Blog

Founder stories and growth playbooks from the GrowthMentor community.

Featured · Mentorship

How Many Mentors Should a Founder Have? (More Than One)

One mentor gives you one person's blind spots. Why GrowthMentor founders build a network of strategic, tactical, and mindset mentors, in their own words.

Foti Panagiotakopoulos · Jul 23, 2026 · 6 min read

Read the full breakdown

The latest

He almost spent on ads. A mentor told him not to. Now he runs a 40-tutor agency.

How to Get Your First Customers After Launching a Startup

Don't go down with the ship. A field guide for marketers handed a product that may never work.

You have an idea and nothing else. Here's what to do first.

You could keep reading. Or ask someone who's done it.

Every face here has already been through what you're working on, and thirty minutes with one of them tends to beat another afternoon of reading.

Find your mentor

Keep reading

168 posts

How to be a good mentor: what the best ones actually do

Most mentoring advice is generic. Here is what the mentors people book again and again actually do, from the first minute of a session to the last.

Can ChatGPT Replace a Startup Mentor?

Mostly yes, use it. But an AI assistant cannot relocate your problem, push back with something at stake, or hold you accountable. Where the tool stops and a person starts.

The Best Thing a Mentor Does Is Tell You You're Solving the Wrong Problem

Most stuck founders execute well against the wrong problem. Three real reframes (pricing, conversion, hiring) and why an AI assistant cannot run this move on you.

How to get your company to pay for a GrowthMentor membership (copy-paste templates)

Your company has a learning budget. Copy, paste, and tweak these email templates to get your GrowthMentor membership expensed, plus the exact lines that get a yes.

Google Ads or Meta First? Pick by Demand, Not by Platform

Which paid channel first when you can only fund one? It's a demand question, not a platform-quality one. Google captures demand that exists, Meta creates it, and one 30-second check tells you which you need.

Founder-Led Sales When You Hate Selling

Stop trying to sell. Early founder-led sales is customer discovery, and the warm, unpushy motion you're wired for is the one converting now. Five calls this week.

How Much Should You Spend to Start Running Ads?

There's no magic number, there's a minimum the algorithm needs. The math that sets your real minimum ad budget (target CPA x 50 / 7), the three readiness checks before you spend, and the kill-number to write down first.

How to Audit Your Own Ad Account Before You Pay Anyone To

About to hand an agency your ad account login? Run the buyer's-side inspection first, the 10-minute teardown that shows whether your budget is leaking, in what, and if you even need to hire.

Why Your Cold Outreach Gets No Replies (and How to Find the One Thing That's Broken)

Sent 200 cold emails and heard nothing? Reply rate is five variables, not a volume problem. How to isolate the one that's broken instead of sending more.

How to Escape Feast-or-Famine Freelancing

Referral-dependence is why your pipeline swings. The escape: mine your warm network, run one owned channel weekly, and turn lead flow into a dial you control.

How to Find Your First Customers When You're the Only Marketer

You are the whole marketing department and the CEO wants pipeline. The one-channel system solo marketers use to land their first ten customers, and what to refuse to do until then.

Stop Being the Doer. Become the Owner.

Hiring won't fix a business designed to need you. Package the method, hire to it, then remove yourself from delivery, and keep the work only a founder can do.

You don't have a pricing problem. No one understands your offer.

Stuck on how to structure your pricing tiers or what to charge? Usually the real problem is that no one understands your offer. Run the one-pager test, and price last.

How to Define an ICP You Can Actually Use

An ICP that names an industry and a headcount decides nothing. Define the trigger, the job, and the threshold, then test it by which lead it turns down.

Still reading? Sometimes a conversation is faster.

Talk to a mentor

How to Explain What Your Startup Does in One Sentence

The one-liner won't come because the who is undecided. Pick one segment, fill the template, add one number, then test the sentence on three strangers.

Your first 90 days as Head of Marketing, with no CMO above you

Just became Head of Marketing with no CMO above you? The quick-win advice is the trap. Diagnose before you commit the org, and the two-week sprint to do it.

Suddenly Senior, With No One Above You to Check Your Judgment

That dread is a missing calibration loop, not impostor syndrome. Someone senior used to stress-test your calls. Here is how to rebuild the check on purpose.

You already picked your niche. Stop reopening the decision.

If you keep second-guessing your niche, the expensive problem is usually the reopening itself. Commit to one segment, set a keep-or-kill number, and judge on evidence, not weeks.

Why Your Ads Get Clicks but No Conversions

A click means the ad worked. The missing sales mean the wrong people clicked. How to rule out tracking and bots, excavate your real ICP, and rewrite one ad for one segment.

First-time CEO, and the first thing on your desk is a layoff

Just became CEO and a layoff is already on your desk? Separate the question you cannot answer this week from the decision you can, and how to lead the cut and the team that stays.

The top of the funnel fell off. AI ate it. Here's what the funnel looks like now.

TOFU, MOFU and BOFU still describe how people buy. But AI Overviews and ChatGPT now answer the top-of-funnel questions directly, which changes where your content can still win.

Instagram doesn't generate leads. DMs do. The feed just gets you there.

Most Instagram lead-gen advice is sold by people running Instagram lead-gen courses. The honest version: who should skip the channel, and how it really works (the feed gets you found, the DM closes).