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You're not ready for a Head of Growth — yet.

A playbook for running “founder-led” growth

This week on The First Round Review, we explore the emerging concept of “founder-led” growth — and give founders a playbook for uncovering and evaluating their growth levers.

You’re Not Ready for a Head of Growth: Run This Founder-Led Growth Playbook Instead

“How do I start executing growth myself?”

It’s the question that Matt Lerner — former PayPal B2B growth lead and co-founder of online growth accelerator SYSTM — gets the most from founders. He’s observed that founders often sit in on early sales calls and spearhead product development, but seldom bring the same hands-on approach to growth channels.

“Ultimately, founders need to be the ones that figure out how their business is going to grow,” Lerner says. “Founders can’t afford to delegate growth right away, nor do the best founders have to.”

Lerner gives us a playbook for founder-led growth, unpacking the most tactical insights he’s collected from working with hundreds of startup founders. Here’s a look at what you can expect:

  1. How to get out of your own way — Are you an overthinker? Underthinker? Hire-and-delegater? Each of these has its strengths but for early-stage founders, execution should supersede them all.
  2. The three-step process for finding your growth levers — From mapping the customer journey to understanding your customer to running experiments, follow these tactics to start thoughtfully executing growth.
  3. Ways to get your whole team into the growth mindset — How to make growth part of the fabric of your startup while also staying connected to it as the company scales.

Whether you’re an early-stage founder grappling with growth or a later-stage founder looking to get closer to the details, discovering and monitoring growth levers provides critical insights that inform every aspect of the business. Interviewing customers, identifying bottlenecks, running experiments — these are ways founders develop a deeper understanding of their company and the market that can’t be delegated.

As always, thanks for reading and sharing.

-The Review Editors

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