20+
Talks, workshops and masterclasses
Speaking / Workshops
Practical startup growth talks founders can actually use on Monday.
I'm Daniel Johnson, a founder, fractional CMO and startup growth mentor. I've delivered 20+ talks, workshops and masterclasses for founders and operators through organisations including Google for Startups, Techstars, Cambridge Judge Business School, Imperial College London, the UK Department for Business & Trade, MEST Africa, General Assembly and Nomad Summit.
No motivational filler and no generic playbook copied from companies with billion-dollar budgets. I focus on practical frameworks, real examples and what the audience should do differently next.
405
Founder and operator mentoring sessions
4.94/5
Average rating from 225+ reviews
10+ countries
Startup audiences reached through teaching and mentoring
Selected speaking
Real rooms, real founders, practical sessions.
A sample of delivered talks and workshops. The full archive includes recurring programmes, panels and earlier sessions.
Nomad Summit · Chiang Mai
2026What Two Exits and Too Many Failures Taught Me About Growing Successful Companies
A founder-focused talk on the mistakes, assumptions and lessons behind building, scaling, failing and exiting companies.
UK Department for Business & Trade
2026Building a Team and Founder-Led Growth: From First Hire to First Advocates
How founders turn early founder-led momentum into a team and growth system without losing customer insight or speed.
UK Department for Business & Trade
2026Ideas to Reality: Validating Your Product and Finding Market Fit
A practical founder workshop on testing ideas before overbuilding and separating real market signal from polite feedback.
Foundervine · Immerse Catalyst
2026Marketing for Growth: Expanding Sales and Revenue
An interactive masterclass helping founders diagnose where growth is stuck and connect marketing activity to revenue.
Shenzhen SaaS & AI founder event
2026Building a Growth System Tied to Revenue
A session on connecting positioning, distribution, experimentation and reporting to the commercial outcomes that matter.
CHSI Stitches · NEC Birmingham
2025From Art to Cart: Converting Creativity Into Sales Through Digital Marketing
A practical session on positioning, customer understanding and digital distribution for creative businesses.
Mayple
2024Game Changing Talent: How to Hire the Best Marketers
What founders should look for when hiring marketers, and why hiring around channels rather than problems often goes wrong.
MEST Africa
2023How to Use Growth Hacking to Grow Business Revenue for African Startups
A hands-on workshop for entrepreneurs and startup teams, delivered to 68 attendees.
Qualcomm + Techstars
2021Going Global: Europe
A session for Taiwanese startups on entering European markets, localisation, positioning and international expansion mistakes.
Imperial College London
2021Turning Ideas Into Startups That Can Scale
A founder workshop covering startup creation, positioning, validation and early-stage growth.
General Assembly Middle East
2020Data-Driven Marketing
A practical training session on using data to make better marketing decisions.
View the full speaking archive →
Includes earlier and recurring work with Google Launchpad, Cambridge Judge, UK Space Agency and more.
Talks, workshops and founder sessions delivered through
GrowthMentor 
Cambridge Judge 
Imperial 
Techstars 
General Assembly 
UK Space Agency Event photography
On stage, in workshops and inside founder cohorts.
Speaking works better when it feels like a conversation with the room, not a lecture at it.
Signature talks
Start with the problem the room actually has.
I do not force the same keynote into every room. These are the themes I speak about most often, then I tailor examples and depth to the audience.
Founders, startup teams and accelerators
What the Hell Is Growth?
How to build a growth system instead of collecting growth hacks
A practical way to diagnose where growth is actually stuck, decide what matters and build a repeatable experimentation process.
B2B SaaS, AI startups and GTM teams
Positioning Before Pipeline
Why your lead problem might actually be a positioning problem
How to diagnose ICP, category and messaging issues before pouring more money into acquisition.
Post-PMF Seed to Series B founders
Founder-Led Growth
What happens after the founder gets the first customers?
How founders capture what is working, turn customer insight into repeatable processes and stop becoming the commercial bottleneck.
AI companies, SaaS teams and innovation programmes
AI-Native GTM
How small teams can use AI without outsourcing their judgement
Where AI genuinely improves research, positioning, experimentation and sales workflows, and where human judgement still matters.
Founder conferences and entrepreneurship events
What Two Exits and Too Many Failures Taught Me
The things I wish somebody had told me earlier
A story-led founder session on the mistakes, assumptions and uncomfortable lessons behind building and growing companies.
Formats
Keynotes when you need one idea. Workshops when you need behaviour change.
The format should match what the audience needs to leave with, not just the slot on the agenda.
20–45 minutes
Keynote
For conferences, company events and founder communities. Focused around one clear idea and a practical takeaway.
60–120 minutes
Workshop
Exercises, examples, audience questions and practical implementation for accelerators, portfolios and startup teams.
Half day or customised
Founder / portfolio session
Teaching, live diagnosis, office hours and individual startup feedback for a specific founder cohort.
Custom format
Panel / moderation
Founder conversations, expert panels, interviews and Q&A around growth, AI, SaaS, entrepreneurship and go-to-market.
What organisers get.
I want the organiser to know exactly what the audience will leave with before the session is booked.
- Audience research before the event so examples match the room.
- Real startup examples rather than only billion-dollar brand case studies.
- Practical frameworks, live Q&A and optional startup or GTM teardowns.
- Slides, worksheets or follow-up resources where they make the session more useful.
Audience fit
Who I speak to.
The sessions land best when the audience has real commercial decisions to make, not when they only need inspiration.
Startup founders
Accelerators and VC portfolios
University entrepreneurship programmes
Corporate innovation teams
Marketing and growth teams
Founder communities and conferences
Organiser feedback
Useful enough to be invited back.
I prefer specific organiser evidence over anonymous praise. These are paraphrased from post-session feedback and correspondence.
MEST Africa
The organiser described the workshop as enlightening, engaging, enjoyable and valuable to attendees.
68 attendees across entrepreneurs in training, staff, portfolio companies and community members.
General Assembly
The organiser reported great feedback after the event and asked about bringing Daniel back for future workshops.
Data-Driven Marketing · General Assembly Middle East
Speaking videos
Watch a session, not a showreel.
See the delivery style before you book.
Luck Doesn't Scale
Daniel Johnson Introduction
A quick intro to Daniel's growth operator background and current point of view.
Watch on YouTubeLuck Doesn't Scale
What The Hell is Growth
An actionable guide to growth marketing for startup founders.
Watch on YouTubeLuck Doesn't Scale
How to Use AI for Product Market Fit
A practical view on using AI to sharpen product-market fit and startup growth.
Watch on YouTube About Daniel
Growth work first. Speaking built from it.
I've spent most of my career trying to understand why some companies grow and others do not. I started my first business young, went on to build and exit companies, worked across startups and larger organisations, and founded We Scale Startups.
Today I work primarily with AI and B2B SaaS companies on positioning, acquisition and repeatable growth systems. Speaking is where I turn those lessons, including the failures, into something another founder can use immediately.
If an attendee leaves with twelve pages of notes but no idea what to do next, the session has not worked.
Planning an event?
Tell me who is in the room and what you want them to leave knowing.
I speak at conferences, startup accelerators, VC portfolio programmes, universities, founder communities and company events in the UK and internationally.