Growth gets easier to manage when the team can see what's working, what's guesswork, and what should stop.
About Daniel
I've been the founder with a working product and a flat chart at 2am.
The first company was eQuoo — gamified emotional fitness training, evidence-based, built with real clinical input. Good product. A mission worth caring about. A go-to-market strategy that amounted to hoping the right people would find us. They didn't. Not fast enough. We navigated through two exits across that chapter, but somewhere between the 2am spreadsheet stares and the awkward conversations about channel strategy, the lesson crystallised: execution without a system isn't scrappy. It's expensive improvisation with a deadline.
Typical clients are B2B SaaS or AI with $2M–$20M ARR, ~10–50 people, and the founder still owning weekly GTM decisions.
Why founders work with me
After those early chapters I took in-house roles — Head of Growth at Shoprocket and then NAVA — and kept seeing the same thing: functional products, founders personally owning every GTM call, and growth that was reactive rather than designed. We got results: 30% LTV improvement at Shoprocket, 30K+ downloads at NAVA. But mostly I was watching what breaks when no operating system exists behind the activity. That repeating pattern is what We Scale Startups was built to fix. Not with a framework deck that gets filed after the workshop. With a structured approach to positioning, pipeline, and growth decisions — built from first principles across 20+ AI and SaaS startups in 12 countries, applied against £6.8M+ in managed acquisition spend, and refined through 479+ mentor sessions at a 4.97/5 rating. The methodology has been taught at Cambridge Judge Business School, Google Launchpad, Techstars, and Imperial College. That's not credential stacking — it's proof the approach holds up under pressure from multiple directions.
Teaching style
Practical, direct, and built around the next decision.
Whether it is a mentoring session or a keynote in front of a Cambridge cohort, the approach is the same: take a messy growth question, separate signal from noise, and make the next commercial decision easier to see. No theatre. No complexity added for the sake of looking thorough.
If you have sat through a pitch that was mostly frameworks with no through-line to your actual problem, you know what I am trying to avoid. The methodology behind this work is 520 slides deep — built on patterns from 100+ startups across 12 countries — but in a session it shows up as a sharper diagnosis and a clearer next step, not a slide deck.
Outside the work: I am usually reading something about behavioural economics, watching a founder pitch something they are genuinely excited about, or navigating a new city with a camera and a bad sense of direction. Currently splitting time between the UK and Southeast Asia.
Principles
How the judgment shows up in the work.
Not rules. Just the things that have proven consistently true across 100+ startup engagements in 12 countries.
01
Find the real bottleneck
Before adding spend, clarify whether growth is breaking in positioning, activation, retention, measurement, or team decision-making.
02
Turn evidence into choices
Good research and data should reduce ambiguity for the team, not create a bigger reporting ritual.
03
Leave a system behind
The best engagement makes the team better after it ends: sharper priorities, clearer rhythm, better hiring or handoff paths.
Operating History
Where the point of view comes from.
Founder-side experience, in-house operating roles, advisory work, and public teaching. The chapters marked ongoing are still active today.
2013–2016
Founder-side: built and exited early ventures
First founder chapter — mental-health tech, early SaaS, and the awkward lessons that come from selling before the system is fully tidy. The useful part was learning founder-led growth from inside the company.2015–2018
In-house: Head of Growth, Shoprocket & NAVA
Senior operating roles covering positioning, acquisition, retention, and revenue quality. 30K+ NAVA downloads, lifecycle rebuild, 30% LTV lift at Shoprocket.2016 → now Ongoing
Advisory: We Scale Startups
The advisory vehicle for fractional CMO, mentoring, content, and speaking across SaaS, AI, fintech, and innovation-led teams.2019 → now Ongoing
Teaching & mentoring at scale
Google Launchpad, Techstars, GrowthMentor, Cambridge Judge Business School, Imperial College London, General Assembly, UK Space Agency. 479+ sessions delivered, 4.97/5 rating.2024 → now Ongoing
Current focus: founder-led GTM systems
Post-PMF B2B SaaS and AI startups at 2M–20M ARR, typically 10-50 people, with a functional product but inconsistent GTM: sharper customer insight, message-market fit, prioritisation, creative testing, and a repeatable growth cadence. Next Step
If this sounds like your current situation.
The fit is strongest with B2B SaaS or AI teams at 2M–20M ARR, 10–50 people, where the founder is still making most of the weekly GTM calls and growth feels more reactive than designed. The Fractional CMO page breaks down scope, 30/60/90-day priorities, and where to start. For named founders and specific outcomes, the testimonials page has the evidence.
Last updated: 11 May 2026