Growth Charlatans

I built a BS detector. Here’s how I filter out the fakes and find killers.

Author

Ajay Prakash
May 27, 2025

Most great growth people either:

  1. Earn a lot of money already.

  2. Run their own thing.

  3. Or both.

And — at the risk of alienating 90% of the field — growth is riddled with charlatans.

When I was hiring a Head of Growth previously, I interviewed a ton of candidates with glittery resumes. But when pushed, most couldn’t go beyond surface-level frameworks. They could quote the blogs. They knew the lingo. But they couldn’t reason from first principles. They crumbled when you actually asked why.

So now, as I’m building out the growth team at Superpower, I’ve developed a few heuristics, questions, and fast filters that have helped me separate signal from noise — and I wanted to share them.

The 15-Minute Filter

Start with a short call. 10–15 minutes is all you need to know if it’s worth going further. No one wants to be 5 minutes into a 45-minute interview thinking “Oh no.”

A quick call is the best tool in your hiring stack.Overall Tips:

What I’m Looking For

  • Sharpness — Can they think clearly and make connections quickly?

  • Founder energy — Are they fast, resourceful, and good at prioritizing?

  • First principles — Can they break things down to the fundamentals?

My Go-To Questions

  1. “What’s one piece of marketing you saw recently that you thought was really smart? Why?”

    Good candidates light up. They get specific. They explain why it worked.

    Bad candidates stay vague. If their inspiration diet sucks, that’s a red flag.

  2. “We’re launching a new membership tier at Superpower. You’ve got $10k and 30 days to get 100 customers. What’s your plan?”

    I’m listening for:

    • Do they ask clarifying questions?

    • Do they prioritize?

    • Do they get scrappy or go straight to paid ads?

    • Do they understand tradeoffs between speed and polish?

  3. [Show a sample conversion funnel or dataset] → “What do you see? How would you fix it?”

    Watch how they think. Are they systematic? Curious? Do they know what metrics matter?

  4. “What’s the most underrated marketing channel right now?”

    I want to hear original thinking — not whatever’s trending on Twitter.

  5. “What are we doing wrong? What would you change?”

    If they can’t spot obvious improvements, they won’t help you grow.

Athyna is a company I own shares in and am currently working with for one of my hires. You can scale your AI and Growth teams without the fluff — just real builders, not résumé poets.

The Final Gut Check

“If I disappeared for a month and this person was in charge of growth — would I be excited or nervous?”

If it’s nervous… don’t hire.

Would love to hear if you have any feedback on my process or how this goes for you.

Until next time,

Ajay (My charlatan status is still pending 😬)