Matt Lerner

SYSTM

At SYSTM (formerly Startup Core Strengths), our mission is to help early-stage startups find their big growth levers (and pull them). We've noticed that great startups don't waste time on small stuff, so we  focus everyone on the most impactful work.

Founder & CEO

TransferGo

During my part-time interim role, our team more than doubled the YoY growth rate of acquisitions while lowering CPAs and improving retention and revenue per transaction. I also sourced their full-time VP Growth, and hired 4 other diverse and talented marketers to the team.

Interim VP of Growth

500 Startups

I led 500 Startups operations in London, investing in 35 seed-stage companies including Storemaven, SimplyCook, ZenJob, AirSorted, Popsa, Settled, Lexoo, Thriva, CharlieHR, HonestBrew, Fy and Second Nature. I also set up and ran the "Distro Dojo" growth marketing program for our portfolio companies in London and Berlin, which I was able to staff with a handful of the most extraordinary growth marketers in Europe.

Partner, London

PayPal

I led business-to-business marketing for PayPal UK, and oversaw the SMB/SME merchant business as a general manager.

Director, SMB

Created and lead PayPal’s first website marketing team, including conversion specialists, web analysts, developers, designers and writers. With a $3.5M budget, I oversee all business-facing areas of PayPal.com, driving over 85% of PayPal’s small business acquisition. The team boosted conversion (visitors to signups) in 2011 by 28%, generating an extra $67M over three years.

Director, On-Site Marketing

Built and managed a team of direct marketers who oversaw all marketing to PayPal’s existing small business customer base including activation, cross-sell and retention, generating $30M in incremental revenue.
+ Led pricing in North America.
+ Oversaw all marketing for the PayPal Debit Card, a $60M business, accelerating growth from 7% to 20% YoY in 12 months.
+ Deployed a propensity model targeting our most promising new customers with a high-touch “welcome” experience, boosting their value by 34% vs. control. The program generated an extra $11M in revenue in the first year and $55M over three years.

Group Manager, Merchant Engagement Marketing

Promoted within the same role, grew the team to 18. Developed processes & metrics around go-to-market. Oversaw the launch of many of PayPal’s most popular small business products.

Group Manager, Product Marketing

Built PayPal’s first outbound Product Marketing team. We oversaw all outbound B2B product marketing, launched a dozen major products and features.

Sr. Manager, Product Marketing

+ Originally hired to oversee developer marketing
+ Managed partner marketing through our shopping cart partners including GoDaddy and Yahoo!
+ Ran PayPal’s first consumer engagement campaigns
+ Launched Website Payments Pro, which currently generates over $100M revenue/year.

Marketing Manager

Macromedia

Brought Fireworks MX 2004 to market. The launch exceeded sales forecast by 20%. Planned subsequent release including researching and writing the MRD.

Product Manager

Visited 36 countries, wrote a book, climbed two 18,000 ft. Himalayan peaks, dove some of the world's best reefs, and learned to "think globally."

International Traveller

+ Led the successful development and launch of two products and discontinued a third product without alienating valuable customers.
+ Led demand generation among designers and developers for four of Macromedia’s largest launches including the flagship Dreamweaver product. Sales consistently beat forecasts. Tactics included print advertising, online media, direct mail (Harte Hanks) and email (Digital Impact) campaigns.

Product & Marketing Manager

Elemental Software

Poppe Tyson

Led B2B online marketing programs for clients including Novell Inc., Edward Jones Inc. and IDG.

Assistant Account Executive

Startup growth strategist, Ex PayPal, 500 Startups VC, Founder @ SYSTM

I founded SYSTM to help startups find their big growth levers - the small actions that can have the biggest impact on their growth. We’ve worked with over 200 companies and earned a 96% founder “likely to recommend” score.

Before founding SYSTM, I was the London-based Partner of 500 Startups, an early-stage VC fund, where I built and ran an accelerator seed-stage growth program for our portfolio companies.

Prior to joining 500 Startups, I worked for many years building and managing growth teams for three  startups (two disasters, one exit), and later at PayPal. 

I approach my work first as a general manager and then as a marketer, product manager or both, as needed. My lens is quantitative, but rooted in deep customer insights and testing, and based on fast iteration. I’m always learning, and I really enjoy teaching and helping those around me to learn and improve. Skip to the references below, you'll see that I'm regarded as a thought leader in many areas of business, and an inspiring people manager who reliably delivers ahead of expectations.

Flexa

Director of Growth

Flexa provides much needed transparency in the job hunting process by verifying companies as truly flexible. We increase their discoverability through company profiles that are browsed by hundreds of thousands of users, and elevate their presence through slick employer brand marketing. 

The future of work is flexible.

Head of Growth

Nodes Ventures

Angel Investor

Visibly

Growth Specialist

SYSTM (Formerly Startup Core Strengths)

I work with teams coming through the program to help them adopt new growth processes and tactics into their businesses.

"Beth is outstanding and brought tremendous insights.  I kept wondering how you found such a gem and where I could hire someone like her." 

"Coaching gives you accountability, encouragement and perspective." 

"Beth is frank, open, and very helpful."

