Case Study: Growth Mentor - Problem

A deep dive into a successful business and what makes it so.

What if there were one thing you could do that would raise your chance of entrepreneurial success by ten times?

I've found the secret. After a decade of searching, it's this:

Know what a good business model looks like.

It's easier said than done. Good businesses are easy to spot. But what makes them a good business? To understand that, we need to do a deep dive into their parts.

To help us understand all the parts of a business model, we'll use the Lean Canvas. It's a tool that allows us conceptually and visually capture those parts.

The subject of a case study is a bootstrapped, profitable company called GrowthMentor.com.

This is no abstract theoretical study. I interviewed the CEO and Founder, Foti Panagiotakopoulos. However, it was a few years ago when this was just an idea.

To start our deep dive, I'll document what might be the most essential part of any business model: the problem it solves.

This is no secret. Now. But when they founded the company, it wasn't clear. Like so many success stories, the clarity on their problem came after the fact. And it was born in a struggle.

When capturing a good business model, I try to document three problems that I'm trying to solve. Here are the three that Foti told me they landed on.