30% growth in one month, but how?

So, January was an awesome month for mentorcruise.com. A few shifts in distribution channels as well as the January guilt of NY's resolutions brought us big traffic and with that many requests.

Result after one month: 30% growth, MRR jumps from ~$4,600 to over $6,000. Sweet!

Last year was bonkers (700% growth) and keeping the pace this year is very encouraging. I believe there are a few reasons for this.

– Getting closer to PMF. People that join MentorCruise love it. Most likely they even tell their friends or write about it. That was not the case 2 years ago.

– Network effects. Each month, we bring in over 50 new mentors. Many of them in leading positions in tech. Each of them brings in a coworker, who are leaders themselves. All of them share this news with their network, which brings in mentees and – you guessed it – other leaders in tech.

– SEO. The long and winding road of working with @jic at embarque.io on SEO is paying off. This month, one of his blog posts is bringing in 2k fresh visitors. SEO makes up for about 80% of all foot traffic.

– Userbase. There are 10,000 people on our mailing list. Whenever I send a newsletter it feels like a rush. 50+ people on the website re-discovering all mentors and reaching out. It's awesome and only keeps on compounding.