6 Posts found for Author: Matt Lerner

Early growth at startups comes down to a few insanely successful tactics. If you look back at the early days of any great startup, you’ll see that 90% of their early growth came from 10% of the stuff they tried.

This phenomenon is no coincidence — it’s physics. Big companies can grow by deploying heaps of cash and armies of people, using every channel, hoping one … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

What seems like a simple purchase decision sits within a larger context in the customers’ lives. And as marketers, that context is critical, because the words in their heads will reflect their situation rather than your product. Therefore, the better we understand that context, the more effective our product and marketing teams will be.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

What’s in your prospects’ heads? If you could stop people in the middle of their day and snapshot-read their minds, what would you find? You would not find a list of product features or marketing platitudes. You would see anxieties, fears, doubts, hopes, dreams and struggles. Therefore the best way to get past the attention filter is to talk about the stuff that is in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

When I hear that founders are looking to “educate the market,” I get nervous. In order to educate somebody, you need to fully capture their attention and get them to suspend their current beliefs and consider, adopt and master a new way of operating. I run an education business, and I must say that is a herculean task.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Language/market fit is the most under-appreciated concept for early-stage startups. For starters, most founders are focused on finding product/market fit, zeroing in on the right set of features to match their prospects’ needs. Moreover, fine-tuning language seems like “marketing,” which is usually seen as a later priority, not step zero. Lastly, people also don’t tend to like going out of their comfort zone — and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Language/market fit is the most under-appreciated concept for early-stage startups. For starters, most founders are focused on finding product/market fit, zeroing in on the right set of features to match their prospects’ needs. Moreover, fine-tuning language seems like “marketing,” which is usually seen as a later priority, not step zero. Lastly, people also don’t tend to like going out of their comfort zone — and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales