Startup Therapy by Tonkopi
Go-to-Market Mentor, Silicon Valley
Building is not the hard part. Going to market is.
I have taken products to market in four different categories: fuel retail, hardware, AI software, and a delivery category that did not exist yet. Six loss-making stations to 500+. A prototype to sales in 40+ countries. Three exits.
30 minutes. No pitch, no obligations.
Sessions in English, Russian, or Ukrainian.
01The same process, whatever the category
Four cases out of many
I have taken products to market from zero more times than fits on this page. These four are here because the industries have nothing in common: energy retail, a delivery category that did not exist yet, hardware sold in more than 40 countries, and AI software built and sold in 14 months. Same process every time. Click a case for the detail.
Also mine: In Charge One, MP.kz, X-Rift, Adlog TV, best.ua. Plus hundreds of mentee companies I have helped launch, strategy through execution. See how I run the process.
02Proof, not promises
, three different playbooks. The e-bike my company built holds the Guinness World Record for . It was named . We raised on Fundable. And I have been , with more than 20,000 startups and founders taught along the way.
Every number above opens the source. Nothing here is decoration.
Trained and certified at
03As seen in
Click any card for the full coverage, then the article.
Delfast Reinvents The Soviet Dnepr As A Powerful Electric Bike
Co-founders of Ukrainian startup Delfast discuss navigating through a crisis
Ukrainian fighters use electric bikes in the war against Russia
Coverage of Ukrainian tech workers during the war, featuring Delfast
04Mentor at accelerators
Active mentor at these six accelerators. More than 20 accelerators over 14 years. 20,000+ founders and students taught across incubators, camps, lectures and the radio practicum since 2012.
Jury: Unicorn Battle Silicon Valley, Startup Weekend, BarCamp.
05What we can fix together
Where go-to-market breaks
Go-to-market from zero
The product works, but there is no repeatable way to win customers.
We define the ICP, the buying trigger and the decision-maker, then build the offer, the outreach and the weekly review that turns guesses into a pipeline.
4 categories
Fuel retail, one-hour delivery, hardware, and AI software. Same process every time.
First customers and a repeatable sales process
You closed a few deals on charm and cannot explain why the next ten stall.
We win the next customers together, then write down what actually worked: pipeline stages, onboarding, objection handling, and the reporting that keeps it honest.
700+ B2B contracts
Signed at Delfast Delivery, from first pilot to a documented process nine franchises could run.
Positioning and category creation
Buyers do not have a mental slot for what you sell, so they compare you to the wrong thing.
We find the one sentence that makes the category obvious, and test it on real buyers before it goes anywhere near a deck.
A new category
One-hour delivery did not exist as a category. The line was "a smartphone delivered as quickly as a pizza".
US market entry
You built something real outside the US and now need to make it work here.
We pick one entry wedge instead of "the US market", translate your traction into terms a US buyer recognizes, and line up the first American customers.
3 countries
Kazakhstan, then Ukraine, then Silicon Valley. Built and sold VisaNow.AI, an AI immigration platform, to a US buyer.
Hardware go-to-market and scaling
You have a working prototype, but manufacturing, distribution and enterprise buyers are a different problem entirely.
We work through sourcing, unit economics, demo logistics, dealer channels and the first market launches with someone who has shipped it.
$0 to $8.5M, 40+ countries
Built the e-bike that holds the record for distance on a single charge, 228 miles, and sold it to the LAPD, the US Air Force, Uber Eats and DoorDash.
Enterprise and government deals
Your buyer is a procurement department, a police fleet, or a ministry, and nothing about that sale looks like SaaS self-serve.
We map the buying committee, design the pilot and its success criteria, and run the cycle from first contact through demo, negotiation and delivery.
5 to 7 figures
Deals run personally with the LAPD, the US Air Force, the Ukrainian armed forces, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Wolt and Bolt.
Established business growth
You run a profitable company and want a thinking partner, not a course.
We work on scale, delegation, the next market to enter, and whether your next venture deserves to exist.
6 to 500+ stations
A fuel retail network scaled from six loss-making sites. A delivery business franchised into 3 countries.
Fundraising and pitch
Your pitch is not landing, and investors go quiet after the first meeting.
We rebuild the narrative, the deck, and the room, then drill the Q&A until it is boring.
Close to $6M raised
15 raises: angels, VCs, accelerators, and crowdfunding. 500 Global batch 33, Unicorn Battle Silicon Valley judge.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding looks like free money until you try to actually run a campaign.
We plan the pre-launch list, the page, the press push, and the fulfillment math before you take a single dollar.
$3.4M in one campaign
Equity crowdfunding, 300 investors, plus $165,800 in rewards crowdfunding.
06How I actually run go-to-market
The method, not the theory
Most go-to-market advice stops at "find product-market fit". This is the operating system I build with founders instead. It runs on account selection, research quality, and disciplined follow-up, and it produces a pipeline you can inspect week by week.
Step 01
Define a narrow ICP, buying trigger, and decision-maker
Not "mid-market retailers". One segment, one moment that makes them buy, and the exact job title that signs.
Step 02
Select 10 accounts every week on real signals
Hiring, funding, regulatory changes, leadership moves, or visible evidence of the manual process you replace.
Step 03
Write a short brief per account
The relevant executives, how they run the process today, the likely pain, and one testable commercial hypothesis. One page. I do not contact an account until that one page is written.
Step 04
Plan the approach across every channel at once
Email, warm introductions, LinkedIn, and the industry events they actually attend, coordinated per account rather than run as separate campaigns.
Step 05
Write every message by hand
One account-specific hypothesis and one relevant proof point per message. Automation handles research, data collection, CRM updates, reminders, and follow-up scheduling. It never handles the judgment or the message itself.
Step 06
Review weekly and feed it back into the product
Replies, meetings, opportunities, objections, and next steps tracked by account. The weekly read refines the ICP, the positioning, the sales collateral, and the roadmap.
I run a working version of it on my own outbound: AI-assisted account research wired into Gmail, HubSpot, LinkedIn, and live browser sources, with the human judgment kept where it belongs.
We can adapt it to your market on the first call and start building the first account list the same week.
07From gas stations in Kazakhstan to Silicon Valley
60 seconds on how I got here
My path ran from Kazakhstan to Ukraine to Silicon Valley. I started as a geophysicist in Kazakhstan, then took on the fuel station network at KazMunayGas: six loss-making stations, which I grew past 500 by writing the state program that funded it and franchising the model. The case is here.
Kyiv came next. I built and sold best.ua, hosted a radio show called "Startup for a Million" on Europa Plus for 19 episodes, and spent a season doing theater on the side, because building companies alone gets lonely.
Then Delfast. First the delivery company: one-hour delivery for online retailers, a category nobody was selling yet, franchised into 10 cities across 3 countries and sold in 2020. Out of its own courier fleet came the e-bike business: $0 to $8.5M in sales across 40+ countries, selling to couriers, police forces and armies. The bike we built holds a Guinness World Record for distance on a single charge, 228 miles (367 km), and set a speed record at Bonneville.
I moved to the US during the war in Ukraine. Built VisaNow.AI, an AI platform for immigration cases, out of my own failed green card case, and sold it to JustiGuide 14 months later.
Now building CoreElement.AI. The job repeats across every category: work out who the buyer really is, what makes them move, and how to win them repeatably. That is what I do with founders now, and I have been doing it since 2012.
0raises, close to $6M total (angels, VC, accelerators, crowd)
0+founders and students mentored
0US patent applications, named inventor
0Bmedia impressions (cumulative Delfast coverage)
500 Globalbatch 33
NVIDIAInception member
08Testimonials
What mentees say
After a business breakfast with Daniel
"Daniel Tonkopiy, thank you again for the meeting (a business breakfast with Daniel Tonkopiy). I really wanted to learn to see the world with a fresh, unconventional eye. After talking with you, I got exactly what I came for. Within six months I completely rebuilt my website on a new engine, expanded to Dnipro and Kharkiv, lost 40 kg, opened a new right-sized business, finally committed to learning English (and I am learning it), and I keep showering my friends and family with advice and ideas."
Sean D.
Founder, robotics hardware
One session
"Thirty minutes in he told me my pricing was an apology. I raised it that week. Nobody left."
Arjun M.
Co-founder, B2B software
Two sessions before our seed round
"We had forty pilots and three paying customers and I was sure we had a product problem. Daniel would not discuss the product at all in the first session. He kept asking who was already paying us and what those companies had in common. They were third party warehouses in Texas, between fifty and three hundred staff. We rebuilt the target list around that and stopped chasing everyone else. Eleven paying customers six weeks later, and the average contract went up about four times."
Grace L.
CEO, healthtech, Singapore
Weekly, for one quarter
"I have worked with three advisors before this one. The difference is that he has actually sold something himself, in a category where nobody was buying yet. I told him our sales cycle is long because healthcare is slow. He made me read our last five email threads out loud, and by the third one I could hear that the problem was in how we were writing them. We changed the opening message that afternoon. Reply rate went from about 4 percent to 19 percent over the next six weeks."
Malik G.
Co-founder, construction analytics
US market entry, first 90 days
"I moved to San Francisco with a deck, a visa and no network at all. The advice I kept getting was to find warm intros, which does not help much when you do not know anyone yet. Daniel had me list the thirty companies that actually have the problem we solve, then went through how to write to them cold. Eleven wrote back. Two are paying now. About half of that first hour was not about sales at all, it was about why I kept putting the outreach off."
Ryan H.
Co-founder, agtech, Fresno
Booked the free session expecting a sales pitch
"I booked the free call assuming a package would get pitched at the end of it. There wasn't one. He asked who signs the check on a family farm and I had to admit I did not really know. Turned out I had spent a year pitching the son while the father still owned the land. We closed four accounts that quarter and every one of them started with the father."
Ines B.
Founder, e-commerce, Berlin
Translated from the original German
"I expected an American coach with slogans. What I got was a lot of very direct questions and long pauses while I tried to answer them. Twice he said an idea of mine was bad and explained why, which nobody in my own network had been willing to do. We have not grown much since then, but I know which customer we are building for now, and I have stopped saying yes to all the others."
Bartek N.
CTO and co-founder, developer tools, Warsaw
Sent as a voice note. Translated from Polish.
"My co-founder booked the call, I joined out of politeness. I spent the first ten minutes explaining our architecture. Daniel let me finish and then asked how many people had paid us anything in the last month. The answer was none. That was basically the whole meeting. We cut the roadmap in half the following week and started calling users instead."
09Three steps, no fluff
How it works
1
Free strategy session, 30 minutes.
We go through your business and find the one thing actually blocking you, usually somewhere between who you sell to and how you win them.
2
Ongoing mentorship.
Monthly sessions, network access, and async support between calls.
3
Focused sprints.
Go-to-market plan, ICP and first-customer push, pitch deck, investor Q&A training, scoped and time-boxed.
Who this is for
- Early-stage founders who want to do the work, not just hear about it
- Founders who have a product and no repeatable way to win customers
- B2B, hardware, and deep-tech founders
- Founders selling to enterprise or government buyers
- International founders entering the US market
- Owners of established businesses who want an operator to think with, not a course
Who this is not for
- Founders looking for a magic fix
- Founders looking for an investor "through a connection"
- Anyone who wants a deck without doing the thinking behind it
10Track record, in full
Full record
The tiles above are the short version. This is the full ledger. Where a public link exists, it is live.
