20Growth: Should Startups Hire Advisors? When is the Right Time? How Much Should They Be Paid? How Should Founders Approach the Hiring Process for Advisors? What Should They Expect From Them? What are the Biggest Mistakes Made and more with Ely Lerner

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ely Lerner is an EIR at Reforge and an advisor for startups transitioning from traction to hypergrowth. Previously he was Head of Consumer Product at Chime, and before that spent an incredible 8 years at Yelp in a number of different roles including Head of Product at Eat24, and Product Leader/GM at Yelp.

In Today's Episode with Ely Lerner We Discuss:

1. Entry into Growth:

How did Ely make his way from engineering manager to growth leader?
What are a couple of his single biggest takeaways from his time with Yelp and Chime?
Why do employees in large companies have to have P&L ownership when innovating within the larger company they are in?

2. Advisors: What, When and How:

What are the three different types of advisors founders can work with today?
When is the right time to engage with each of them?
Should the advisor have had direct experience with the problem you need help with?
How should these advisors be compensated; what is normal?
What are 1-2 of the biggest reasons startup advisory roles do not work out?

3. Offense vs Defence: The Tricky Balance:

What is the difference between offense and defense in product strategy?
What should the resource allocation be between the two?
What is the right amount of offensive strategies to have on at the same time?
How can leaders prevent their defensive teams from feeling like second-class citizens?

4. Ely Lerner: AMA:

Why does Ely disagree with many and suggest that horizontal products do have a core ICP?
Should growth teams sit on their own or within functions in the org?
What are the core reasons teams fail to ship fast?
What state should your data be in when you bring in your first growth hire?

Transcript

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0:00.0	One mistake I see founders make a lot trying to delegate core pieces of their strategy.
0:05.9	You should be owning the strategy for your primary growth lever. You cannot delegate that strategy.
0:12.6	The strongest lever that you can pull to really drive high functioning engineering teams is engineering
0:19.6	ownership of outcomes. Welcome back. This is 20
0:22.0	Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now 20 Growth is the monthly show where we sit down with the best
0:26.1	growth leaders to discuss starting, scaling and maintaining growth orgs today. And I'm so happy to welcome
0:31.7	Eli Lerner. Eli is currently an advisor to some of the best and fastest growing companies. And previously,
0:37.2	he was
0:37.6	head of consumer product at Chime, and before that, spent an incredible eight years at Yelp
0:42.3	in a number of different roles, including head of product at E24 and product leader at Yelp.
0:47.7	But before we dive into the episode's day, I'm refreshing the 20 VC Mero board, and I'd love
0:52.8	your input again. It's really easy. Just head on over to
0:55.5	Mero.com forward slash 20VC and leave your guest suggestions for future shows and you can do it with a
1:01.4	digital sticky note or a comment. You can head over to Mero.com forward slash 20VC and Mero actually
1:07.9	sponsored this episode. If you haven't already tried it, I think you'll love it.
1:11.6	Mero is the online workspace for innovation.
1:14.3	It's packed with the right capabilities to be your dream product's home base,
1:18.7	that you can visualize content, data and research findings all in one space with no problem.
1:24.5	It means this space is where you map customer journeys with the whole product team, create user behaviour dashboards, and map process diagrams.
1:31.3	And finally, it's where you'll run productive team sprints using integrations with tools you already love and use,
1:37.3	like Jira for developers, Asana for project managers, Figma for designers, and so on.
1:42.3	We use Miro and love it to brainstorm future shows,
	...

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