Get First Sales in 2 Months Without a Product | Advisor to Early-Stage Startups | 12 years of 0-1> Startups
I had the pleasure of working with Dmitry and cannot recommend him highly enough. Dmitry specializes in helping brand-new startup founders get clarity on critical issues, and that's exactly what he delivered. He took the time to really listen, asked the hard questions, and provided thoughtful insights on everything from runway projections to my marketing strategy and ideal customer profile. What I appreciated most was his willingness to act as a respectful devil's advocate. He challenged my thinking and perspectives I'd gotten from others, but always in a way that was supportive and constructive. That's the kind of feedback you need as a founder - someone who believes in you and wants to see you succeed, but won't just rubber-stamp your ideas. If you have hte opportunity to meet with Dmitry, I highly suggest you do it. He's the real deal.
Dmitry brought the perfect mix of clarity, honesty, and strategy, and somehow made a potentially overwhelming conversation actually fun!! We came in torn between two paths (B2B vs. B2C), with traction, but a lot of emotional and energetic weight around the decision. He not only helped us break it down logically, but also challenged our assumptions in a way that felt productive and energizing, not heavy. What really stood out is how approachable and down-to-earth he is. You’re talking to someone with deep expertise, but it never feels intimidating. Just a genuinely cool person who knows how to meet you where you are and help you move forward! We appreciated that he didn’t just give cookie-cutter advice but listened deeply, spotted patterns quickly, and offered concrete next steps we could actually execute. And his idea to frame it all as a testable sprint? Exactly what we needed to move forward without spinning in circles. You can tell he’s been in the trenches. He’s sharp, no-BS, and genuinely wants you to win. If you’re wrestling with strategy, clarity, or just need someone to pressure test your thinking, talk to Dmitry. Easily one of the most valuable conversations we’ve had in a long time!!
Dmitry was direct, practical, and exactly what I needed. He helped me zoom out and see that Amazon vs D2C are fundamentally different business models with different economics and skill sets. He pushed me to prioritize go to market, test channels quickly, and avoid guessing. I left with clarity, next steps, and a more realistic view of CAC and distribution. Highly recommend if you want strategic honesty without fluff.
I spent the last 12 years building 0->1 startups across six US, UK, and EMEA industries. Which was when I realized: → You don't need a product to get your first traction. Yet, most founders tend to think otherwise. The result? 42% of startups (in reality, even more) fail because they lack product-market fit. They end up: → Wasting over a year building a product that no one wants; → Spending >$100k while developing the wrong product; → Launching products that gather dust on the shelf. All to eventually pivot... or worse. So, I got obsessed with answering one question: How do you figure out what to build before you build it? (thus saving a ton of $$$) I did it while: 1) Building a $10M ARR mental health marketplace in Eastern Europe; 2) Helping an R&D team reshape the mobility industry within the largest IPO in the UK; 3) Pivoting a SaaS product to unlock $30M in GMV in EMEA. These are success stories. The failures are too many to count. I can't promise you a product-market fit (no one can). I can promise you one thing: building a product or raising money before getting traction NO LONGER WORKS for most startups. Sell first, build and fund later. Book a free mentoring session if you want to learn how.
Built a research studio that helps founders define TAM, segments, and competitor advantages as well as verify existing pain and solutions with no coding.
9 of the 10 startups I worked with pivoted in the first two months without writing a line of code. They could have wasted a lot of money, but I saved it. I teach founders to do no-code validation to reach product-market fit faster.
Built a whole email support for two-sided marketplace, both demand and supply side, with several support lines, automation and knowledge base. Set up analytics to track performance of the support function.
Built different forms, slow and quick nurture sequences, automation through Make.com, and used personalization, tagging and other boring basic feature any email mailer has.
Arranged an email strategy with both transactional and marketing communication in Mailchimp for segmented base in 2 types of audiences of a healthcare marketplace
Helped 6 mobile-first AI startups find their first clients in under 2 month; frequent lecturer at various Mobile Founders communities, talking about how to pick a thriving niche in mobile, based on available public data.
