Growth Studio

Growth Studio helps early stage and high-growth founders scale from $3m to $25m ARR through strategic growth direction and execution. 

We start with deep customer research to build your growth roadmap, then take ownership of implementation—managing your paid acquisition, optimizing conversion funnels, designing growth experiments, and orchestrating your retention strategy. 

Built by operators who've scaled companies to $XXM+ ARR, we provide the strategic leadership of a CMO plus hands-on campaign management, all without the overhead of building an in-house team.

Founder

Samantha Leal • Growth & Marketing Advisor

I help early-stage startups with acquisition, retention, and monetization strategies to scale to 8-figures.

If you're a founder, here are some of the areas that I can help you with:
• Growth Loops
• Acquisition Strategy
• Paid Social
• Lifecycle / Email Marketing
• Customer Research / JTBD development
• Content Marketing
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Engagement & Retention
• Monetization
• Team building / Hiring


Companies I've worked with:
- Kinedu (500 Startups, StartX): Leading early childhood development app that empowers parents with personalized, science-based activities and tracking tools to optimize their baby's cognitive growth.
- Leadsales (StartX, Latitud): B2B sales automation platform that transforms cold leads into warm conversations through intelligent outreach and engagement.
- Terapify (YC, 500 Startups) - The leading spanish-speaking mental health platform connecting Latin American users with licensed therapists through online therapy sessions.
- Prequel - Education company building the common core of life skills that schools aren't teaching, empowering kids aged 9-18 to launch businesses, build products, and achieve real-world success.
- Curious Cardinals - Online platform connecting high-achieving college students from top universities with K-12 students for personalized mentorship and academic enrichment.
- Huex Labs - Enterprise AI solutions provider specializing in automating complex business processes through custom machine learning models.
-Mely AI - Cutting-edge AI platform that streamlines customer service operations through intelligent automation and natural language processing.

Growth & Marketing Advisor

Prequel

Leading all marketing and growth efforts for Prequel.

We often underestimate what kids can do, but at Prequel, we not only empower them – we are setting a new standard.

At Prequel, we help 9-18 year olds accomplish what their parents think is impossible.

Head of Growth & Marketing

Prequel is a group of EdTech brands that aims to help the world's most ambitious kids learn 21st century skills that prepares them for the new global economy. Our brands include: AlphaX, Beta Camp, and Apollo School.

Head of Marketing

Synthesis

Scaling the best ideas from Ad Astra, the school our cofounder started with Elon Musk at SpaceX. Synthesis teaches kids 8 to 14 collaboration, critical thinking, and decision-making skills by challenging them to wrestle with complex simulations of real-world problems.

As the Director of Marketing I was responsible for setting the strategy and overseeing marketing functions including user acquisition, customer LTV through communication strategies, lifecycle engagement campaigns, conversion efforts, and product marketing.

Within 8 months, as a team of 3 in the marketing team, managed to spearhead their growth efforts and scale the number of paying subscribers by 340%

Director of Marketing

YSpace, York University

YSpace is York University’s entrepreneurship hub creating positive change by fostering a community of innovators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers. 

As a Growth Consultant, I provided strategic and tactical guidance to specifically assigned ventures on their user and revenue development goals.

Two of the companies I mentored, ended as the top 5 finalists on YSpace Tech Accelerator Demo Day.

• Huex Labs - developed AIDA, a voice-enabled conversational AI to enable food chains and brands to better serve their customers in live business environments.

• Mely AI - an enterprise AI-powered solution, with a proprietary technology to extract key information from complex documents and specialized in Supply Chain and Logistics.

Growth Consultant

Kinedu

Kinedu's mission is to unleash early childhood development at scale by fostering quality learning experiences at home, school, and everywhere in between. 

Trusted by more than 8MM parents worldwide, Kinedu's iOS and Android app is available in 3 languages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) and provides personalized, engaging video-based developmental activities for children under the age of 4.

Joined Kinedu in early 2014 as the 1st marketing hire and employee #4.

Responsible for all consumer growth-related functions including user acquisition, customer LTV through communication strategies, lifecycle engagement campaigns, conversion efforts, product marketing, partnerships, and pricing.

VP of Growth Marketing

Joined Kinedu in early 2014 as the 1st marketing hire and employee #4.

- Define marketing objectives and strategies to support the company’s goals.
- Plan and execute marketing, email, and social media, and user acquisition campaigns
- Design, build and maintain social media presence and community management
- Measure and report performance of all digital marketing campaigns, and assess against goals (ROI and KPIs)
- Analyze user behavior, conversion data and customer journeys, funnel analysis and multi-channel attribution
- Identify trends to optimize spend and performance
- Design and implement new growth strategies
- Plan, execute, and measure experiments and conversion tests
- Collaborate with Product and Design teams to optimize user experience and increase conversion rates
- Customer insights, and feedback loops

Content

Hey, I'm Sam 👋
When I discovered growth marketing, something clicked. It perfectly blends what fascinates me: understanding people and building systems that make businesses grow.

