Matt Lerner

After 17 years, we finally “cracked” a $100M churn problem at PayPal. Zero fancy tech. Just a spreadsheet, some simple SQL, and a physicist named Ben. 👇🏼

@KurtSupeCPA Never compare your inside to somebody else's outside

They'd been measuring themselves against the Hendersons for thirty years. Bigger house. Nicer cars. Private schools. Country club. My clients always felt a little behind. Saved more because of it honestly. Pushed harder. The Hendersons sold their house last spring. Mutual friend mentioned they had to. $890,000 left on a house worth $1.1 million. Three HELOCs drawn over twelve years. Credit cards. A boat they financed twice. The country club dues were going on revolving debt. My clients have $1.4 million. The Hendersons retired with $340,000 and a payment on a car they couldn't afford. They spent thirty years feeling behind someone who was secretly drowning.

@DanielOyefusi Led the NFL in punts last season! Let’s not do that again.

The Browns announce the re-signing of punter Corey Bojorquez

@DanielOyefusi That’s a lot of Jenkins‘s. Did they re-sign Rayshawn Jenkins too?

Double win for the Browns

@hovah76 I forgot Josh Dobbs.

@hovah76 Kevin Stefanski started Deshaun Watson, Dorian Thompson Robinson, Jameis Winston, Jacoby Brissett, Snoop Huntley, Bailey Zappe, PJ Walker, Tyrod Taylor andShedeur Sanders, and he’s racist? He’s literally started more black quarterbacks than the rest of the league combined!

@bosconference In!

We’re confident enough to offer a refund if you don’t see value at BoS Europe 2026. (Also: prices increase this friday, Jan 16.) Get your ticket before it's too late: businessofsoftware.org/events/bos-eur…

@bryan_johnson Hot off the presses science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Nearly 40% of dementia cases can be prevented or delayed. These 10 things may lower your risk: 0. Maintain systolic blood pressure of 120 mm Hg or less in midlife from age 40. 1. Use hearing aids for hearing loss and protect your ears from high noise levels, starting at 85 decibels. 2. Reduce exposure to air pollution and second-hand tobacco smoke. The damage goes beyond your lungs, disrupting your focus/cognitive performance and damaging your liver. 3. Avoid head injury (violent sports, job safety measures, be careful generally). 4. Limit drinking to less than 1 unit a day (1 unit (8g or 10ml) is a glass of beer or a small glass of wine). Best to eliminate alcohol entirely. 5. Stop smoking, and never start if you don’t (beneficial at any age). 6. Exercise. 7. Maintain a healthy weight and good nutrition. 8. Correct vision limitations, have your eyes regularly checked and treat causes of vision disruption and sight loss. 9. Monitor for plaque and LDL cholesterol.

@Henry_20XX @DzambhalaHODL You’re uploading it to Google and you’re asking about privacy?

@DzambhalaHODL Any brands you recommend? Got spooked after the 23 and me fiasco re: privacy

Once again, I am pounding the table on using Gemini to analyze your genes. Get a basic Ancestry DNA test, opt into their privacy options, and once you get your results login and download your "raw DNA file" Ask Gemini to give you the identifiers to search for high impact genes and then use it to understand your own data and suggest interventions for the ones with a detrimental impact It's legitimately life changing

@bosconference I’m really looking forward to this!

Most copy sounds good. Very little of it sells. At BoS Europe 2026, Joanna Wiebe breaks down the art and science of copywriting: customer-first messaging that actually converts (not just reads well). 🎟️ Grab tickets before price rise: businessofsoftware.org/events/bos-eur…

@JackDuffin And Milroe with our original second round pick?

Let's say #Browns double trade: 2 & 104 for 5, 36, 1st 5 & 94 for 10, 39, 148 Some names of what that could look like: Keep 2 Travis Hunter 94 Ashton Gillotte 104 Cameron Williams Trade 10 Tet McMillan 36 Josh Conerly 39 James Pearce 148 Trevor Etienne Jags 2026 1st

@JackDuffin I’m with you, we have a lot of needs this year.

@JackDuffin Possible to Trade down for another 2nd rounder this year? AB’s good at second round picks.

Two logical choices for the #Browns in the draft a) Take the QB they like after the Titans pick b) Trade down to add an extra 2026 1st to have ammunition for a QB next year. Will still pick one somewhere in 2025 Needs will be fixed in FA as they have plenty of cash to invest

@MaryKayCabot Look at that arm. Dude is a freak.

ICYMI: Watch #Browns Myles Garrett arrive for the #Ravens game as The Terminator - and guess who approves? cleveland.com/browns/2024/10…

@EllenRhymes @HereWithRon Wow thanks! I was wondering too. I should have asked you!

@HereWithRon @matthlerner haha! so, it was 3 things: (1) cut all redundant passages (~10k words). (2) cut boring/abstract elaborations (~5k words). (3) removed ~5k words individually (e.g. I changed sentences like ‘I went home as quickly as I could’ to ‘I sped home’). Voila! 40k words —> 20k words.

