Founders blaming failure on exogenous risks are uncoachable on growth
Matt Lerner · How to find & pull startup growth levers | Matt Lerner (Founder of SYSTM, Author of Growth Levers) · Sep 26, 2024 · at 40:02
Matt Lerner, founder of SYSTM, explains how he uses a premortem interview question to evaluate founder risk awareness and coachability.
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“And there's one question we asked, which can very reliably weed out teams we don't want to work with. And it's the premortem question. Okay. Suppose we're two years out. And this didn't work, and you've completely failed and missed your goals. What probably went wrong? And their willingness to acknowledge that that's a possibility already is their hubris. They're like, we can't fail. Or do they mostly blame exogenous risks? You know, if Google decides to give away their product for free, or if we have another pandemic, if that's the level of their thinking about risk, they're not open to learning, and they're not going to be able to figure this out.”
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