Companies and exits 9
- best.ua: Founded, sold in 2014 (exit 1 of 3). Source: AIN, web archive.
- Best UA + The Best Magazine: M&A deal, 2011. Source: AIN, web archive.
- Delfast Delivery: First 1-hour delivery from online stores, franchised into 3 countries, sold after 6 years (2020, exit 2 of 3). Sources: SMK Group, CFTS, InVenture, AutoGeek.
- Delfast Bikes: Sales from $0 to $8.5M, 40+ countries. Customers: LAPD, US Air Force, police in Mexico and North Carolina, Ukraine's armed forces, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Wolt, Bolt, Glovo. Gold at the European Electric Marathon 2015 (Kyiv to Monte-Carlo) and 2016 (Lviv to Monte-Carlo). US channel built from zero: 24 authorized dealers and 22 dropship partners across 10 states. Full case study. Coverage in the Press group below.
- In Charge One: Founded, raised investment from 500 Global in the Valley, pilots in SF and LA. Source: youtu.be.
- VisaNow.AI: Founded (Nov 2024), sold to JustiGuide (Jan 2026, exit 3 of 3). No public announcement yet, no dollar figure ever.
- Adlog TV: Co-founded, 2013. Source: AIN, web archive.
- X-Rift: AR game, CEO 2013 to 2014, European App Award. Source: AIN, web archive.
- CoreElement.AI: Founded (Oct 2025), NVIDIA Inception member, active. Separate brand, not linked from this site.
Before startups 4
- KazMunayGas, 2002 to 2009, Astana: Head of Product & Infrastructure Scale. Took the fuel station network from 6 loss-making stations to more than 500 across the country, later sold. Wrote the 120-page state investment program that funded the buildout and entered the budget of the Republic. Full case study.
- Real estate: Deals across 30 land parcels and properties worth $800M+. Development projects in Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand: built and sold.
- Baisal residential complex, Almaty: Authored the concept. Sold out 100% at 2.2x market price.
- mp.kz, 2013: Head of Product & Operations. Grew annual revenue from $30M to $40M.
Records and awards 11
- Guinness World Record: 228 miles (367 km) on a single charge, on the electric bike Daniel's company built. The record belongs to the bike. Source: guinnessworldrecords.com.
- Bonneville speed record: Set by the same bike, at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Sources: YouTube, LinkedIn.
- Forbes Fastest Electric Bike: 2021 and 2022, Delfast Top 3.0. Sources: Forbes 2020, Forbes 2021.
- Sustainability Hero of the Year: 2022. Source: LinkedIn.
- EarthX EcoWarrior: 2022. Source: Facebook.
- EBRD + Greencubator: Climate Innovation Vouchers. No link.
- Best Mobile App, EECA 2013: X-Rift, Yerevan. Source: AIN, web archive.
- KZ Start: Winner, Almaty. No link.
- mLab ECA: Winner, Yerevan. No link.
- Unicorn Battle final: Winner, Startup.Network, Kyiv. No link.
- Patents: Named inventor on 3 US patent applications (published 2022, since abandoned) plus 3 Ukraine patents. Sources: patent 1, patent 2, patent 3.
Fundraising 5
- Kickstarter: $165,800. Source: Kickstarter.
- 500 Global: $200K, batch 33. Sources: LinkedIn, youtu.be.
- Angels: ZAS Ventures and other known business angels. No link.
- Total raised: close to $6M across 15 raises: angels, VCs, accelerators, and crowdfunding. Summary figure.
- Crowdfunding: $3.4M in one campaign, 300 investors. Sources: Fundable, AIN.
