Ace Karim

I am a full funnel expert having been in the field of marketing - sales - customer success for around 25 years working with established brands. I am a startup consultant working with early stage and growth stage founders from pre-seed to end of Series A for over 12 years.

I setup and was managing partner of an investor advisory and portfolio support firm. I ran it for a tad under 5 years, working alongside founders and investors so I have experience from both sides of the table. I have helped startups at pre-seed, Seed and Series A raise funds, in numerous regions notably the US, UK, and Asia.

I am also a VC scout for a few firms, with a primary focus at Seed and Series A in the US, so I may be able to introduce you, but only if you are ready. I am an advisor at a Rouge Ventures where I provide executive and portfolio support.

I have owned and operated numerous businesses, and am a partner in a SaaS that’s been running for a number of years. Finally I have two more startups in the works, one focused on helping early stage founders get from idea to initial traction (Startizer). The other is to help startups with some traction, solidify principles, put in holistic systems, and standardize various operations to accelerate growth and then scale.

So, what can I help you with?

Full-funnel: covering interest, consideration, acquisition, onboarding, retention and referral. Growth and sales models include product led growth, customer led growth, marketing and sales led growth. I can help you get your first handful of customers by focusing on your early adopters and using un-scalable methods of customer acquisition.

Once you have good initial traction, and signal to noise ratio is at an acceptable level, we can start standardizing various operations, removal of bottlenecks, increasing efficiency and automation to increase growth. When successfully done, and you have various forms of fit: product-market fit, channel - business model fit, channel - pricing fit, etc, we can look into various forms of scalable acquisition and placing growth systems in place to do so.

Specific areas in marketing and sales including but not limited to: lead generation, demand generation, inbound marketing, outbound marketing, content marketing, email marketing, inside and outside sales, inbound and outbound sales, from no-touch self service, to full-on high touch.

I cover SEO, copywriting, information modularization, macro-micro information presentation, all to aid in the understanding and retention of the information your customers need to take onboard and act on.

When it comes to onboarding and retention, I cover the systems that need to be in place to facilitate a new trial user to successfully convert into a paying user, and from that a long-term user.

I can help you define the analytical system that needs to be in place to monitor and define the paths to lead new users to key moments, Aha moments, logging which actions and events to help promote an efficient and effective onboarding path leading to retention.

If you are a startup looking to attain outside investment I cover due diligence requirements, pitch-deck audits, investor relations, investor readiness, startup viability assessment, business modelling, financial modelling. Basically what investors look for in early stage startups.

If you have an idea and are wondering how to take it forward, I can aid you with a step by step detailed approach that covers the full spectrum of things that must be done to go from idea to launch and early traction. So, it will be things like various forms of validation, be it problem, audience, solution, market-demand.

I’ll go into the formulation of your MVP, market research, competition research, positioning, GTM strategy, initial marketing collateral, and how to find and sell your solution in person or as close to in person as possible.

Finally I take a detailed holistic approach covering big-picture small details. I look at things in a systemic manner, for ultimately things are interconnected, are part of something bigger, so there must be an appreciation of context.