Lerner: Founders must own strategy for primary growth levers
Ely Lerner · Ely Lerner: Should Startups Hire Advisors & How much should they be paid? | E1075 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 25, 2023 · at 12:07
Ely Lerner, EIR at Reforge and former product leader at Chime and Yelp, discusses startup advisory dynamics and executive delegation with Harry Stebbings.
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“As a founder, you should be owning the strategy for your primary growth lever. If that's product marketing sales, right? Like whatever the primary growth lever for your business is, you should not delegate that thing. I think a lot of founders are like, Hey, I don't have a lot of background in X. Like I need to bring in somebody who's super experienced in X. It is okay to bring somebody in to leverage and help you learn and help you through it. But at the end of the day, you need to own that strategy. You cannot delegate that strategy. And so that I think is something to be careful of in general, both for full-time hires and for functional advisors.”
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