Mentoring & jury duty 21
Mentoring programs
- Alchemist Accelerator (Startup Mentor, 2025 to present)
- Signal (Founding Mentor)
- Startupbootcamp (Mentor)
- Intelligent People (Product Mentor)
- Mentors in Tech / MinT (Mentor)
Show all mentoring programs
- Silicon Valley Certification Hub
- Startup Ukraine (2013 to 2018)
- EastLabs (2013 to 2015)
- Greencubator
- Happy Farm
- Bitrix24
- Concepter
- Technation
- Technovation
Jury duty
- Unicorn Battle (Silicon Valley, 2026)
- Yerevan BarCamp (2018), Source: news.am
Radio, school & speaking 21
Radio and school
- Europa Plus, 107.0 FM, Kyiv: Author and host, "Startup for a Million," 19 episodes. Guests: Yaroslav Azhnyuk, Vladimir Kalashnik, Nikolai Palienko. Archive on SoundCloud.
- "Startup for a Million" workshop: Author and lead trainer. Sessions: session 1, session 2.
Speaking, 100+ talks since 2012 (this list is 30 to 40% of the full record)
- 2025: MOST Business Incubator, Almaty.
- 2023: EarthX Dallas (moderator); SelectUSA; Green Summit, San Diego.
- 2022: EarthX Dallas (moderator). Sources: NADallas, LinkedIn.
- 2021: iForum, stadium, Kyiv. Source: YouTube.
- 2019: 5th European Congress of Local Authorities, Krakow, panel moderator, City Transportation.
Show all talks (2012 to 2025)
- 2025: Consulate General of Kazakhstan in San Francisco.
- 2021: Reinvention Academy.
- 2020: Kyiv Smart City Forum; Startup Grind Global.
- 2019: Shevchenko National Technical University, Kyiv.
- 2018: PrivatBank Business Incubator KUB, Kharkiv (keynote and mentor); Marketing Jazz, Odessa; Yerevan BarCamp; Startup Ukraine Startup Camp, Verholy; Startup Ukraine "Start Your Business" (jury); Startup Battle Almaty (jury).
- 2017: PrivatBank Forum "Ukraine, the Country of Businessmen," Kyiv; StartupKitchen, investor and expert; conference invitation video.
- 2016: iForum, Source: YouTube; Codefest, Ohrid, Macedonia (speaker and jury); Franch Biz "Birth of a Legend," Kyiv; Lviv Business School MSc in Technology Management (keynote); Central Asia FLEX-Ability StartQube, Bishkek; Startup School Incubator, Kyiv (founder and trainer); UNIT.City.
- 2015 to 2016: Technation, Almaty (speaker, mentor, jury); E-commerce Congress, Kyiv (moderator); Business Camp "Made in Ukraine" (2015 to 2019, annually); Zavtra.ua (2016 to 2017).
- 2015: Eurasia Mobile Challenge, Almaty (keynote); Greencubator Climate LaunchPad; M-City Challenge, Almaty; IT Cluster Dnipropetrovsk.
- 2014: Eastlabs and Eastlabs Gaming (expert and mentor); Microsoft YouthSpark (keynote); Global Startup Battle, Startup Weekend Odessa, Startup Weekend Ladies Kiev, Hack4Good (hackathons, mentor and jury); LifeHackDay (keynote), Source: YouTube; MOST Business Incubator, Almaty; Greencubator TeslaCamp; European Cycle Logistics Federation Conference, Bilbao; Golden Bytes (2014 to 2016, jury); I Coworking Hub (2014 to 2015); Bitrix24 growth conferences (2014 to 2019, multi-city tour).
- 2013 to 2016: Mobievent, Almaty, annually (speaker and moderator).
- 2013: Google Developers Group, Almaty.
- 2012: Bionic University, Kyiv (lecturer and jury); Happy Farm (expert and mentor).
- Also: KPI (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute); Kyiv-Mohyla Business School; STEP IT Academy; BIONIC University; Chasopys.
Press & writing 40
2.5B media impressions, 50+ outlets, cumulative Delfast coverage.
- Bloomberg: "Ukraine engineers create new electric bike model during war"
- Bloomberg BNN: "The electric bikes facing off against Putin's war machine"
- The Washington Post: Ukraine, Russia, war, electric bikes, weapons
- The Verge: Ukraine tech workers and the Russian war
- TechCrunch: "Co-founders of Ukrainian startup Delfast discuss navigating through a crisis"
- TechCrunch: smarter, powerful electric scooters and bikes at CES 2022
- NY Post: Consumer Electronics Show returns to Las Vegas
- DW: Ukrainian e-bike makers running a business amid the war
- RFE/RL: Ukraine electric bikes, war, Russia, technology
Forbes
- Forbes: "Ukrainian tech dodging bullets" (2022)
- Forbes: "Delfast reinvents the Dnepr" (2021)
- Forbes: "Holiday gift guide" (2021)
- Forbes: "The California bike" (2022)
- Forbes: "Riding the ragged legal edge" (2020)
- Forbes KZ
Show all coverage
Tech
- Electrek
- Electrek
- Mashable
- BGR
- BikeRadar
- RideApart
- autoevolution
- MoveElectric
- Momentum
- Electric Bike Report
- ADVPulse
- Authority Magazine
- LAist
- TechBullion
- Kyiv Post
- Startup Grind
- EU-Startups
Regional (UA/CIS)
2022 wave (no individual links captured)
US News, VICE, Yahoo, Interesting Engineering, InsideEV, MSN, Top Speed, The Defense Post, EBikeTips ("Ukraine's Electric Cavalry," published in 5 languages, picked up by Reddit, 9GAG, and Wikipedia).
Writing (Daniel's own articles)
- The Next Web: "3 key lessons I've learned as a (mostly) unsuccessful businessman"
- AltexSoft: "How to find product-market fit"
- Rademade: "5 mentor's tips for launching a startup"
Podcasts and interviews 27
- Bloomberg TV (2022). No link.
- Care More Be Better: "How Delfast e-bikes are making a positive environmental footprint and supporting Ukraine"
- Enterprise Podcast Network: "US-Ukrainian startup leverages e-bike innovation"
- Into Tomorrow (at CES 2022)
- GSD Venture Studios
Show all 27
- Builder Nation
- Before It Happened
- The Green Summit (Spotify)
- Healthy Living
- Beat the Often Path
- Building The Future Show
- Conservation Connection
- Winstars AI
- Bakunin Live
- Start Global
- Max Wrist
- Action and Ambition: "Daniel Tonkopiy redefines the future of transportation with electric bikes"
- Made In Ukraine (Apple Podcasts)
- Vasyl Khmelnitskyi
- Big Fish (with Aleksander Kolb)
- Startup Nation
- Podcast 10K (Spotify)
- Platforma TV
- Radio NV
- Radio Voice of the Capital
- Channel 24
- Andrey Burenok
Education, certificates & accelerators 14
Education
- Stanford: Product Management, 2025 to 2026
- University of Oxford Said Business School: AI Foundations, 2026
- Duke University: AI Product Management, 2026
- Vanderbilt University: Generative AI Software Engineering, 2026
- Narxoz University: International Economic Relations, 1995 to 1999
- MGIMO: International Law, 1999 to 2002
- DeepLearning.AI: Deep Learning and Machine Learning Specializations, 2026
- Y Combinator Startup School, 2026
Certificates
- Stanford Building AI Products (Dr. Marily Nika)
- IBM RAG and Agentic AI
- IBM Building AI Agents
- IBM GenAI for Executives
- Microsoft AI and ML Engineering
- Microsoft Generative AI Engineering
- Google AI Professional
- NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Operations
Accelerators
- 500 Global (Batch 33, 2023)
- NVIDIA (Inception member)
- Grand Founders (Member)
- GSD Venture Studio (Member)
- Startup Grind (Accelerator)
Beyond business 5
- ULAW: Ukrainian Leaders Against the War. Co-founder: entrepreneurs, diplomats, scientists engaging with Congress. Helped finalize $40B in Lend-Lease. Source: LinkedIn.
