Our Team
Our coaches aren’t professional “mentors”. We're operators who have built and exited startups and enjoy teaching others.
After watching hundreds of startups waste investors’ money on bad hires and expensive non-scalable tactics, we built Startup Core Strengths to help startups learn the foundational mindset and habits to drive sustainable growth.
Our mission is to help early-stage startups to get much much better at customer acquisition. We know it’s not only possible but repeatable. And, we’ve seen that it’s not only repeatable but teachable.
Our Why
Matt Lerner
Founder & Chief Troublemaker
Matt spent 15 years as a marketer and G.M. in Silicon Valley, including 10 years at PayPal. Later, as a VC at 500 Startups, he led 35 early-stage investments, and developed and led the “Distro Dojo” growth program, where he helped those startups achieve average growth of 250% in 12 months. Matt guest-lectures at Stanford Business School and Imperial College.
When he's not hacking growth, Matt's obsessed with optimising his own health, “biohacking,” fasting, and measuring anything that isn’t nailed down.
Nopadon Wongpakdee
Co-Founder
Prior to Startup Core Strengths, Nopadon was an Entrepreneur In Residence with Citi Ventures, and coached in 500 Startups' accelerator. He's been working on SEO and inbound since the late 90s, and has worked with over 100 companies.
When he’s not inspiring teams… Nop enjoys Thai boxing and buzzing around London on his one-of-a-kind custom-built Triumph T100 TR9C Roadster.
He once… grew a publisher’s traffic from 5K/month to 50K/day in 10 months.
Claire Barrance
Operations & Community
Claire has a background in marketing, community and events management, with 15 years of experience across different sectors including tech, education, startups, membership organisations, and HR.
She is now the Operations Manager at Startup Core Strengths and really passionate about the power of community.
When she’s not running operations she loves live music – both attending and organising events.
She once launched, managed and grew a community of Senior HR Professionals completely from the ground up
"The coaches and mentors KNOW our business. They spot opportunities and issues that we can't even see, and proactively help us to navigate through them. There's no generic advice here. It's hyper-tailored to our business, our team, and the problems we must solve to grow."
Beth Carter
Head of Growth, GoSquared
Having an outside perspective not just of someone off the street, but people who are incredibly smart experienced and who - importantly - are genuinely willing you to succeed is almost priceless.
Liam Houghton
Founder, Popsa
Every one of the coaches and mentors emits this feeling of caring deeply about the things they’re doing and saying. And they have a sense of credibility that only comes from carrying the scars of success and failure.
Hamish Grierson,
Founder Thriva
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Our Coaches
LENNY PICARDO
(D2C, MARKETPLACES)
Ex. Index Ventures. First Head of Growth @ Deliveroo. Investor & Advisor @Huel
HANNAH PARVAZ
(B2C, MOBILE)
Head of Marketing @ Uptime
Ex-Head of Growth @ Curio
App Marketer of the Year
#1 Rated on GrowthMentor
Francesco Cardoletti
(Marketplaces, B2B)
Venture Builder @ Unilever Foundry
Former EIR Citi Ventures
Founder PawSquad
2+ exits
0% Snakeoil
Second Nature
100x
100X
Fy
70X
so-sure
50X
Popsa
40X
Storemaven
20X
Zenjob
17X
Thriva
12X
Simply Cook
12X
Houst
5X
Ooni Pizza
Ferly
3.5X
?
You
SO-SURE
2,000%
1,000%
Our Path
600%
Get Agent
600%
KEKO (MOVIVO)
500%
Zen Job
500%
Storemaven
Airsorted
300%
900%
POPSA
550%
Qunomedical
300%
Settled
Thriva
300%
300%
CODEC
Sara Gordon
(Positioning & Storytelling)
Positioning consultant for tech companies in healthcare, consumer & software incl. Flo, ZOE health, Bloom & Wild, Incident.io
DANNY LEONARD
(B2B Sales)
Silicon Valley sales leader with 5 exits including Square, Groupon, Storefront, Thanx, OrderAhead
Maya Moufarek
(D2C, B2C)
Founder of Marketing Cube
Ex. CMO Chemist Direct, Pharmacy2U, Ex-Google & AMEX
Gold dust for Impatient Founders
Hyper-curated. Two minutes per week:
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Growth tactics worth stealing
-
Interview questions
-
Useful mental models
Josh Lachkovic
(D2C,E-com, Digital,Copy)
2X Founder, CEO WineList, Head of Growth @Thriva, ex-Pact Coffee, Hotwire
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Joanna Wiebe
(B2C, B2B)
Founder of copyhackers.com, 100% results-driven, and the #1 copywriter + coach today (in our humble opinion).
Sohrab Jahanbani
(Marketplaces, Sales, Ops)
6X founder, 4 exits, recently Bidvine, GoNabit.
Hawi Bekele Bengessa
(Copy, B2C, B2B)
B2C Direct Response copy: Headlines, landing pages, emails, ads.
JP Morgan Chase, Startup Core Strengths
Lisa Kennelly
(B2C, Mobile, Brand)
Consumer growth @ Klarna, previously CMO at Fishbrain, Marketing Director @ Clue, mentor at Antler & FirstRound.
Beth Carter
(B2B, B2C, Saas)
Head of Growth at Flexa Careers, Ex HOG Tillit Invest, Manifesto,
GoSquared. Angel @Ada Ventures
Marcin Zaba
(eCom, B2B)
Head of Marketing @ Audiens
Ex-Head of Marketing @ Syndicate Room, 2X Founder
Oyinda Bamgbose
(Product Led Growth)
Charlie HR, OYNB, New Entrepreneurs Foundation
Luke Carthy
(eCom, Analytics, SEO)
Founder @ LukeCarthy.com
Ex- Mayflex, Finning Caterpillar, Chemist Direct