Meltem Kuran

Asking about a candidate's reputation with family reveals their level of self-awareness and humility.

"What would your siblings say about you? It's very telling. If they have siblings, if they don't, I will say, what will your parents say about you? But it's very telling what you think other people thi..."

Early growth hires must be willing to take accountability for revenue, not just top-of-funnel metrics.

"Early on one of the first questions I would ask people is, what are the KPIs that you're willing to commit to? So if someone's only willing to commit to lead numbers, that's not good enough. They need..."

Use multi-tiered budget scenarios in case studies to evaluate a candidate's resourcefulness and scalability.

"A really good way to also test for that is, this is more on the case study process, but asking someone to come up with a strategy with $0, with $10,000 and maybe a hundred thousand dollars to see if t..."

A high-growth culture requires both extreme urgency ('Deel speed') and a bias toward believing solutions are possible ('default optimism').

"Our version of velocity is something that we call 'Deel speed', is that we want to make sure that we act with urgency. It doesn't matter how big the team has grown, we want to act with urgency on beha..."

Effective B2B messaging must be specific and unique to the product's actual function.

"If your one-liner can also work for another business, please don't let that be your one-liner. Make it so that people actually understand what you do. Because right now there's a lot of statements out..."

Early-stage B2B companies should prioritize high-intent, bottom-of-funnel channels over broad brand awareness.

"I'm not a huge fan of early awareness campaigns for B2B businesses specifically... the reason I don't like awareness early on is because to do a proper awareness campaign, it takes time... B2B busines..."

SEO content is only effective if it targets existing search demand and active questions.

"I'm a huge fan of SEO, happy to discuss that later, but if people aren't asking this question to Google, you can write all the content you want, it doesn't matter, nobody's going to find it."

The ultimate goal of SEO content is to satisfy the user's intent so completely that they stop searching.

"The biggest mistake people make is they will just shove keywords. They're like, 'Okay, these are the keywords people are searching for, I need to make sure I mention it five times.' Obviously do that,..."

Prioritize content creation based on a combination of search volume and conversion intent.

"We have this framework that we call the traffic light system. Essentially we go, whenever the team is going to do a content series, they will go and find up to 700 keywords... And then those set of ke..."

Use optimization tools to ensure content is accessible and technically sound for search engines.

"We use Clearscope, we love it... those tools will give you a score to say you're an A plus or you're a C minus, you need to make your language less sophisticated, currently it's at university level an..."

Early growth can be driven by providing genuine value in existing communities where users are actively seeking solutions.

"Those cheaper channels are often places where people are just trying to get an answer to their question. So whether that be search engine optimization through the articles that you write for people, l..."

Community engagement must be helpful and non-promotional to be effective and avoid being banned.

"The value-add way would be explaining what the solution to that problem is. Because the reality is there are a lot of people out there who can probably solve this, and then providing your solution, bu..."

The best partners are those whom your target audience already views as a trusted resource for the specific problem you solve.

"Venture capital partners was a huge one because when you get money from a new VC, they ask, they're like, 'Okay, thank you for giving us this money, now we want to expand our team with the money you g..."