20Growth: The Six Channels Startups Need to Dominate to Grow, Why the Best Growth Talent Never Comes from Marketing or Product, Who and How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI, Growth is More Science than Art with Matt Lerner

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The Twenty Minute VC

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

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt Lerner is one of the OGs of growth having spent 11 years leading growth teams at PayPal. Post PayPal, Matt led the growth marketing program at 500 Startups. He is also the bestselling author of Growth Levers and How to Find Them. Today, Matt is the Co-Founder and CEO of SYSTM, an accelerator program helping startups find their growth drivers.

In Today’s Episode with Matt Lerner We Discuss:

From Philosophy Student to PayPal Growth Leader:

How did Matt make his way into the world of growth?
What were Matt’s biggest lessons from 11 years at PayPal?
What did Matt know now that he wished he’d known when he entered the world of growth?

How to Master Growth in a World of AI:

What is growth to Matt? What is it not?
Why does Matt think growth is more science than art?
Does Matt Agee with Adam Gross @ Vimeo that paid acquisition below $100M ARR isn’t PLG?
How does Matt think AI will change the world of growth today?
What does Matt think are the most common growth mistakes founders make?

Optimizing Growth Channels: Dos & Don’ts

Why does Matt believe there are only six types of growth channels?
What is the “locksmith moment" & how do startups find channels that work for them?
How does Matt pick a Northstar metric?
What are the most common mistakes founders make when picking North Star metrics? When is the right time to change them?
How does Matt approach horizontal product messaging? What works? What doesn’t work?

How to Hire & Manage Growth Teams

What does Matt look for in the first head of growth hire?
What questions does Matt ask when interviewing?
What were Matt’s biggest hiring mistakes? What did he learn?
Why does Matt think the best growth hires have no marketing experience?
What are Matt’s two steps to master onboarding?
What are the 3 most common patterns in leaders according to Matt?

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's really only like six channels in the world. If you think about how are the ways you find out
0:04.5	about stuff, you hear from a salesperson, some partner brings you in because to enable you to do
0:09.0	something, you see some ads, you do a Google search or there's some content or inbound paid ads
0:14.7	or maybe hear about it from an influencer. That's really kind of it. I'll say categorically,
0:18.9	the best growth people are hired and managed
0:21.2	in my time at PayPal had no marketing experience, had no product experience at all.
0:25.3	This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, 20 Growth is the show where once a month we sit
0:30.0	down with the best growth leaders in the world and we discuss growth strategies and how the best
0:35.4	start and scale growth teams.
0:37.8	Today we're joined by an OG of the growth world, Matt Lerner.
0:41.1	Now Matt spent 11 years running growth teams at PayPal and led the growth marketing program
0:46.1	at 500 startups.
0:47.6	He's also the best-selling author of Growth Leavers and How to Find Them.
0:51.6	This is a very granular episode on starting and scaling growth themes.
0:55.5	Get the notebooks out. There's a lot to learn from this one. But before we dive in,
0:59.6	they say ad creative is king, but man is UGC creative a pain in the ass to pull together?
1:04.8	Imagine if you didn't have to. Captions just launched AI creator ads. So you can produce
1:09.9	dozens of UGC style creatives instantly. Just cast your AI creator ads, so you can produce dozens of UGC-style creatives instantly.
1:12.6	Just cast your AI creator, paste in your product URL, and drop in your product images.
1:18.6	AI will take care of the rest.
1:20.6	Captions will generate dozens of UGC-style creatives in seconds, 10x your creative output, and test more hooks than you ever thought possible,
1:28.3	because let's be honest, your current ad creative is fatiguing as we speak.
	...

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