"Beth's content marketing session was another one of those that just make things click in your head. The fact she pointed out really only 10% of content marketing is actually to do with the copy and then dived into the juicy bit of the distribution was very very valuable."

Growth Coach

I work with startup and scaleup teams to build out and improve growth models, find Product Market Fit, and truly understand their customers. 

Talk to me about: 
🥦 Customer insights processes
🍊 JTBD 
🍋 Finding and measuring Product Market Fit 
🥕 Understanding your North Star Metric and Key Drivers 
🍍 Founder and leadership coaching 
🌶 Drawing Growth Models 
🍦 Planning and running a Growth Process - sprints, experiments, analysis 
🍓 Learning (and practising!) focus on the right areas of your business
🌽 Content Marketing as a Growth channel 
🧅 Customer Journey Mapping and optimisation

 Growth Consulting & Advisory

Ada Ventures

Ada Ventures is the inclusive venture firm. Ada Ventures finds and funds extraordinary talent building breakthrough ideas for the hardest problems we face. We are investing out of our second fund and we invest £250,000 - £1m in UK technology companies across climate, economic empowerment and healthcare & ageing.

Ada Ventures has chosen a second cohort of 20 Ada's Angels who are seed-series A specialist operators & founders in their sectors.

TILLIT

Growth & Insights Lead

Manifesto Studios

Consulting Head of Growth

GoSquared

Atharna

Atharna works with artisans from all corners of the Middle East: retailing their handmade products to an international market, enabling them to become entrepreneurs themselves and helping to revitalise the artisanal industry in the region.

Head of Growth @ Flexa || Ada Ventures Angel Investor & Scout || Growth Coach

I help founders and teams to figure out which work is the most important, how to position and grow products in crowded spaces, and become category-defining brands.

Beth Carter

Whoever is running the Glassdoor socials...I see you, and everyone has needs but maybe keep it off the company account

Growth & Product @ Flexa || Angel Investor || Growth Coach & Advisor

A few years ago I was helping Molly, Maurice, and Tim think through hiring their new Head of Growth. Offering advice, seeing if I had anyone in my network who could be a good fit. 

And then, over pints in our local pub M&M floated the idea of me taking the job. 

I was already an investor, I respected them as founders, I liked the sound of what they were building...but I was terrified of ruining the friendship, or of the friendship causing issues within the work. 

And we were faced with a big one right off the bat. 

My dad died a month before I joined Flexa and Molly and I oscillated between messages about grief and messages about onboarding, and within that space I realised that our friendship didn't have to be a fear - it could actually be a huge benefit. 

Leading with empathy as well as directness is a mammoth task and a hard balance, and it's something I've watched Molly do repeatedly over the last few years - learning too what kind of leader I want to be. It's a huge part of what made our friend-colleague relationship work so well.

This team is one of the brightest, kindest and most unhinged group of people I've ever had the joy of working with, and to get really soppy for a minute (which I'll be teased for on slack in about 15 seconds time) - I may have come in to Flexa as Molly's friend - but I'm leaving with you all ❤️

CEO & Co-Founder @ Flexa | Future of Work Speaker & Creator (100k) | Employer Brand | DEI | Talent Intelligence

I hired one of my best friends, and it totally changed our friendship. 



People always warn you not to hire your friends, but the truth is that you just shouldn’t hire the friends you can’t work with. 

I've known Beth Carter since I was 19. Three years ago, we hired her as our Head of Growth. Today, she’s heading off to something new... and we'll remain friends. 

It’s made me think about why it worked, and what actually happens when you blur the line between friend and colleague.

The friendship didn’t stay the same, and we never expected it to. 

It changed drastically.

Working together meant seeing each other fully: the strengths, the weaknesses, the stress patterns, the way we each respond when things get messy or urgent. 

You can’t learn that over dinners or holidays. You only learn it when you’re solving real problems side by side.

And, strangely, that made the friendship stronger overall rather than putting it under strain. We understand each other better now because we’ve had to be honest, clear, and occasionally very direct (although that's probably not that occasional for me). 

We’ve had to face difficult situations and get through them. We've had to navigate complex power dynamics. We’ve had to give each other feedback without tiptoeing around it. We've had to shift the way we do things to prioritise the business as well as our friendship. We've had to support and pick each other up from places you'd rarely see a friend. 

Not every friendship can hold that. Some depend on avoiding tension or keeping things easy. Some thrive on fun and spontaneity. Others are an escape from work.

Those friendships don’t survive working together.

But when a relationship is built on trust and clarity to begin with, working together adds something meaningful to it. It gives you a different kind of respect for one another. 

It deepens the friendship because you’ve moved beyond the polished version of yourselves. 

The work changed the friendship, and the friendship shaped the work.

Hiring a friend isn’t the risk. Hiring the wrong friend is.

She’s off to an exciting opportunity, and the friendship is stronger because of the three years we spent working together. And her friendship with my husband, Maurice, another co-founder, has grown over that time too. 

That feels like the best possible outcome.

Good luck, Beth 🍀 
________________________

👋 I'm Molly and I run Flexa, the platform that enables you to filter for your next employer based on what you really care about (like cultures built on trust and respect)

🔔 Follow me for musings on the future of work and equality

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Matt Lerner

Beth Carter

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