Lerner: Growth models must start with value-delivering North Star metrics
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 13:35
Matt Lerner, co-founder of SYSTM and former PayPal growth executive, explains how early-stage founders should construct their initial growth models.
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“The way to map your growth model is you start with your North Star, and that's going to be a metric that increments when you deliver value to customers, and something that encompasses the entire funnel, and, you know, you stress test it a bit so it's not creating perverse incentives like, hey, is there a way we could game this and make this number go up without actually delivering? You know, business value.”
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More from Matt Lerner
Lerner: A startup's founder must serve as its first head of growth
“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.”
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”
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.”
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.”