The Brutally Honest

The Brutally Honest Mentorship, training, products, programs, and tools for the startup ecosystem. The focus is on prioritisation, trade offs, and ex*****on under real constraints.

We help founders build better companies, angels make smarter investment decisions, corporates run innovation that delivers results, and ecosystem programs show real impact. The Brutally Honest works with people and organisations operating inside the startup ecosystem, where decisions have real consequences. We help founders build better companies by bringing clarity to product, growth, fundraising, and team decisions. We support angel investors in making smarter investment decisions by adding structure to deal evaluation, portfolio thinking, and risk management. We work with corporates to turn innovation into measurable outcomes. This includes intrapreneurship, venture building, venture clienting, and reviewing innovation portfolios so leaders can decide what to back, change, or stop. We also partner with accelerators, incubators, venture builders, competitions, and ecosystem programs to improve selection, strengthen founders during programs, and track outcomes across cohorts. Across all of our work, we combine mentorship, training, products, programs, and tools to reduce complexity and support better decisions. We strengthen existing teams and programs rather than replacing them.

07/10/2026

An AI startup says its ARR is $2 million. Our angel is ready to wire the money. So we looked inside the number first.

ARR should mean signed, recurring subscriptions. Unsigned deals, token usage, hardware and one great month times twelve don't count the same way.

One startup made about $100k a month, then had one $170k month. Multiply that month by twelve and you get $2 million. Annualise the last six months instead and it's $1.3 million.

Three questions before you wire anything:

Is it signed?

Which month is that?

After the model bill, what's left?

06/10/2026

Revenue is up. Customers are happy. So why does the team still guess?

Each co-founder has a different answer. Nobody puts it on paper. Then 12 months pass.

TBHM Growth gives you four weeks to decide the year, with 13 mentors in 8 countries.

The NOV26 cohort starts on 23 November. Apply at growth.brutallyhonestmentor.com

05/10/2026

Your deck says the market is $50 billion. Investors have seen that slide a hundred times, and it tells them you haven't picked anyone yet.

The fix is older than your startup. In 1991 Geoffrey Moore took it from D-Day: take one beach, hold it, then move inland.

Facebook did exactly this. Harvard first. A month later Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Then high schools. Everyone else waited until 2006.

Can you name 10 of your buyers, and do they know each other? Two yeses and that's your beach.

28/09/2026

A founder finishes the pitch, says thank you, and walks off stage. The investor is left thinking: so what?

Before you pitch, answer the questions the room is already asking. How can we help you? Why do you need this money? What exactly will you do with it?

Asking for money just to have money does not work.

Find your ask. Then defend it.

21/09/2026

Applications for the October Growth cohort close on 28 September. 🗓️

Four things have to be true. The product is built and earning. You want to go international. You have started thinking about how to pay for that. And you are willing to be transparent with your co-founder and with us.

No revenue yet? Apply if you want, but we will say no, so the four weeks are not wasted on you.

Already growing fast? Also no. Well done, go and grow.

The ones we are built for are in the middle. Product works, money is coming in, and nobody can say where the next year goes.

Apply 👉 https://growth.brutallyhonestmentor.com

18/09/2026

opens on 18 November. Someone there will ask you for one line, where the company is going next year.

It is the friendliest question anyone asks a founder and the hardest one to answer honestly, because twelve months of work can feel like progress right up until you see it from above.

Our brand new growth programme is four weeks that end with an answer you can defend.

Eight live sessions, four private mentor calls with people who have already done it in the market you are heading into, and an assessment each co-founder answers on their own.

Ten places, for founders who already have revenue.

📍 Cohort OCT26 starts 5 October. Applications close 28 September.

🔗 Apply through the link in bio!

𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗩𝗶𝗹𝗻𝗶𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸.Thursday, our co-founder Ozan Sonmez is on the Startup Fair Main Stage for 𝘕𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘐 𝘌𝘷...
14/09/2026

𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗩𝗶𝗹𝗻𝗶𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸.

Thursday, our co-founder Ozan Sonmez is on the Startup Fair Main Stage for 𝘕𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘐 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳: 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘌𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, with investors from Wave Ventures, Bek Ventures and Outlast Fund.

Friday, we host founders at ROCKIT for our Growth Readiness Workshop. Two hours with the tool we use to evaluate startups as angel investors, and €400 in credits for it.

📍 Thu 17 Sep, 15:50, LITEXPO
📍 Fri 18 Sep, 10:00, ROCKIT. Free, register at luma.com/w040lix0

Link is in bio!

07/09/2026

An investor is a person listening to your story.

How you tell it matters. A slower pace gives a serious moment room to land. Genuine excitement helps the person across the table understand why you care.

Ozan shares a reminder for founders preparing their next pitch: practise the delivery alongside the words. Record yourself once and listen for the parts that sound rehearsed.

🎤 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝘁 𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗣On Monday the talks on this stage were about how you start and fund a company. Today they change to wh...
03/09/2026

🎤 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝘁 𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗣

On Monday the talks on this stage were about how you start and fund a company. Today they change to what happens after that, when there is an exit, or when the founder moves on.

What is on today: planning for liquidity instead of waiting for it. How fear changes the way you make decisions, with the person who came up with the word FOMO. And a look back at the first five years of LEAP with the people who ran it.

Doors at 13:00. Our co-founder Ozan Sonmez is hosting, same as all week.

Running order in the carousel!

📍 Malham, Riyadh. Come say hi if you are around.

🎤 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘂𝘀?That is the last session on our stage at LEAP 2026 today. Monday we laid the ground. Yesterday we...
02/09/2026

🎤 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘂𝘀?

That is the last session on our stage at LEAP 2026 today. Monday we laid the ground. Yesterday we turned momentum into scale. Today, Autonomy x Legacy.

Fourteen sessions from 13:00, and our co-founder Ozan Sonmez opens every one of them.

The full running order is in the carousel!

📍 Malham, Riyadh. If you are here, come and say hello.

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