Built 2-d largest mental health marketplace in Easter Europe with $10M ARR and a TravelTech marketplace with $15M ARR. Solved issues of marketplace liquidity, cross-functional strategies between supply and product, and figured out the chicken-and-egg problem.
Built the second largest mental health marketplace in Eastern Europe, helped 5 mental health startups across the US and EMEA find their way to validate demand early.
Built 3 SaaS startups (one survived!) and helped a dozen find their product-market fit, define pricing, assess feature parity and pick the key north star metric at the early stage.
Product is rarely the real bottleneck. 9 in 10 startups never reach $10K MRR — because distribution is the real challenge, and AI just made that 10x truer. DWM builds traction and distribution systems for early-stage AI & SaaS founders: find the audience that actually needs you, and sell before you over-build.
GTM & Validation Studio for funded early-stage startups. We helped founders find product-market fit before the runway burned — testing offers on real buyers, picking ICPs by talking to them, and delivering the traction needed to de-risk the venture and secure the next round. Sprints, not reports.
Launched a 0->1 corporate startup in an International travel tech with $3BN+ annual turnover and 4000 employees. 1/ Established a new business unit from 0 to a cross-functional distributed team of 15 people in collaboration with five separate business functions of the group; 2/ Scaled revenue x3 through prioritizing execution over key growth areas; 3/ Developed a comprehensive business strategy (marketing, supply, product) to double market share within the next 3 years.
Launched a 0->1 bootstrapped startup to become the top-2 mental health marketplace in Eastern Europe with $7M+ ARR, 1000 providers, 100 000 clients. 1/ Built the product from scratch, bootstrapping the business from $100k in yearly revenue to $7M+. 2/ Developed a platform strategy that allowed for a new business model, boosting the revenue tenfold through focus on billing and scheduling automation. 3/ Created a vision for a new class of psychotherapy and developed a flexible product strategy that increased customer retention 2x now and is projected to increase it further by 4x. 4/ Launched and led a growth team that achieved a 2x increase in conversion rate (key metrics) to payments through regular A/B tests. 5/ Built and led a product team of 5 people that fulfilled incoming requests of 5 departments and collaborated with the engineering team of 10 people.
Launched 0->1 a new SaaS product within the UK's largest IPO - an electric vehicle manufacturer that raised a total of $600mln. 1/ Set up a vision and a product process for 5 product teams to create a customer-centric ecosystem of products with a breakthrough approach to auto manufacturing covering all stages from design to robofacturing, which could cut the time to market of a new vehicle by 6x. 2/ Fostered a product leaders team focused on customer pains and metrics by regular mentoring and process optimization.
Scaled 1->10 an existing bootstrapped mobile-first B2B SaaS startup for SMBs, reaching $27M GMV. 1/ Developed a roadmap for an existing product that helped achieve a 80% feature parity with key competitors in 6 months. 2/ Reduced product delivery costs by 40% without significant loss of engineering time-to-market by building and leading an engineering team of 4 people. 3/ Improved cross-functional communication by implementing regular stakeholder management processes to ensure teams are aware of the priorities, deadlines, and are able to affect product development.
Launched 0->1 (and closed) a corporate fintech automotive startup within Alfa-Bank, Russia's second-largest private bank. 1/ Saved the company from launching an unsuccessful product by testing five key ICPs in 7 months through supervising the product scrum team of 7 people. 2/ Created the product vision and product positioning for a new class of product by performing customer segmentation research with 50 interviews. 3/ Increased the speed of ICP tests 2x by implementing the internal system for real-time SQL analytics.
Launched 0->1 (and closed) an angel-investment supported innovative home 3D printer, 100 printers pre-ordered B2C in 1 month, 10 media features. 1/ Raised angel investment to design the product and initial manufacturing. 2/ Developed and executed the pre-sales strategy that brought 100 sales of a non-manufactured product in 1 month.
