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  • 58. 🚀 How to Find and Pull Startup Growth Levers

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In the chaotic world of startups, finding growth isn’t about doing everything at once. The key lies in identifying the levers that can generate the biggest impact—quickly and efficiently. On the latest First Round Review Podcast, Matt Lerner, Founder and CEO of SYSTM, shares invaluable insights about narrowing your focus to the few strategic moves that drive real growth. It’s a great listen with practical takeaways for founders and product managers on how to find, pull, and optimise those growth levers.

He covers:

  • Understanding the key drivers of startup success

  • Applying the Growth Lever framework

  • Several case studies

  • Customer-centric growth tactics

  • Adapting growth levers for different business models

🚀 How to Find and Pull Startup Growth Levers

Matt Lerner

🎙️ Listen to the full episode here

📆 Published: September 26th, 2024

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 2 mins. Time saved: 60 mins🔥

🔍 The Locksmith Moment: Find Your Customer’s Point of Need

One of the most powerful concepts Matt discusses is the idea of the locksmith moment. This is the precise moment when customers realise they need your product—urgently.

Matt recalls a story from his time at PayPal when he saw a 24-hour locksmith sticker on his apartment gate. "If I ever need a locksmith, I’ll be right here, staring at that sticker," he thought. The question every startup needs to ask is: where are your customers when they realise they need your solution? Where do they turn? And how can you be right there when they need you the most?

Key takeaways for founders and product managers:

  • Identify moments when customers experience pain or frustration.

  • Make sure your product is discoverable when they need it most.

  • Be present in the places where your customers naturally turn for solutions.

🎯 Prioritise the 10% of Work That Drives 90% of Results

The harsh truth? Most startup growth doesn’t come from ticking off a long list of marketing tactics. Instead, 90% of your growth will come from just 10% of your efforts. During his time at PayPal, Matt found that a few strategic moves—like integrating with eBay and focusing on web developers—drove the majority of the company’s explosive growth.

The challenge is figuring out which few levers will move the needle for your business. Matt describes this as the process of mapping out your customer journey, pinpointing bottlenecks, and focusing on removing the biggest constraints.

Key takeaways for founders and product managers:

  • Focus on high-leverage activities that generate the biggest impact.

  • Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to do everything at once.

  • Experiment quickly, and when something works, double down on it.

🛠️ Map the Customer Journey to Find Bottlenecks

Startups often rush into scaling without really understanding how customers move through their product. But according to Matt, mapping out the customer journey is essential to unlocking growth. You need to break down the entire experience into behavioural metrics—from the moment a customer first hears about your product to when they become a loyal user.

For example, Popsa, a photo book app, quadrupled its install conversion rate by simply changing its app store description from “Fast, easy photo books” to “Photo books in 5 minutes.” A small change, based on understanding what “fast” meant to customers, had a massive impact.

Key takeaways for founders and product managers:

  • Map your customer journey from awareness to loyalty.

  • Identify the biggest drop-off points in that journey.

  • Run experiments focused on fixing those specific bottlenecks.

🧠 Understand Customer Mindsets Using Jobs-to-Be-Done

Another powerful tool for discovering growth levers is the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework. People don’t buy products for the sake of it—they buy them to accomplish a specific goal. Your job is to figure out what that goal is and how well your product helps them achieve it.

Matt gives the example of a company selling remote identity verification software. Rather than focusing on features, they zoomed in on the biggest pain point their customers had in common: “I hate asking for copies of people’s passports.” This insight aligned their marketing with what customers really cared about.

Key takeaways for founders and product managers:

  • Focus on the outcomes your customers want to achieve, not just features.

  • Use interviews and user testing to uncover your customers’ true goals.

  • Align your messaging with what matters most to your audience.

🏗️ Test Fast, Learn Faster: Build an Experimentation Engine

One of the biggest misconceptions about growth is that it’s a one-time fix. In reality, Matt stresses the importance of building a culture of rapid experimentation. Growth teams at successful startups like Popsa run 10 experiments a week—constantly tweaking and testing to improve results.

The goal isn’t to build something perfect, but to learn what works as quickly as possible. By setting up rapid experimentation cycles, companies can find the levers that drive growth while minimising the risk of big, time-consuming failures.

Key takeaways for founders and product managers:

  • Set up a system for rapid, low-cost experiments.

  • Focus on learning quickly, rather than creating the perfect solution.

  • Run as many small experiments as possible to see what sticks.

🤔 Overcome the Mental Block: Your Best Growth Lever Might Be the One You’re Ignoring

Matt warns that sometimes the best growth lever is the one you’re resisting the most. Whether it’s a messaging tweak that feels “too simple” or a high-risk tactic you’ve been avoiding, growth often comes from pushing beyond what feels comfortable.

He shares an example of a startup selling to architects in Germany. They had identified the right messaging two years ago but ignored it because it seemed too basic. When they finally tested it, the result was their best sales month ever.

Key takeaways for founders and product managers:

  • Don’t dismiss ideas because they seem too simple or uncomfortable.

  • Always test potential growth levers, no matter how trivial they seem.

  • Your best growth strategy could be something you've overlooked or rejected.

🏆 Founder-Led Growth: Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Growth Too Early

One of the most common mistakes founders make is trying to outsource growth too early. Matt strongly believes in founder-led growth, especially in the early stages. Why? Because no one else understands your customers, product, and market as deeply as you do.

Hiring a growth expert from a larger company won’t help if you haven’t figured out your own growth levers yet. Instead, founders should be hands-on in identifying and testing growth strategies before bringing in external help.

Key takeaways for founders:

  • Don’t outsource growth until you deeply understand your own growth levers.

  • As a founder, take responsibility for the early stages of growth experimentation.

  • Bring in external growth help only once you’ve developed a clear, scalable strategy.

✍️ Conclusion: Growth Levers are About Focus, Experimentation, and Customer Understanding

To scale your startup, you don’t need to do everything—you just need to find the few things that work exceptionally well. By mapping out your customer journey, understanding their mindset, and running rapid experiments, you can uncover the growth levers that will take your startup to the next level. Remember, your best lever might be the one you’ve been resisting the most.

Focus on what moves the needle, and don’t be afraid to dive deep into the messiness of figuring out what works.

Want to know more quickly? Just ask the episode below [web only]👇️🤯
or if you prefer, 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here

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Referenced:

Where to find Matt Lerner:

Where to find Brett Berson:

📅Timestamps:

  • (00:00) Intro

  • (03:11) The hidden truth about startup success

  • (05:10) Popsa's journey: A case study in growth

  • (07:31) Breaking down the growth lever framework

  • (11:30) Understanding the customer's journey

  • (14:14) The art of customer interviews

  • (18:07) Unlocking growth through customer insights

  • (24:23) The triple threat: Founder failure modes

  • (27:32) The power of founder-led growth strategies

  • (32:42) Unlocking growth bottlenecks

  • (36:40) Timing and implementation of growth strategies

  • (39:43) Founder red flags

  • (41:32) Crafting effective growth experiments

  • (43:14) Why customer mindset is the ultimate growth driver

  • (46:19) The power law of business

  • (48:59) Why startups don’t need paid marketing

  • (50:47) Growth levers for sales-driven companies

  • (53:43) Matt's own application of growth principles

  • (55:39) Growth levers in B2B sales

  • (57:05) Finding customer "locksmith moments"

  • (64:08) The mentor who shaped Matt's thinking