Growth
Marketing, Sales, Product and Retention as one Revenue system
Your growth function, owned and operated to a first result.
Twenty-two years operating the whole growth surface, demand to retention. AI made execution cheap; judgement and ownership stayed scarce. I run your growth function from inside the team to a first result, then hand back a motion your team keeps, for a fraction of a full-time hire.
Usually a fit for B2B SaaS founders past product-market fit (PMF) and a recent raise (around £1–10M ARR), where no single person yet owns growth, often after a plateau or a senior departure.
In their words
Edwin has a deep understanding of marketing and growth strategies and a strong ability to leverage product data to drive measurable outcomes. His leadership during a high-velocity, month-long marketing push across products at Move AI accelerated growth and delivered clear results.
Deeptaroop Majumdar · Cloud/DevOps/MLOps Engineer, Move AI
I had the pleasure of working with Edwin across a particularly intense online business build. He helped me pull everything together and ensure we reached our goals in the most cost- and time-efficient way. I highly recommend his services.
Jane Bayler · Founder, Chosen First System and The Pocket MBA
Edwin's transfer to the UK will prove a considerable challenge for me. He will be greatly missed, and I reckon it will be nearly impossible to find a suitable replacement. Without hesitation, I recommend him. Frankly, you’d be crazy not to hire him.
Shane Granger · Director of Marketing and Public Relations, AICF
I had the privilege of collaborating with Edwin on a complex project at LangOptima as Research Associate, a partnership that led to our top position at TAUS Rome 2026, a leading language technology conference. Together, we combined Multilingual Compliance with Knowledge Graph Mediated Translation, opening new markets and driving measurable growth. Edwin’s expertise in aligning marketing, sales, product, and retention into a single growth engine is exceptional. He generously shares knowledge, providing guidance that is insightful, practical, and immediately actionable. His energy and motivation are contagious. Edwin leads with clarity and approachability, facilitating sales pipelines, optimizing workflows, and driving marketing initiatives while keeping teams aligned, focused, and empowered. He turns complex AI challenges into scalable, production-ready solutions with real impact. His blend of vision, operational rigor, and generosity lifts everyone around him. Any team is fortunate to experience his expertise, leadership, and the unique way he inspires a culture of growth.
Viveta Gene, PhD · Multilingual Compliance Expert for Regulated Markets
The shape of the problem
Most growth functions are split three ways: a marketing lead owning demand, a sales lead owning pipeline, a customer success lead owning renewals, and no one person accountable for the number that connects them. That seam is often where growth suffers: acquisition pours into a leaky bucket, the motion is wrong before the tactics are, and every function optimises its own slice.
The aim is simple: growth stops being the thing no one quite owns, and becomes a number with a clear owner and a motion your team keeps running. Whether that's the picture at your company is an open question; the first call answers one: what does growth leadership look like today, and what needs to be true in twelve to eighteen months that isn't now?
● The case for value-first
Value is the lever. Volume alone won't move it.
5×
A one-point gain in retention lifts customer value about 5%, roughly five times a one-point margin gain and about fifty times a one-point cut in acquisition cost.
Gupta, Lehmann & Stuart, JMR (2004)
21×
B2B software holding Net Revenue Retention at or above 120% has carried an enterprise value near 21× revenue, against about 9× below that line.
McKinsey
83%
The companies with the highest Net Revenue Retention grow about 83% faster than the median.
SaaS Capital, 2025 survey
The full-surface approach
Marketing, sales, product and retention usually sit in separate teams, each optimising its own number. Growth often leaks in the gaps between them. The work is to join them: one operator on the whole surface, so demand connects to retention and the parts reinforce each other instead of competing.
The motion gets named, given one number and named owners, operated to a first result, then handed back as a playbook your team keeps running.
Operating principles
Diagnose before tactics. The motion gets named before anything gets reached for.
Retention before acquisition. The leaky bucket gets fixed before more is poured in.
Cut before add. Focus is what compounds, so concurrent initiatives get halved.
Operate from inside the team, in your Slack, your CRM, your planning.
One number. Everything runs to a shared growth metric, owned alongside your CEO.
Hand back a system. The motion is built to keep running after the engagement ends.
● Where you are
The Full-Surface Growth Model™
A way to locate the growth system on a five-stage curve, measured by how much of the value journey is owned and compounding.
