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.

Lower Street Media

Brands like HPE, BCG, Stanford GSB, PepsiCo & names like Sam Parr from My First Million come to us to develop, launch, and grow world class podcasts.

From full narrative productions to self-hosted interview shows, you want the best strategy and the highest quality writing, editing, and production, and we’ve got it.

CEO, Lower Street: We help brands make the best podcasts on the internet

Easyfairs

Launched a trade show and conference in Shanghai to add to an existing portfolio of events in the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore and the UAE.

Business Development Manager

Diversified Communications Australia

Sales & Sponsorship

750MPH

Audio engineer at leading Soho audio post production facility. Worked with top agencies on global brand campaigns.

Sound Engineer

Skip the “awkward years” and launch and grow a great show right away with our podcast services.

"Harry and the team are professional, knowledgeable and friendly. But perhaps more importantly though, the output they produce is exceptional.” - Michael Bird, Head of Audio at HPE

I specialise in:

👉 Podcast strategy and developing the perfect show to meet your business goals
👉 Production and writing - turning your ideas and expertise into compelling stories
👉 Promotion and audience growth - getting your show in front of the right listeners

********************

"MoneyWise started as an idea that really intimidated me. It's a ton of work, and Lower Street have made it very easy for me to make a very popular show."

Sam Parr, Host of MoneyWise and Co-Founder of Hampton

Harry Morton

Don’t make another B2B interview podcast.

There are too many. Instead, do this.


99% of marketers are making undifferentiated shows, and are lost in a sea of sameness.

They copy what they see out there already and assume interview shows are simple to execute and will deliver the results they’re looking for.

I call this the Interview Illusion.

Because it’s actually way harder than it looks to make a good interview show and be a skilled host.

And it’s actually way harder to stand out and get anyone to care about your show.

Which gets crappy results.

But they’re under this false impression that to do anything else, any other kind of show, would be too hard and too risky.

Its the Format Fallacy.

But making a more creative show doesn’t have to be so hard or intimidating.

With the right systems and structure, any marketer can make something more creative than “two experts talking”.

And the good news is that when you do - getting the results you’re looking for becomes SO much easier.

Audiences lean in, they stick around, they share, they take action.

I talked about this - and my cows - today at the MarketingProfs #MPB2B conference in Boston.

Awesome event, so well run and programmed (they let me slip through the net though, luckily!).

The Podcast Strategist, sharing everything I know and learn about brand content | CEO, Lower Street, podcasts for brands | Clients Pepsico, Fidelity, Booking.com & more.

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Brands are preparing now for their 2026 podcast plans.

6 things to consider to get ahead with your show before the holidays:

December can be challenging in some ways, but full of opportunity in others. Here are some ideas based on what's worked for our clients in the past.

1. January is a great time to launch a new show or season

The holidays are a notoriously challenging time to put a new podcast out. But January is amazing.

People are back from their holidays with their goals and aspirations for the year in place, and are actively looking for new content to help them achieve those goals. Start the year strong before your competition does.

2. Plan your and produce your holiday content now

It's a bad time to start a new show, but for existing podcasts it's a great time to hit your followers on their journeys back home or in the down time between basting turkeys.

But so often we plan too late and cobble together our December content in a panic.

Instead, think now about what your year end episodes should be:
- Year wraps
- 2026 predictions
- Highlight reels and "best of" segments
- 2025 trends and takeaways

Last Christmas, my Mum gave me socks (love you Mum, but come on).

Don't be like Mum. Whatever your strategy for Christmas content, don't make it an afterthought and underwhelm your audience.

3. Bank your interviews

January is a challenging time to get busy people booked for podcasts. But as December slows, it's a perfect moment to lock them in.

Send your invites now and get a ton of content in the can to start the new year strong.

4. Promote your show

Without new shows coming out, there's less content competing for listeners' attention. Now is a great time to run promotion campaigns to get your show in front of the people who need to hear it and be subscribed ready for your 2026 slate.

