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Lerner: A startup's founder must serve as its first head of growth

Matt Lerner · Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · May 31, 2024 · at 30:45

Matt Lerner, co-founder of SYSTM and former PayPal growth lead, explains why early-stage startups should not hire senior growth leaders pre-product-market fit.

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“So I really believe very strongly that your first head of growth is your founder, and their first hires, I wouldn't start by hiring somebody senior.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Matt Lerner

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lerner: PayPal wasted hundreds of millions on unused marketing and products
“They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns, building products that, frankly, nobody ever used”
Matt Lerner May 31, 2024 ▶ 3:03 Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Lerner: Revenue is the wrong North Star metric for early-stage startups
“The biggest mistake with North Star, and it's a very reasonable one, is they choose their North Star as revenue, or profits.”
Matt Lerner May 31, 2024 ▶ 14:00 Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lerner: PayPal's best growth hires had zero marketing or product background
“The best, I'll say categorically, the best growth people I hired and managed in my time at PayPal had no marketing experience, had no product experience at all.”
Matt Lerner May 31, 2024 ▶ 33:09 Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lerner: Prospects will become immune to AI outbound outreach within a year
“They will become a nerd to that in a year, but at the moment, the window's kind of still open.”
Matt Lerner May 31, 2024 ▶ 51:27 Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Lerner: 90% of PayPal's growth came from 10% of initiatives
“When I look back on my time at PayPal, 90% of our growth came from, like, 10% of the stuff that we did.”
Matt Lerner May 31, 2024 ▶ 2:31 Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Lerner: Startup growth is information discovery, not executing standard playbooks
“How much of growth is actually figuring stuff out? Is actually information discovery rather than running playbooks, doing best practices, copying what other companies did?”
Matt Lerner May 31, 2024 ▶ 3:53 Matt Lerner: How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI | E1159 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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