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.

Joanna Wiebe

Copyhackers

Copyhackers is the home of conversion copywriting. We share our online marketing know-how with the tech startup world - and we're stoked to see more offline and hybrid growing businesses use what we teach to gain traction. Get free in-depth copywriting, marketing and growth articles and ebooks at Copyhackers.com... or head to ConversionCopywriting.com to get live and video-based training on how to THINK like a copywriter... and act like one too.

Founder

Turn your ideas into published content faster with Airstory, the only creation platform that marries knowledge assets with a really smart doc. Airstory comes out of private beta on October 31, 2016. We're planning to launch to content teams and copywriters, with education (i.e., universities, classrooms) to follow. Get your invitation code at Airstory.co.

Intuit

Lead copywriter, editor & content author for QuickBooks.ca and Intuit.ca. I write & edit copy, develop creative strategies, collaborate with visual & interaction design, manage the CMS and onboard freelancers/new hires.
•	User personas, stories, concept maps & lo-fi flow-framing to develop experiences
•	Develop, share out, and own online content strategy for Global Small Business
•	Seek and drive for passion in all copy, working with the customer research group as well as the call centre to derive customer-need insights and keywords; call scripting; lead development of editorial style guide, message maps and ‘message pod’ documentation
•	Single-handedly lead the development of Web & email best practices documents, with a focus on testing (A/B, MVT) to prove results; write all copy for websites as well as copy for key email campaigns
•	Co-manage e-commerce optimization activities; recommend activities based on user data

Senior Web Writer

Conversion Rate Experts

Using VOC, analytics, behavior studies, and other data, assess websites for conversion optimization opportunities; develop testing (A/B, MVT) roadmaps; craft recommendations (e.g., wireframes, copy); analyze test results; iterate. Focus on persuasion, engagement/interaction, trust-building, and usability.

Web Conversion Consultant

MacEwan College

I teach professional business writing in the Writing Works program. 

Writing for the Web
Fall 2007 - 22 students
Winter 2008 - 17 students

Business Writing for Results
Winter 2008 - 8 students

In addition to continuing on with "Writing for the Web" courses, I've proposed and had approved the replacement of "Business Writing for Results" with "Creativity in a Corporate World", to start in the fall semester of 2008.

Instructor

Incite Solutions Inc.

Writer

JET Programme

Assistant Language Teacher (ALT)

The original conversion copywriter, I'm the creator of Copyhackers. For 20 years, incredible companies like BT, Canva, Glowforge, Intuit, MetaLab, Prezi, SAP, Sprout Social and VWO have trusted me to optimize their copy. And incredible conferences like Mozcon, INBOUND, SearchLove and CXL Live have invited me to teach their audiences to write copy that converts. And along the way, more than 70,000 people at early and growth-stage startups, small businesses, huge businesses, international agencies and indie establishments have let me coach their copy forward, which is and has been a great honour. With a U. Because I'm Canadian.

You can read The Challenger Sale (which I love) and still not close if you show up "the wrong way" on Zoom calls. 

I'm not talking about no beds in the background... although legit I watched a webinar this week, and the cohost couldn't be bothered to blur their background to hide their bed *or the clothes on their floor*. It was borderline offensive. Like, dude, for real. 

What I'm talking about is the next layer of showing, as in:

👉 Turning off "self view" so you really focus on your lead...
👉 Giving Resting Rich Face (see clip) 
👉 Rehearsing in advance, not just winging it (esp if you're nervous)
👉 Taking actual pauses, which is critical on zoom as over-talk is a real problem

How do you actually *talk* with your leads?

How do you speak - and connect - on sales calls? 

I've been coaching freelancers on this for ages, and I finally put it all in a video. Link in the comments. 

But I'm really keen to know if you have special tricks you use to *project* your confidence? What gets in the way of SHOWING your confidence on calls?

Author of The Copyselling System, available at all major book retailers in July 21, 2026. Pre-orders start January!

You don't have to compete on features. Or on price. Or honestly even on value. 

Try competing on brand. 

Starbucks did it. Apple did it. Little bitty businesses in red oceans did it (then got acquired by the Starbucks and Apples of the world). 

Brand and brand voice are not luxuries that get added during the editing stage. They're a lever you can and should pull that is:

💰 Cheap, to the point of being free
💰 Extremely valuable - think Liquid Death
💰 Easy to test 
💰 Really f***ing fun to work on

What I wish every startup founder and struggling new business knew is this:

Your message -- what you say and how you say it -- are entirely within your control. You can compete with giant brands that have huge teams and that dominate your market... while spending very little. 

You don't need an original product. 
With original features.
And original pricing models. 
In an original business model. 

Copy all that crap. Then be a billion times better than anyone in the market by having a POV you share in your brand voice.

Bad data is worse than no data. Case in point:

Today, a federal vaccine committee in the US decided to end the decades-long recommendation that all newborns be immunized at birth against hepatitis B. Hep B is, of course, a highly infectious virus that leads to chronic liver disease. (From NYT.)

Earlier this year, Throughline (on NPR) did an excellently researched piece on the history of vaccines and autism. (Link in first comment.) Basically, where did the bad data come from? A reminder:

"The alleged link between vaccines and autism was first published in 1998, in a since-retracted [case series, not study] in medical journal The Lancet. The claim has been repeatedly disproven: there is no evidence that vaccines and autism are related." 

Yet here we are. #lifelessons

One small group in a large organization can latch onto one piece of bad data, circulate it amongst themselves, and make really, really bad decisions of real consequence based on it. 

Good data is usually 1) unsexy and 2) more complicated to get through, so it doesn't circulate. The Throughline episode is 40+ mins long, too long for most attention spans, especially those addicted to rage bait and allergic to syllables. 

Might I suggest you give a raise to everyone on your team fighting the good fight for *deep, supported, non-synthetic research* on which to make your decisions...?

Huge gigantic ENORMOUS congratulations to my wonderful husband Christopher Bain, who’s at #thegameawards in LA tonight and who finally gets to talk about this new game. 

Am I allowed to say the words “Star Wars” now that the teaser is out???

(Video “features” (it’s not a bug) Hunnybear and the sound of Grover returning a ball…)

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The Battle

Matt Lerner

Joanna Wiebe

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The Battle

Matt Lerner

Joanna Wiebe

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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);}Joanna Wiebe's LinkedIn Performance

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