Mayday Mayday! Kindly asking please help and review my app and documents

Hi everyone. My name is Maks, and, to be honest, it’s hard to overestimate the value you bring to us, poor souls who are stranded in the darkness of uncertainty before they apply, haha.

Please, would you be so kind as to take a look at my application strategy and the following list of evidence/docs?

Personal statement:
Describing how I started my career in a digital marketing agency but then pivoted into the AdTech and Martech roles. I’ve led the digital transformation of two iconic brands, helping them to digitalize massive chunks of data, simultaneously growing the business by that.
The next step was a FinTech trading platform, where I was in charge of user acquisition and product marketing. I describe how I conducted a survey and analyzed the data, which allowed me to find a pitfall - lack of financial education within an auditory that leads to a less lifetime. The solution was to grow the business by building a digital, comprehensive proprietary educational platform and the impact of this product decision, which I did. The results were three new markets and growth of up to 150k users.
The last is an EdTech product-led company where I hold the Head of Growth role. Being in charge of marketing and product, I’ve built a comprehensive ecosystem, combining five siloed products into one universe - an ecosystem that allows students to perform better in Nature Science by studying using VR & AR lessons and hands-on experiments. It allowed more than 1 000 000 kids worldwide to spark and ignite their love for science. With this bold product decision, I doubled the number of active users and revenue from them.
For my plans in the UK, I want to merge my business, product and marketing knowledge with one of the best UK teachers and build a standalone curriculum-based EdTech product for schools that will fulfil all that student need in the classroom to learn Natural Science.

Recommendation letters:

  1. Google AdTech lead, who I worked with during my AdTech career. Describe how passionate I am about the data and how businesses were influenced by my outstanding ideas (of digitalising their internal data streams into one data lake). It allows companies to get more margin and raise the budget for Google AdTech Solutions.

  2. Exceptional Talent Endorsed person from Deep-Tech venture fund, that worked with me in the latest startup. The letter describes how my leadership impacted their decision to invest in round B (I’ve pitched in front of them) and proves that my product initiatives were a breakthrough for the EdTech business in the UK and US. Additionally, there is information about me being a speaker for their accelerator; since they were so mesmerized by my outstanding professionalism during the pitch, they convinced me to act as a speaker on their platform.

  3. Letter from the C-level Precision Director of the international media holding I worked in. Describing how I contribute with my knowledge, leadership and initiatives to the AdTech and Martech fields, finding the best digital & data solutions for iconic brands.

Now, pieces of evidence:
Mandatory:

  1. A reference letter from the CEO of the EdTech business where I hold the position of Head of Growth. Describing the effect of building a comprehensive ecosystem instead of the siloed products, then proves my impact on round B of investment, then showing a few other product & business ideas, e.g. conquering new markets by making the educational platform freemium. At the end - how he is glad that I will build the same stuff but UK-curriculum based.

  2. A document with my P60 (with an extremely high salary for two years), my contract and the options shares agreement that I’ve granted after the significant commercial results from my decisions. Signed by the CFO of the company.

  3. A document signed by the COO of the business with internal screenshots of the user base, revenue and profitability. Clearly show the business impact of my design and work. (profitability x2, userbase x1.5, revenue x1.7) Everything comes from raw data - internal Metabase.

  4. Screenshots of my contribution to the Round B investment into the EdTech business, where I was Head of Growth. Shows announcements, media plans that I’ve built, calendars of strategy sessions that I’ve driven, substantial incremental growth of the user base using this investment, endorsing from the board by pitching my ideas - screenshot of the calendar of the board meeting — a document signed by Co-Founder and Head of Product of the business.

Optional criteria 2:

  1. Vimeo links to two of my lectures with more than 100 attendants, speaking about Growth and Mobile Performance Marketing, that I performed in the Tech Accelerator. A few key slides and a lecture description (a few sentences). Internal Notion announcement for the Accelerator’s associates, the screenshot of the Social Media Announce. Screenshot of the calendar inviting you to my lecture.

  2. Two small startups and Tech Accelerator participants that I’ve mentored for at least a year, with screenshots of our meetings, calendars with agenda and a small letter from both startup founders describing the growth decisions that I’ve contributed to them during the mentorship program and how it was impacted their business and traction. Plus, links to their LinkedIn. One of the startups invited me to be an independent board counsellor, pro-bono, which I agreed to do. The agreement screenshot is included as well.

Optional criteria 3:

  1. Screenshots and links, with descriptions, demonstrate at least four international awards the business acquired while I was in charge of growth. Plus, I was involved in four announcements of the round B investments.

  2. Reference letter from my colleague from the EdTech business, but the VP of Engineering. He is Exceptional Talent alumni as well, already two in my application, haha. Basically goes a bit deeper and from another perspective from evidence one into the same levers that I’ve used (merged five products and built an ecosystem) and how the opportunity was spotted during my work.

  3. Offer letter from curriculum-based EdTech business, with enormously high salary and invitation to join this freshly new company as a Chief Growth Officer.

  4. Document that highlights my product ideas in FinTech - to build an educational platform for the customers. Screenshot of the platform, small cover letter from ex. colleague - Deputy CMO, plus explanation that due to the NDA, I can provide only independent evidence of growth by my decisions, which I did, using the SEMRush tool (screenshot of organic traffic to the platform veeery precise rocketed when I joined the company). In addition, a screenshot of the offer letter showed the date I joined and the enormously high salary.

Now, round, folks :))) Any tips or critics will be much appreciated. Please, beat me as hard as you can. I need it.

Cheers and good luck to everyone,
Maks.

1 Like

Hello Maksim,

It’s clear that you’re quite a talent:) In my opinion, you have provided sufficient evidence of your eligibility on the mandatory and OC3 criteria. Again, in my opinion, the evidence that you’ve provided for OC2 (outside occupation) may not be just enough. Tech Nation Guidelines do not specify the number of pieces of evidence one should provide. But, from my experience, your OC2 evidence is borderline. Also it would be great, if you could obtain a letter of Acknowledgment or Appreciation from Tech Accelerator for the two lectures (item 5).

I hope this helps,
Irina

1 Like

Wow, Irina! You’re a rockstar. Thank you for your attention to my profile. It sounds like an incredibly beneficial tip, I will undoubtedly enrich my application in evidence 6 with the letter you mentioned.
Wish you all the best!

Cheers,
Maks.

Hi Maks:) I meant evidence 5 not 6 but I guess that was a typo from your side.

And one more tip: your written English appears to be a bit “flowery”. So if you’re preparing the application documentation by yourself, please note that the Tech Nation officers will not appreciate this kind of style. All documents (above all the Reference Letters) should be written in formal English (fact-focused, it’s ok to use praise words but no colloquial expressions) except for the Acknowledgment and Thank You letters from event organizers etc.

Kind regards,
Irina

Irina,

Yeah, you nailed that with your comment. Thank you for that.
Well, imagine me typing all the above at 3 pm, haha. No wonder it sounds cheesy. In my documents, I’ve used Grammarly and already like ten times rewrite the text for clarity. Plus, there are a lot of dates, commercial details and facts about what I did. But still, I should go and check everything the 11th time, haha.

Cheers!

You do not have sufficient evidence for Optional criteria 2. Evidence of mentoring two startup accelerator is not strong enough. It has to be a structured mentorship programme.

Given several products you’ve led, you may want to consider OC1 rather than OC2.

Thank you for reviewing. Yeah, I think it would be better to reassemble the application around oc1 and oc3. What do you think about the pieces of evidence? What can I present as a oc1 for your pov?