How to grow a SaaS business | The Early Days by DULO (S3E1)

The Early Days Podcast by DULO

Discussing growth marketing for entrepreneurs with Foti Panagio of Growthmentor (S3E1)

Foti Panagio is the co-founder of Growthmentor - a platform that connects founders and marketers with growth mentors. We were first introduced to Foti and Growthmentor thanks to Julian who is an active mentor on the site.

Growthmentor is Foti’s first attempt at entrepreneurship and in our conversation, we touch on a lot of topics around the early days. We go behind the scenes of the process of idea validation, transitioning from full-time employment to part-time entrepreneurship, the biggest challenges facing the business today, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and much more. As we go along, Foti shares a lot of useful resources, tools, and methods he uses to steer the growth of the business (check out a list with all the links below).

We also gave Foti the opportunity to ask you, our audience, to answer this question of the day: "What is your biggest pain point in growth [marketing] that you have right now?"

Topics we cover in this episode:

02:44 - Who is Foti and the origin of Growthmentor

05:20 - Previous startup experience

06:04 - Foti's first steps into solo entrepreneurship

08:40 - How Foti validated the idea for Growthmentor

13:50 - Transitioning from a full-time job to part-time entrepreneurship

15:00 - Balancing family and co-founder relationship with a spouse

17:15 - Splitting responsibilities between co-founders

18:50 - What's the current focus of the Growthmentor team

24:00 - Foti's current biggest challenge

26:40 - Timeframe to start monetizing

27:20 - What KPIs is Growthmentor tracking

28:22 - How are they tracking KPIs

31:15 - Plans for Startup Grind

32:36 - Nailing the elevator pitch

35:08 - Resources and techniques for starting and growing a business

37:27 - Delegating work to virtual assistants

38:00 - Following up with cold leads and personalized outreach

39:30 - Resources for growth marketing and performance marketing

40:22 - Future plans, targets, and ideas for the next 6 months

46:40 - How does Foti go around selecting mentors for the platform

50:00 - Foti's question to the audience: "What is your biggest pain point in growth [marketing] that you have right now?"

Useful Resources and Links:

Connect with Foti - twitter, LinkedIn

Check out Growthmentor

AdWords - Google's advertising platform, useful to run A/B tests

instapages - quick landing page creation

2018 Marktech Landscape Plan - overview of marketing technologies for 2018

Trello - project management software

Google Drive - document and cloud storage set of tools

IndieHackers - a community of entrepreneurs

Zest.is - marketing content aggregation

useloom - a browser extension that to share a recording of your screen with audio and video

UpWork - if you want to look for virtual assistants

woodpecker.co - automated cold emails and follow-ups