- YouTube: 1.2M views on the main channel, plus 430K on a second channel. No link.
- FilmArtPlanet.ai: Producer, AI film project. No link.
- Acting school: Certified, Mikhail Kostrov studio. Certified, "Black Square" improv. Etudes: one, two, three.
- "Black Square" Theater: 2016 to 2019. Taught, performed, and judged candidates. No link.
11FAQ
Questions
What does a go-to-market mentor do?
A go-to-market mentor helps you turn a product into a repeatable way of winning customers. We define a narrow ICP and the buying trigger, validate the problem directly with buyers, set the positioning and the offer, win the first customers with you, and then turn what worked into a sales and onboarding process your team can run without you. See how I run go-to-market.
Who is a good go-to-market expert for a startup?
Someone who has personally sold, not only advised. I have built go-to-market from zero in four different categories: fuel retail in Kazakhstan, one-hour delivery in Ukraine (a category that did not exist when we started), long-range electric bikes sold in more than 40 countries, and an AI software product built and sold in 14 months. Three of those ended in exits.
How long does it take to build a go-to-market process?
The first version of an ICP, positioning and outreach plan comes out of one or two working sessions. A pipeline you can actually read takes about a quarter of disciplined weekly execution: ten researched accounts a week, account briefs, coordinated outreach, and a weekly review that feeds results back into the ICP and the product.
What happens on the free session?
We spend 30 minutes on your business. By the end you will have a clear read on the one thing most worth fixing next.
Is it really free?
Yes. The first session costs nothing and comes with no obligation to continue.
How does paid mentorship work?
A monthly retainer or a scoped sprint (go-to-market plan, first-customer push, pitch, US-entry plan). We agree the format and terms on the call, after we both see the fit. No numbers are published here because scope varies, and the free session costs nothing either way.
What stage do you work with?
The core is pre-seed and seed founders. I also work with owners of established companies on growth, delegation, and new ventures: I spent a decade scaling non-startup businesses before my own companies. If you are not sure you fit, book the free session and ask.
Do you invest?
Not through this page. Sometimes I make an introduction to investors I know, but this site is about mentorship, not checks.
Do you work in Russian or Ukrainian?
Yes, both, alongside English.
How does ongoing mentorship work?
Monthly sessions, access to my network, and async support between calls. We set the cadence together after the first session.
Can you build my pitch deck?
Yes, as a scoped sprint alongside the mentorship, not as a one-off freelance job.
Do you speak at events?
Yes. See "Invite me to speak at your event" in the footer.
Who is Daniel Tonkopiy?
Daniel Tonkopiy is a go-to-market mentor in Silicon Valley. He has taken products to market from zero in four categories: fuel retail (6 loss-making stations to more than 500), one-hour delivery (a category he created and franchised into 3 countries), hardware (electric bikes sold in 40+ countries), and AI software (VisaNow.AI, built and sold in 14 months). Three exits, close to $6M raised across 15 raises, mentoring founders since 2012. He helps founders with go-to-market, first customers, US market entry, and fundraising.
How can a startup mentor help me raise money?
We fix the narrative and the deck, rehearse investor Q&A, and decide which investors to approach and in what order. I have raised close to $6M across 15 raises myself: angels, VCs, accelerators, and crowdfunding. That experience is the difference between advice and a playbook.
Do you help startups enter the US market?
Yes. US market entry is one of the core areas here. I brought my own companies from Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the US, sold VisaNow.AI to JustiGuide in 2026, and work from Silicon Valley. We map the path from outside-US traction to a story American investors and customers recognize.
Do you work with founders outside the US?
Yes. Sessions are remote, founders join from anywhere, and we work in English, Russian, or Ukrainian. Time zones have never been the blocker.
12Let's find your bottleneck.
Get started
The free session is a working session, not a sales pitch.
Pick a time. 30 minutes, no pitch required.
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