Cogito
If you're a startup founder struggling to scale your business, we totally understand how frustrating and overwhelming it can be. That's why my cofounder, Ankit Maloo, and I started Cogito, a data-driven scaling agency.
Most of startup life is flying by the seat of one’s pants, and growth is rarely different. There’s typically 30+ growth channels that need to be tested, and it is virtually impossible for one person to be skilled in all of them. This was a challenge we faced in our own startups, and in the startups we’ve worked with.
We’ve since built a network of growth marketers skilled in each of those specific areas. Every startup is unique, and needs a tailor-made team of experts to help scale it. With our flexible, world-class growth team, you can combine your understanding of your customers with our expertise to scale multiple channels concurrently and blow past your OKRs.
Aditya Mehta
Aditya was previously the CEO of Suggestr (YC W22), where he was leading all growth efforts. He took the company to 5-figures in revenue within the first 3 months of launching. His areas of expertise are growth strategy, email outbound, sales, and organic socials.
How we’ve helped startups before
- YC web3 startup 1 (US-based) - fix attribution, high-ROI channel discovery, performance marketing
- YC web3 startup 2 (US-based) - email marketing
- 3d printing startup (SG-based) - inbound strategy, content marketing
- Series A FinTech (India-based) - referral strategy
- YC B2B startup (US-based) - landing page copywriting
- … and many more
How do we work?
We combine your understanding of your customer, with our marketing expertise to deliver the best outcomes for your company. We follow the framework below to achieve this:
Discovery
We begin by getting to know your business, your product, your target audience, and your current marketing efforts. We analyze your data and look for areas where we can make improvements, including customer interviews.
Strategy
We will then create a customized strategy that outlines the channels we will use, the timelines, and the expected results. We will work closely with you to ensure that our strategy aligns with your business goals.
Experiment
We will implement the strategy and runs experiments to test and optimize various marketing channels. We monitor the performance of each channel and make adjustments. We report the results on shared Slack channels.
Teardown
We analyze the results of each experiment and provide you with detailed reports on what worked and what didn't. We discuss the results with you and use the insights to refine our strategy. Look forward to our weekly sync ups for this.
Scale
Once we have identified the most effective channels, we scale up our efforts to maximize your growth potential. We continuously monitor and optimize our approach to ensure that you are getting the most out of your marketing budget.
Why choose Cogito?
- We’re founders ourselves, understand the early-stage uncertainty, and take ownership
- We work closely with our clients to understand the customer personna, and ensure our efforts align with their business goals
- We function just like an in-house marketing team, using shared Slack channels for comms, and weekly sync-up calls to discuss progress
- We build customized strategies for each client, use experiments to test and optimize various marketing channels
- For areas where we need additonal expertise, we’ll bring in world-class experts from our network, at no additional cost to you
- You can combine your understanding of your customers with our expertise to scale multiple channels concurrently and blow past your OKRs
- We understand the changing nature of business, so we don’t have any lock-in periods, only month-to-month contracts
Our expertise
Customer Acquisition
Strategy
Who we work with?
- You want to grow your users and revenue
- You’re looking for a partner and not just a vendor
- You want sustainable, defensible growth, instead of burning money on channels that don’t work
- You want your strategy, product, creative, and data all working harmoniously
Ready to chat?
Frequently asked questions
Can I see who all you’ve worked with in the past?
Most of our work is covered by NDAs so we can’t share names openly. However, if you need more validation before committing, we’re happy to arrange a reference call with 1-2 of our previous partners.
What is the exact process?
We start off with a 30-min intro call in which you give us an overview of your businsess, product, and marketing. We want to understand your goals, expectations, and what milestones you need to hit for your next round of funding. If we see mutual fit here, we proceed to sign an NDA. Post that, we offer you a (free) deep-dive analysis on your metrics before signing anything. After this is done, we prepare a draft scope of work and an estimate of the time and cost of the project. Once both sides are happy, we sign an Agency Agreement to formalize the engagment, setup shared comms over Slack, and kick things off.
How much does it cost?
We bill on an hourly-basis or on a project-basis. However, we can only give an estimate once we closely understand your company and product. After the completion of the partnership duration, any collaterals, playbooks, strategies, and tools belong to you.
How long does a partnership last?
We work on a month-by-month basis. However, if required, you can terminate the engagement with two weeks notice. No questions asked, no hard feelings :)
I already have a growth team. Why should I work with you?
You get two seasoned operators for less than the cost of one senior hire. We help you strategize as well as execute, working closely with your growth team. We also share knowledge and strategies extensively, developing that growth mindset and processes, and your team can take over within 2-3 months.
Why shouldn’t I just hire someone in-house?
Working with Cogito gives you access to a team of experts in various growth channels, without the need to hire and manage them in-house. This allows you to focus on your core business while still having a dedicated team working on growth for you. Additionally, the flexible nature of Cogito's services means that you can scale up or down as needed, without the hassle of hiring or firing employees.
How long does it take to see results?
Differs across channels and tactics. Eg — SEO takes 3 months to show results, while FB ads can start bringing an ROI within a few days. We use a mix of long-term and short-terms strategies and tactics to deliver on your weekly/monthly goals.
Do you have experience working with B2B or B2C companies?
We’ve worked with both B2B and B2C companies, helping them meet their growth goals.
How do you measure success?
Our success is the same as your success. In some cases, it means getting a lot of users at the top of the funnel. In other cases, it’s fixing activation. In others, it’s about getting free users to convert to paid customers. It depends on the stage your product and company are currently at.
We believe in sustainable growth and we work to build your growth engine for the long term, even after our partnership has ended.
Can you help with branding and design?
While branding and design are not our primary focus, we do work with a network of talented designers who can help you create high-quality branding and design assets.
How do you stay up-to-date with the latest growth trends and techniques?
Our source of knowledge is our own experiements and tapping into what our friends in the industry are doing at this point. We have a wide network of experts across different industries, and a shared knowledge of what is working and what isn’t for different use cases.
What level of involvement do you expect from us during the partnership?
About 1-2 hours / week. Once we start our partnership, we have a shared Slack channel for comms. We also do weekly sync ups with you, and any ad-hoc calls as needed. Being founders, we take ownership and try to work as autonomous as possible, to free up bandwidth on your end.
How do you ensure that our data and information are kept confidential?
We take the confidentiality of our clients' data and information very seriously. We use a specific growth email id that you provide us with to store all documents and data. Once the partnership ends, you can simply change the password and own all the data.
We sign NDAs with all clients before any work or data exchange commences.
I don’t have a huge marketing budget. Am I still a good fit?
Definitely, we work with you closely to devise specific tactics suitable for your budget and goals. There is no minimum bar for a marketing budget. We do occasionally recommend some marketing spend to test new channels, based on product-channel fit.
Recently we work with a startup who had a specific requirement of trying ‘doing things that don’t scale’. We leveraged Zapier and social signal listening to surface posts and conversations about their competitors and specific pain points at almost zero cost.
Can you work with startups at different stages of growth?
Yes, we work with startups at different stages of growth, from early-stage startups to well-established companies looking to accelerate their growth.