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

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