A few days ago, I woke up to the most fantastic compliment. @matthlerner posted an essay describing how my team and I helped him with his book! 😊 He called it "the story of a philosopher, a poet, and a bestseller that almost wasn’t": systm.co/post/the-bests…

Husband is away on business this week, and somehow both kids were asleep by 7:45pm. I don’t normally drink on Mondays but I have some down time for once. So here we are with a Manhattan and a new book: “Growth Levers” by Matt Lerner. Cheers!

@amandanat I tried to make it short and helpful - jus like me 🤷🏻‍♂️

The pre-speaker rate for #BoS24 USA has been extended until June 21. 🎉 This is your chance to lock in a special rate and join us for an epic event filled with industry insights and groundbreaking discussions. Secure your spot now: businessofsoftware.org/events/bos-usa… #BoSConference

I took this course with @amandanat and agree - transformative, even for experienced speakers looking to go from good to great.

@DanielPriestley cnbc.com/2024/06/18/mil…

The UK is in dire trouble. We've had three strikes. Let me look at the UK through the lens of an entrepreneur... 1. Core product 2. Positioning 3. Talent Prior to 2008, the UK had a clear core product, a strong position and the ability to attract talent and then it systematically dismantled all three. Strike 1: The destruction of the core product. Every successful country has at least one big core product. The core product of the UK was banking, finance and insurance. After the fall of the British Empire the one dominant industry that the UK was known for globally was all things finance. From investment banking, international structuring, trading, insurance and lending - if it related to money, London was considered a leader at it. This industry became an engine-room for money flowing in and around the UK. Germany has cars, France has luxury goods, Australia has mining, the UK has finance. In 2008, the whole world came to the brink of collapse thanks to rogue bankers. In the USA and in the UK, toxic financial products almost destroyed the whole system. The UK jumped in heavy and started regulating the whole industry as part of a sweeping bailout program. Part of that was to really take away the more aggressive, nuanced or "global" products that the general public wouldn't understand. Additionally, we opted to limit bonuses on bankers. Rightly or wrongly, this had the effect of moving the really profitable end of finance away from the UK. The USA did a fair bit of regulating too but banking was only one of many strengths in the USA. To Briton, taking the wind out of the sails on banking was like telling Ricky Gervais he's not allowed to tell offensive jokes. Act 2: Losing a strong brand position. A successful country needs to be known for something that is uniquely positioned to do. By 2015, the UK has doubled down on being the place for global businesses to have their European head office. Our strong brand positioning was to be the EU HQ. All the Americans loved it and the biggest brands set up offices in the UK to handle their EU operations. It was easy to send an executive from Texas to London. The UK was getting back on its feet with a strong "reason to exist"... and then Brexit. From a branding perspective, Brexit would be the equivalent of Roger Federer switching career to table tennis because it's less bureaucratic and independent than the tens circuit. Maybe that's true but there's just not as much money in ping pong, compared to tennis. Imagine if Apple decided it would not make its phones compatible on several major networks because these networks are annoying and demanding to work with. Even if that were true, it would be a costly decision. The UK stepped out of a 500M person economic block as the dominant voice and failed to replace its brand with anything new. To be fair, it took Singapore and Dubai 50 years to establish their brand internationally - and that's with political unity. So in 40 years from now, it might turn out to be a good decision but in the short term it was a costly way to go. I get it. For many reasons, the EU wasn’t a positive force for the UK and there are genuine reasons people wanted to leave. But from a positioning point of view, it moved the UK into no-mans-land (at least in the short term). Strike 3: Repelling talent. The UK's last saving grace is extraordinary talent. It's hard to overstate just how far above its weight class this island punches. In media and music, the UK has produced countless international super-stars. For a country with 67M people, we seriously crush it in medicine, technology, aerospace, engineering and entrepreneurship. We have some of the best universities in the world. Then there's London - Glorious London! This place by default is a magnet for talent. The best of the best want to come to London to collaborate and create the future. It's naturally a melting pot of money, ideas, work-ethic, entertainment and energy. What could go wrong? Lots has gone wrong. To start with the top rate of tax kicks in painfully low compared to the USA. In the USA, the top rate of tax (37%) kicks in at about $600K ... in the UK, the effective rate of tax on £100K hits people at 60% before reducing down to 45% at £125K. It's brutal. After you pay that tax, you have 20% VAT, then council tax, then CGT, then stamp duty, the list goes on. The UK is so out of control with taxes that the government spending now equals 45% of the economy! Add to this the cost of housing in London, relative to what you get is expensive. Then there's the BIG one - the culture of hating the rich! In the USA, they love to see people succeed, whereas in the UK it's seen as a problem that needs to be solved. It's no wonder 240,000 brits have now moved to low-tax, "high-achievers welcome" Dubai. It's no wonder that many super-stars in the UK end up in the USA. It's almost always the case that successful startups in the UK sell to US companies relatively early in their journey. These are the 3 ways the UK has shot itself in the foot. If it's going to recover, we need a strong core product to sell to the world again, we need to become known for something unique in the world and we need to become a magnet for the worlds most talented people to come and create here. These are the three things that create an "engine room" for the British economy. No engine, no momentum, no progress.