Matt Lerner discusses 'locksmith moments'—intercepting customers right when an acute need arises—recounting a case study from Jobs to Be Done co-creator Bob Moesta.
Insight
Founders often resist the right growth lever because they dislike it
“When you find you probably already have the right answer and you probably just don't like it. So the reason you're not growing is because you're missing some important piece of information about the business model, about the market, about your customers. When …”
Insight
Early-stage startups cannot compete against incumbents on Meta and Google ads
“Ads, you know, let's just be specific. We're talking about Meta and Google. Those are the main ways you buy, and they're sold at auction, which means ultimately they're going to go to the people who can pay the most, which means the most well-funded companies,…”
Insight
Use paid ads for quick testing, not scaling early-stage startup growth
“Ads are a very good way to get traffic quickly for testing. So suppose, you know, you're an early stage B to B company and you have very little traffic and you've come up with three, you've interviewed all your customers and you found there's three different b…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lerner: 95% of PayPal's Growth Came From Just Five Initiatives
“When I look back on it, all of our growth, all of like, 95% of it came from like five things.”
Insight
Interview recent buyers, not non-buyers, to avoid misleading customer insights
“We start with people who are customers who just became customers for a couple of reasons. First of all, the purchase journey is still fresh in their heads, but also If they didn't buy, they might not actually be your good customer. They might not have bought b…”
Insight
Lerner: Prioritize growth experiments by maximum potential upside, not effort
“I don't care how much effort it is to do the experiment. I care if this works, how big can it be? Because a lot of times people will just work on a piece of the funnel or something that even if it did amazingly well, You know, it's only move the needle by thre…”