entire career. I spent 5 years ad a digital ad agency, and another 5 running a marketing team for a techie real estate firm. For the last year I’ve been running my own marketing consultancy, building out Salesforce and Pardot for a number of enterprise firms.

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

I’m more of a teacher than I am a consultant. I both teach and mentor for Salesforce, but my background is in Startups. It’s not immediately financially rewarding, but I personally get a lot out of growing people and learning from them along the way.

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

Growth is about resilience and boldness as much as it is the hustle. We hear a ton about failure being necessary for growth, but the relentless pursuit of improvement, not the ability to fail.

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

Pardot.

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

Using marketing automation as an example, the first drip campaign I ever created was when I was onboarding the tool in house. I planned a series of easter eggs in my emails opening up feature functionality to those people who actually read my content. My top salespeople threw tantrums for a while that they were missing out, but my open rates went from 27% at the beginning of the campaign to no one skipping and email from me ever again.

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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.