I'm Madalena Rugeroni, founder of Madgrowth. I help leaders in tech turn what they know into a business they own: a fractional role, an advisory practice, an agency or software. I also advise startup founders on go-to-market, from zero to their first $1M in revenue.
I've spent fifteen years building and scaling things: at Google, as a first-time founder, as a country manager, as a growth leader in B2B SaaS, and now as the owner of a small portfolio of internet businesses. Most of what I teach, I learned by getting it wrong first.
Career
| Years | Role | What I did |
|---|---|---|
| 2025–now | Founder, Madgrowth | Advisory, AI agents (The Stack) and the Builder Diagnostic for leaders in tech starting a business of their own. About 30 clients since mid-2025. |
| 2026–now | Founder, Mazo | An AI go-to-market advisor for B2B SaaS founders, built without a technical background. Frameworks from April Dunford, Kyle Poyar, Elena Verna and others, structured so a founder gets an answer that holds up. |
| 2025–now | Go-to-market advisor and investor | 1:1 advisory for startup founders; portfolio advisory with Bynd Venture Capital; angel investing. |
| 2026 | Program lead, Nova SBE Executive Education | Designed "Entrepreneurship and Innovation with AI: From Idea to Launch", a hands-on program where each participant builds and launches a real venture. |
| 2022–now | Co-founder, Favorite People | A vintage-inspired clothing brand I co-own with my sister Rita, who runs it. Profitable within six months, seven figures in revenue, customers in the US, Europe and Australia. |
| 2022–2025 | Global Head of Growth, Amplemarket | Growth for an AI-powered B2B sales platform. Where I learned that B2B plays in a different league. |
| 2022 | Marketing Director, Bitpanda | A fully remote leadership role in fintech. A six-month detour that taught me more than most successes. |
| 2018–2022 | General Manager, Too Good To Go | Employee number one in Portugal, then Spain and the UK. Built the country operations from scratch to a team of 200+ across three markets. |
| 2015–2018 | Co-founder and CEO, Misk | A social app for restaurant recommendations, backed by a New York fund. Great traction, wrong business model. We shut it down, and I learned to build the monetisation path from day one. |
| 2012–2015 | Google, London | The job I decided I would get while still at university, and did, six months after graduating. |
What I believe about building
Experienced operators usually have the credibility to go independent. Where they get stuck is the offer: what to sell, who buys it, how to package it and what to charge. That is the problem Madgrowth works on, either self-serve with AI agents that run in Claude, or 1:1 with me.
I don't believe in the VC rat race for most people. No big team, no big burn, no board meetings. A portfolio of small, leveraged businesses that pay for the freedom to keep building is a better life for most leaders in tech than the next title.
The cost of building has collapsed. Testing an idea used to take €50K and six months; now it takes an afternoon. Building stopped being the hard part. Validation and distribution are, and that is where I spend my time with clients.
The Builder Archetypes
I created the Builder Archetypes, a framework that sorts people into five types (Broadcaster, Advisor, Productizer, Venture Builder, Orchestrator) based on five dimensions: Engine, Bet, Tempo, Moat and Buyers. It's the basis of the free Builder Diagnostic, and it exists because the first question is never "what's a good business" but "which business fits how you work".
Writing and speaking
- From operator to owner: my weekly newsletter, every Thursday, read by leaders in tech in Portugal, the rest of Europe and the US.
- Guides on going fractional, pricing, agencies, micro-SaaS and digital products.
- Columnist for the Portuguese Women in Tech (PWIT) column in Observador.
- Guest on Capital de Ideias (Santander and Jornal PT50) and other podcasts on entrepreneurship and money.
- Speaker at tech conferences and in-company programs on growth, positioning and personal branding.
Press
- ECO: "Quando falava da Too Good To Go, havia um ceticismo brutal"
- SAPO: "O dinheiro é uma ferramenta, não um objetivo"
- Líder Magazine: author page
- Portuguese Women in Tech: profile
- Mujeres&Cia: nueva directora general de Too Good To Go
Short bio (copy this)
For podcast intros, event pages and articles. Please use it as written.
Madalena Rugeroni is the founder of Madgrowth, where she helps leaders in tech turn what they know into a business they own: fractional roles, advisory practices, agencies and software. Ex-Google, former General Manager of Too Good To Go for Spain and Portugal, she has scaled startups from zero to $10M and advises founders on go-to-market. Based in Lisbon.
Headshot: download. Contact: madalena@madgrowth.io. Elsewhere: LinkedIn, X, Crunchbase.
Work with me
Start with the free Builder Diagnostic. If you already know what you want to build, The Stack and The Build are the two ways in. Startup founders: go-to-market advisory.