Methodology

Why this page exists

On the website we say that clients grow by an average of 20% in 90 days across a sample of completed mentorships. Any number without a methodology quickly turns into marketing noise, so on this page we describe openly what stands behind the public metrics: which sample we take, how we calculate the result, which limitations we acknowledge and what we deliberately do not promise.

This page is the single source of truth for every mention of these numbers on the site, in emails and in presentations. Wherever a percentage or a count appears, the link leads here.

The sample

Only completed mentoring programmes enter the calculation — the client worked with their mentor for at least one full paid period (usually one to three months) and filled in the post-programme survey. Free diagnostic sessions and interrupted programmes are excluded: they give too short a horizon to measure a result properly.

The baseline public sample is about 180 completed mentorships accumulated since 2019, when the platform began to formalise outcome reporting. The sample is updated as new programmes close; the page carries the date of the last update.

The sample is deliberately not segmented by niche: we work with e-commerce, IT, services, manufacturing, restaurants and venture projects, and the public figure reflects the average growth across that whole mix. Within individual industries the spread is wider — which is why we publish segment cases separately, without averaging them against other niches.

What “+20% in 90 days” means

By growth we mean the relative change in the key business metric that the client and mentor agreed on in the first session. The specific metric is chosen to fit the task: most often revenue, gross profit, average order value, sales conversion or MRR. We do not force everything into a single metric: for a product company MRR growth says more than revenue, while for services the average order value matters more.

“90 days” is the indicative horizon of a first full programme. In practice clients compare the metric at the start and on day 90 after the first paid session. If a programme runs longer, we take the snapshot on day 90 so that figures stay comparable between clients.

The average in the public figure is the arithmetic mean across all cases in the sample. We do not discard outliers and we do not publish the median separately, but note this: behind the averaged number sit cases with very strong growth and cases with a result close to zero. Detailed cases with specific numbers and timelines are collected on the client reviews page.

How we collect the data

In the first session the mentor and the client record the starting metrics and formulate the goal of the programme — that is the baseline we later measure growth against. The United Mentors curator keeps this data in the shared chat and in the client card in our CRM. At the end of the paid period we ask the client for the final values and a short description of what they managed to implement.

The figures that enter the public sample are confirmed by the client in writing — either in a review or in the post-programme survey. If a client declines to share numbers, the case does not enter the sample, but the programme still counts as completed.

Limitations worth understanding

Mentoring is a tool, not a guarantee of results. The “+20%” figure reflects the average result of completed programmes; it does not mean that any given client will see that growth. The final outcome depends on the niche, the stage of the business, the team's readiness to implement recommendations, market conditions and dozens of other factors that mentoring does not control.

We do not adjust for correlation versus causation: a client's growth over a 90-day period is the combined result of the mentoring, their own effort and the state of the market. It is correct to say that the average client who completes a programme grows their business; it is not correct to say that all of that growth came from the mentoring alone.

We do not publish metrics that cannot be verified: the annual ROI of mentoring, income after leaving the programme, growth in company valuation. Those figures depend on events far beyond the 90 days of work with a mentor, and attributing them to mentoring would be manipulation.

The other public numbers

“100+ mentors in the catalogue” is the number of profiles that have passed moderation, are active and available for matching. Archived and temporarily hidden profiles are not counted. The exact current number is visible on the catalogue page.

“500+ entrepreneurs have worked with us” is the total number of clients who have held at least one free diagnostic session with a United Mentors mentor since 2019. This figure is broader than the sample used to calculate results: it includes those who stopped after the free session.

“8 years on the market” is counted from 2018, when the founder of the service, Sergey Zakharov, started working with entrepreneurs in a mentoring format and building the methodology the United Mentors platform later grew from.

Updates

This page is updated whenever the calculation method changes or the sample is substantially recalculated. Last updated: 28 April 2026.

If you have questions about the numbers, or you spot a discrepancy between this page and any other material on the site, write to hello@unimentors.ru.