-> Run PR campaigns
-> Pitch app editorial teams (Apple, Spotify, etc) for holiday features
-> Run cross-promos with other podcasts
-> Invest in paid campaigns

While the competition is slowing down and getting quiet, be noisy and collect listeners looking for new shows.

5. Do your audience research

Nothing will help your 2026 content strategy more than speaking to your audience, and now is a perfect moment.

Things are slow, people have time. Run your surveys or, ideally, 1-to-1 listener interviews to test your ideas and find new ones.

If you want your show to stand out and find an audience next year, you need to truly know your listeners.

6. Run competitions

Everyone loves a Christmas gift. As employees slow down over the next few weeks, giveaways are a great way to engage with your audience.

Competitions help with engagement, loyalty, lead gen, and it's a good way to spur some organic growth for the show.


Need help? Let me know. We're locking in discounts for brands pre-paying for next year.

I'm a fan of video in podcasting. But you don't need it.

Here's what I mean.

All the talk in podcasting right now is video.

YouTube and Spotify video, even Netflix are huge opportunities, I get it.

But I worry...

Pivoting to video could push some brands to make worse shows. All just to ride the algorithm.

FOMO, or a desire to make content for all your channels at once, can supersede quality and making the best show for your particular audience.

When people think of podcasts on YouTube they often think of chat shows and interviews. It's hard (and expensive!) to turn a creative audio format like a documentary into a video show.

So the natural instinct is to make what already works on video: 2 people talking.

These can be great - I listen to lots myself - but for many brands there are better ways to serve your audience.

When you ignore video for a moment, you can focus on narrative storytelling. Really creative formats and show concepts that hook listeners, things they've never heard before and will remember.

There's still so much that has never been done in podcasting to experiment with, and so many formats that perform amazingly in audio that brands ignore in pursuit of The Algorithm.

You can create true fans in a way it can be tougher to do with *another* standard interview show.

I'm not saying YOU should ignore video. It might be your best opportunity.

I'm saying you don't NEED it either.

Doubling down on really good audio is often the better strategy.

Focusing on the right audience, not the biggest.

Building a community of diehards.

There's no universal answer as to whether you should make a video podcast or not. And video isn't destroying podcasting as some people fear.

But our reaction to it could.

What do you think?

Content marketers are all talking about video podcasts. Very few are getting more than a couple hundred views on YouTube.
We've worked out an approach that works.

Content should be platform native. The expectations of a user on YouTube are different on Instagram, or LinkedIn, or Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

But most marketers just repurpose stuff from one place to another.

Podcasts that look like Zoom calls.

LinkedIn posts with boring 30s clips that get no engagement.

Your podcast is an incredible well of content that you can pull from for all your channels. But it's not just a case of copy pasting from one to another.

Don't make the user do the work. Meet them where they are and design your content for the experience they're expecting on the platform you find them.

It's not complicated, but it takes intention and effort.

A simple reworking of podcast packaging on YouTube can have an immediate impact on your reach and engagement, for example.

The results we're seeing when brands do this stuff right is huge.

My LinkedIn feed is almost entirely podcasts clips these days.
You need more visual storytelling.

If I see talking heads, I skip before I even know what it's about.

You gotta bring something fresh for me to stop scrolling now.

You're competing with so much.

You're even competing with the fact that users make assumptions about your content (and scroll by) purely based on pattern matching it with stuff they've seen 1000 times.

I’m way more likely to accept a blank connection request than a generic “I’m looking to expand my network” cut-and-paste.

At least if there’s no message, you assume that the person specially chose to connect with you.

With a bland as hell template you know this is meaningless and they have no idea who you are.

Instant ignore.

Big audience growth wins on our client’s podcast to round out the week!

The Lower Street audience development team are doing great things. If you want results like these for your show, let me know.

taplio

The Battle

Matt Lerner

Harry Morton

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreHarry Morton's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Matt Lerner

Harry Morton

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Harry Morton's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreHarry Morton's LinkedIn Performance