Lerner: Startup advising spans company-level, functional, and domain expertise
Ely Lerner · Ely Lerner: Should Startups Hire Advisors & How much should they be paid? | E1075 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 25, 2023 · at 9:24
Ely Lerner is an EIR at Reforge and startup advisor, formerly leading product at Chime and Yelp. He outlines a taxonomy for modern startup advisory engagements.
0:00 / 0:37exact quote · 37.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I see kind of like three top level shapes of advising today. The first one is company level advising or founder level advising, where the perspective is across the whole company, the whole business. You're really like a partner to that founder. This is the kind of advising that I do. And there's some sub areas here. You then see functional advising. So think like a marketing advisor, right? Like that person is really coming in to help bridge a gap within a particular function. And then you have sort of like domain, like deeper, deeper domain kind of advising. So think like SEO, or if you're in a deep domain, like international logistics, like people who are deep in that domain, right? These are sort of the three high level shapes of advising that I think you're seeing now.”
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 Ely Lerner
Lerner: Internal corporate startups need P&L control and staged funding
“It's like the leader of that doesn't have P and L you're not a startup within a big company. Right. I think that is the important piece, which is like, you need to fund this as an independent unit that is looking at a business line holistically and is autonomo…”
Lerner: Building totally adjacent products inside large corporations is a mistake
“If you are trying to build a totally adjacent business inside of a large company, don't do that. The company shouldn't do it. You shouldn't do it. It's not a good idea.”
Lerner: Founders must own strategy for primary growth levers
“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…”
Lerner: Non-founders will not take necessary risks on growth levers
“If it's the primary growth lever for your business, it is the most important piece of your business, and at the end of the day, the person you hire will not have the full company perspective that you do. They will not have the right level of skin in the game, …”
Lerner: High-level monthly advising fails to provide real thought partnership
“Which is something you don't get to do when you're doing the high level advising. You're just not close enough to the ground to really be a thought partner.”
Lerner: Performance marketing advisors cannot effectively advise virality-driven startups
“On the growth side, like if your primary lever is virality, definitely get somebody that did virality stuff, right? If they come from a performance world, they're gonna not have, they're gonna struggle to help you with the core virality stuff and vice versa, r…”