Founder-Led
Growth AdvisorChannel-Fragmented
Diagnostic → SprintMotion-Fit
Sprint → FractionalFull-Surface
Fractional CGOCompounding
Full-time seat / handoverSeven pillars, one owner
One value journey, demand through referral, run as a single system rather than four functions each chasing its own number. Split it across a marketing chief and a revenue chief who don't share a number, and the function tends to suffer. One owner keeps it whole.
01 · Demand
Make the value visible
Category narrative, positioning, content authority, discovery across AI surfaces.
02 · Acquisition
Reach the people it’s for
ICP, outbound architecture, inbound funnel, account-based motion, paid mix, partner pipeline.
03 · Activation
Deliver first value fast
Onboarding, first-value engineering, trial-to-paid or pilot-to-production.
04 · Conversion
Price and close on value
Sales process, deal mechanics, ROI cases, objection handling, pricing.
05 · Retention
Keep the value flowing
Customer-health model, churn-risk identification, renewal motion, success-org design.
06 · Expansion
Widen the value
Net revenue retention, account growth, upgrade triggers, cross-sell.
07 · Referral
Turn value into advocacy
Advocacy, partner referrals, community-driven distribution.
How to engage
Five ways to work together, plus a day rate and one target outcome above all of them. We calibrate scope and terms together on the first call.
start
Growth Diagnostic
2 weeks
One executive document
A two-week senior read: where it stands, what to fix first, a documented next step.
Project
90-day Growth Sprint
90 days
Defined scope · hard stop
Diagnose, decide, ship one tangible growth result with a written handover.
Retainer
Fractional CGO
Monthly
3, 6 or 12-month terms
Embedded one to two days a week, a weekly CEO cadence, ownership of the pillars we agree.
Event work
Conference Concierge
Per event
Intel → Full Proxy
An industry conference covered on your behalf, from a market read to full proxy representation.
Startup-friendly
Growth Advisor
Monthly
Cash or equity
A standing monthly call, async access, and a quarterly growth review.
The longer you commit, the lower the rate; exact terms are scoped together on the first call.
Day rate available for executive offsites, board prep, or a single-day operating review.
Open to a full-time CGO seat: if you’re hiring for it, say so.
What the first 90 days look like
Day 30. A one-page diagnostic to the CEO: five findings, three recommendations, one decision that’s yours to make.
Day 60. Motion named. North-star metric defined with three input metrics and named owners. Concurrent initiatives cut by half. A twelve-month team plan signed.
Day 90. The plan in motion. One tangible growth result shipped. Reporting cadence operational, and a written playbook so the discipline holds after the engagement, not just during it.
Questions that come up
Why not just hire a head of marketing or a VP of sales?
Because growth is the full surface, not one channel. Splitting demand-through-referral across two leaders who don't share a number is, in many companies, where the growth function breaks.
How is this different from a growth consultant?
This is operating, not advising. The work happens inside your tools, with a weekly cadence alongside your CEO. Consultants advise and move on; an operator owns the function and the outcome for the term you agree.
Do you take equity?
For operating retainers, cash with optional equity. For earlier-stage relationships, the Growth Advisor track is built for equity.
What happens after the engagement?
Every engagement leaves a written playbook and a reporting cadence, so the discipline holds whether the engagement continues, converts to the next mode, or hands over.
The first call
One question: what does growth leadership look like at your company today, and what needs to be true twelve to eighteen months from now that isn’t true today?
No pricing on the first call. Fit before terms.
LangOptima is a recent build: a Systems Integrator (SI) that helps companies grow by connecting platforms, tools, data and people so they work together as a cohesive whole. On this page it is a case study, proof of the full growth surface owned as an operator. If your actual need is Business Orchestration and Automation Technology (BOAT), a knowledge graph for enterprise data, or custom software development, that is a separate conversation.
What clients say about our development partner
“Guys at instea possess a rare talent in being able to grasp complex abstract concepts and turn them into working, scalable code, quickly and accurately.”
“I especially appreciate the structure and professionalism that instea has implemented in all development. I am pleased that we can bring new trends in the loyalty segment to gastronomy in Slovakia through technology.”
“We needed a special team to handle a complex topic with many analytical and development tasks. instea proved to be a very reliable partner for such kind of topics.”