私たちのメンターシップ事業は、市場の課題にもかかわらず月商4万ドル（$40K）に倍増しました【更新】
月商 $25,000 · 創業者1人 · 従業員5人 · Zürich, Switzerland
dom（Founder, MentorCruise）· 創業 March 2018 · 記事掲載 — · mentorcruise.com · 元の記事
同じ会社のほかの記事: 月2.4万ドル（$24K）稼ぐメンターシップ・マーケットプレイスをどう作ったか
当初の月商2.4万ドルが、2023年の記事時点では月商4万ドル（約600万円）に倍増。社員は創業者が1人、チームは4人体制。SEO強化と月5,000ドル以上の広告投資（Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Google Adwords）に加え、B2B顧客（Kickstarter, Rakuten）との提携で事業を拡大した。顧客サポート体制の強化も行っている。
売値の出典: 売値は公式サイトには明記されておらず、メンターごとに異なる可能性があり確認できず（推測）（2026-10-14 取得）
Our growth is something that can’t be pointed to one specific point in time – it’s a culmination of staying consistent and trying to entice more growth in solid ways.
Too many entrepreneurs are looking for creative growth hacks and shortcuts trying to grow their businesses. It’s all about breaking down your growth struggles into bite-sized pieces.
会計: Mercury
広告: Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Google Adwords
分析: Google Analytics, Posthog
customer service: HelpScout
デザイン: Figma, Canva, Figma
メール配信: Postmark
freelance: Fiverr
hiring: Upwork
その他: 1Password, Zapier, Printful
決済: Stripe
ネットショップ: Digital Ocean, Django
業務: Google Workspace, Dropbox, Slack
seo: Ahrefs
SNS: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Buffer, TikTok
stack: React
Hey again! We’re still here and kicking, MentorCruise is a coaching marketplace, where we are both helping career professionals turn their knowledge into a marketable coaching business, and also make it possible for mentees to find a perfect mentor with just a few clicks. Back when we did our original story, we were sitting at $24,000/month. MentorCruise had solid, linear growth and today sits at almost twice that – around $40,000/month. Our growth is something that can’t be pointed to one specific point in time – it’s a culmination of staying consistent and trying to entice more growth in solid ways.
The past year was all about optimizing and continuing to invest in things that have previously worked for us. As a result, we’ve grown our SEO by a wide margin, we also went from tinkering with paid ads to continuously investing over $5,000 per month into them with the help of an expert. We’ve made our product better and nicer to use. To do this, we’ve hired a senior-level designer for a couple of months to help our team. We’re still a small team of 4 but we have worked with various incredibly experienced talents to reach our goal. One big change we’ve made is leveling up our support team and have started doing live chats on our platform, so customers get more assistance when they need it. This required restructuring the support team but has been very rewarding. We were also lucky to work with companies like Kickstarter and Rakuten on implementing a coaching scheme in their companies, which was a new experience as well. This has started our gradual transformation from a pure B2C platform to now doing both B2C and B2B. All this together has driven a gradual month-over-month growth that has resulted in us doubling our business this year. It’s something that can’t be pointed to one specific point in time – it’s a culmination of staying consistent and trying to entice more growth in solid ways. MentorCruise has been featured in Forbes, on Neil Patel’s blog, and GitLab’s Handbook, just to name a few.
2023 hasn’t been easy for most businesses, and not for us either. While we had many leads to do company-level mentorships with amazing brands potentially, those leads have mostly dried up as HR budgets got cut first when times got tough. On the bright side, this allowed us to focus on our consumer business, which has grown since then. We decided to put most of our B2B efforts on ice for a bit. That seems dangerous at first, as our growth could have stagnated. But MentorCruise is a funny business, and very asynchronous in that way: If the economy is going well, businesses invest in their employees, and our business offering grows. But if the economy doesn’t go well, people need training and education, and our consumer side grows. Hiring was also tricky; I had to let go and replace two employees on short notice. That was a stressful time, as I had a lot of other things on my plate and travel lined up. Dealing with the pressure during those times was tough, but I’m happy I got out on the other end fine. Too many entrepreneurs are looking for creative growth hacks and shortcuts trying to grow their businesses. It’s all about breaking down your growth struggles into bite-sized pieces.
As a first-time founder who previously worked as an engineer, hiring and managing people has been by far the largest challenge I’ve encountered. This year, I was put in front of new challenges in this area. I’ve learned a bit more about what it takes to build a happy team, and also how important it is to let people go gracefully if they no longer fit in your team. I’ve utilized a few ways to become better as a manager and employer. Firstly, I’ve drawn inspiration from well-known employers like GitLab, Gumroad, and Doist, to build a business people enjoy working for. Employees at MentorCruise receive a coaching budget, and paid time off, we have regular reviews and there’s room to grow. Secondly, I got mentors of my own through our platform, folks that are a few steps ahead of me, and have hired before and scaled their companies. That's been helpful, to be able to access some past experiences to build my own. A big win has been going from discovery, and trying out many different marketing schemes, to focusing all our energy on 2-3 core channels. This has given our growth another spurt, as it’s easier to compound growth in channels that are already working for you.
We want to continue our way up to not only implement coaching for individuals but also at an organizational level. Late last year we launched our executive coaching options. We also launched our team hub, a team billing platform of sorts, that helps managers and HR keep an eye on ongoing mentorships. I’d like us to stick to similar linear growth levels as we’ve been doing so far. This allows us to build a calm, yet successful business. Given our history of revenue growth, we should be able to get to the magical $83.3k MRR within that time period. These days, a lot more people are using mentorship and coaching as their superpower. We’ve talked to a few of our mentees who have gained promotions, pay raises, or new job prospects thanks to their mentorship. This makes it an interesting case for teams as well, especially now that the economy is tighter, and there’s more attention being paid to building effective teams.
Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda has been one of my favorite reads this year. It’s all about the inner design processes at Apple in the times of the first iPhone – a huge undertaking. Designing and building a marketplace sometimes feels a little bit similar to this – there are many stakeholders involved, you can’t spill all the secrets, and it’s hard to test assumptions with everyone involved. A lot of gut feeling and breaking down huge issues into small manageable steps is required.
KISS – Keep it Simple (and) Stupid. Too many entrepreneurs are looking for creative growth hacks and shortcuts trying to grow their businesses. Again, it’s all about breaking down your growth struggles into bite-sized pieces. Check your retention. If you’re losing customers without end, you need to fix that. Chances are, your product isn’t where it needs to be. Check your activation. Are people hesitant to leave their credit cards with you? Is your trial offering not attractive? Try as many options as you can. Are you just not getting any traffic? You’re in luck – this is the easy part. Get some keyword research done by an SEO professional, and publish two blog posts each week for those keywords. Build out landing pages where necessary. Invest the rest of your budget into some retargeting and lookalike ads.
We are on the lookout for a part-time/hourly developer with experience working in Django or React. MentorCruise is fully remote and works asynchronously, so it doesn’t matter where you’re from, just how well you’re doing. It’s important to us that everyone on the team has excellent writing and communication skills, so when you reach out to dom@mentorcruise.com please send along a piece of writing you’re proud of.
Follow me on X or reach out on MentorCruise.