Meltem Kuran on Deel's Growth, Cheap Channels, and Building an SEO Engine

Meltem Kuran on Deel's Growth, Cheap Channels, and Building an SEO Engine

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Meltem Kuran on Deel’s Growth, Cheap Channels, and Building an SEO Engine

Source: Lenny’s Podcast Speaker: Meltem Kuran Date: ~2023 Link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

Key ideas

  • Skeleton before makeup: infrastructure first, distribution second. Kuran’s sequencing rule for early-stage B2B growth: website speed, then SEO foundations, then content, then paid ads. Running paid ads before the SEO and content foundation is in place means buying attention for a product the market cannot find organically and the site cannot convert. Most early-stage teams reverse this order because paid shows fast results; Kuran argues the fast results fund the wrong asset.
  • Cheap channels: find where the questions are being asked. Deel’s early growth came not from advertising but from finding every place on the internet where potential customers were asking relevant questions — Reddit, Quora, Twitter, YC communities, Discord, Slack groups — and answering them genuinely without self-promotion. Kuran set up Reddit keyword monitoring on day one (it was still running at time of recording). The principle: authentic helpfulness in communities earns trust before the buying conversation begins.
  • Traffic light SEO: prioritise by buyer intent. Kuran built a 700-keyword database and colour-coded it: green (high commercial intent — searchers are buyers), yellow (ambiguous), red (informational — searchers are not buyers). The publishing rule: write for green keywords first at the highest monthly volume, then yellow, never red. The editorial quality test: “Is the Google search over?” — meaning, does this article give the searcher everything they need to stop searching?
  • B2B brand awareness is premature for the first 6–8 months. Perkins distinguishes awareness investment (top-of-funnel, brand, vanity) from bottom-of-funnel investment (search intent, communities, referrals). Early-stage B2B teams that spend on awareness before bottom-of-funnel channels are optimised waste spend on an audience who is not yet searching. VC partnerships work because founders trust the vendor recommendations their VCs give them; this is relationship-based bottom-of-funnel, not brand.
  • First three growth hires define the growth function’s identity. Kuran’s sequence: (1) product marketing — frames what the product is and who it is for; (2) copywriter — ensures the voice is consistent and compelling across all channels; (3) data analyst — closes the loop between activity and outcomes. Hiring in the wrong order (e.g. data analyst before copywriter) means investing in measurement without having a coherent story to measure.

Overview

Meltem Kuran (also known as Meltem Kuran Berkowitz) was employee #19–20 at Deel, joining in July 2020 as Head of Growth when the company had less than $1M ARR. By the time of recording, Deel had reached $295M ARR and remained EBITDA positive throughout — a rate of growth Kuran describes as one of the fastest in SaaS history. She built Deel’s growth function from scratch and embedded it in Deel’s operating culture (“Deel speed,” “default optimism,” “little hands” meaning everyone does the nitty-gritty). The episode covers: Deel’s ARR trajectory, the cheap channels philosophy, skeleton-before-makeup sequencing, the traffic light SEO system, why the IRS linked to their PPP article, VC partnerships as a growth channel, and the first three growth hires. Kuran’s favourite book is How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clay Christensen. Her life motto is “The world is run by insecure overachievers.”