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Lerner: Defensive engineering is as critical as offensive growth for startups

Ely Lerner · Ely Lerner: Should Startups Hire Advisors & How much should they be paid? | E1075 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 25, 2023 · at 42:20

Ely Lerner, EIR at Reforge and former product leader at Chime and Yelp, explains why startup leadership must prioritize maintaining core technical infrastructure alongside growth initiatives.

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“The one thing to remember here is defense is equally important to offense, if not more important, right? Like the whole point is that these are existential. If you do not do these things, you're not going to have a company to invest in offense.”

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