Over the past decade, I've helped startups scale from 0 to 8-figures by looking at growth holistically. For me, it's never just about finding one magic lever - it's about building a complete system that works. From scaling products to 8M+ users to helping founders navigate their path to $XXM in revenue, I've learned that sustainable growth comes from understanding the full picture.

What sets my approach apart? I look at your entire customer journey - from acquisition to activation, conversion to monetization. It starts with deeply understanding your customers and product, then building a growth system that connects all these pieces. No generic playbooks, no isolated tactics - just strategic moves that compound over time.

I'm known for moving fast and diving deep. Instead of following generic playbooks, I help startups find their unique path to scale by deeply understanding their customers. The result? Growth strategies that actually work for their specific business.

If you're at $3M+ ARR and want to scale efficiently while maintaining strong unit economics, would love to chat.

Want to know more? Check out samanthaleal.io

Samantha Leal

Not ready yet

Building something for the people working with and for people.

Rubik Hub

Helping founders with their start, launch or growth strategies. Drop me a DM with questions or for more details!

Mentor

As a coordinator at Rubik Garage Accelerator for Startups, I support and mentor early-stage entrepreneurs who want to launch and grow viable businesses. With over 7 years of experience in the startup ecosystem, I have helped hundreds of founders validate their products, access funding, and scale their impact.

I also manage the Rubik Garage - Scale to the USA Accelerator program, which is designed to help startups from Europe enter the US market and connect with investors and mentors. In this role, I leverage my expertise in business models, growth and innovation, as well as our network of partners and collaborators, to provide startups with the best opportunities and resources.

Coordinator @ Rubik Garage Accelerator 

Head of Startup Programs Office

Community Builder

ROD - Creative and Educational Space

I help to create educational contexts for children and families so they can make a positive impact in the world with their involvement, creativity and passions. From interactive workshops to big street events, all the support them to learn in a very creative way for long-term impact. For some is tho discover the skills they have, and for others is to develop the skills they have.

Educational programs development - volunteer

Bonom - pentru educație

Coordinating and organising non-profit projects with an impact on local and regional communities.

The Climate Vertical

We want to live in a world where humans live in harmony with nature, united as one

We are on a mission to create the movement to inspire more respect for nature, educate on living sustainable, and accelerate high impact climate solutions

Co-founder & Startup Program Manager 

Co-managing the educational process (accelerator) and the grant awarding steps for 33 climate startups from Romania.

Co-manager @ Black Sea ClimAccelerator EIT ClimateKIC 2021

North-East Regional Development Agency / Agentia pentru Dezvoltare Regionala Nord-Est

Creating & delivering programs and learning journeys for entrepreneurs from idea to the first investment.

Expert @ Startup Support Office in the Businesses Development Department

St. Nicholas College

Coordinator for the extra-curricular activities of 110 students and creating contexts for non-formal learning and programs for the experiential development of their abilities and skills.
Manager for the daily operational activities for a guest house, restaurant and student dorm.

Director

Part of the initiative team of the College to create the space for learning and growth of personalities of the students selected in the College. The College acted as a volunteer centre focused on enhancing students' skills through volunteering, encouraging them to address community issues and enrich their theoretical knowledge from university. We dedicated ourselves to promoting formative experiences and personal development through diverse projects in areas such as ecology, culture, fundraising, recreation, liturgical initiatives, missionary work, education, sports, image and IT, journalism through Alpha editorial, and charitable actions.

Educational Director

Aleph - network of clubs for high-school students

The purpose of the Aleph clubs is to foster community and nurture the passions that can bring students together. Aleph is organized into clubs for literature, journalism, theatre, and music, with the guiding motto for members' participation in meetings and activities being "Express Your Passion!".
We were creating the context so the student can self-organise so they can initiate and organise projects according to their passions.

Project Coordinator

ASFI

Volunteering for impact through projects in culture, education, and management. This is where I learnt skills though in at least 4 faculties.

Member

Vicepresedinte Resurse Umane

Work and Travel Company

Recruiting students for summer job employees, contacting and informing employers, promoting job offers among students, organizing informational events, managing client and partner databases, and handling contracts.

Recruiting Officer

- Passionate about growth, creativity, positive impact, empowering minds and creating the context for others to start, launch and grow. 
- Startup Programs Manager with a history of working and mentoring in the startup ecosystem, startup accelerators & incubators, educational projects, local businesses, artisans & crafters, community building, NGOs & people development. 
- Working with early-stage Startups and scaleups, Mentoring and Event Management. 
- Founder, initiator & co-founder of several projects, startups and NGOs.
- High involvement in NGOs, youth work and volunteering to create a positive impact in the local and regional communities. 
- Program management professional with a PhD in personality traits.
I like transforming learning through interactive & experiential projects and non-formal educational techniques. I design learning paths, camps, curriculas and project-based workshops.

taplio

The Battle

Samantha Leal

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