Built to Last: What Early Stage Founders Get Wrong About Execution with Lisa Smith
A lot of early stage founders obsess over vision, brand, and momentum. Much fewer know how to build something that actually holds up over time.
This session is about the real work behind durable businesses: making smart decisions with limited resources, staying lean without becoming messy, navigating pivots without losing focus, and building with the kind of discipline that gives a company a real chance of lasting.
Lisa Smith is a founder, operator, and mentor who has spent more than a decade building and running a profitable business, while also launching new ventures and advising early stage founders through the messy reality of growth, execution, and change.
She is the founder of Met, a hyperlocal introduction app designed to help people form meaningful in person connections, and the owner of Moving On Productions, a long running services business built through disciplined operations, client led iteration, and careful growth.
In this conversation, we’ll get into:
What founders get wrong about lean execution
How to build with discipline when resources are tight
What it takes to pivot without losing momentum
How to make better operational decisions early
What resilience actually looks like in company building
Expect a practical conversation about execution, focus, and what it really takes to build something that lasts.
About Lisa Smith
Lisa Smith is a founder, operator, and mentor with experience across technology, media, education, and AI driven businesses. She has built and sustained a profitable company for more than a decade, is currently building Met, and has advised founders across product, operations, team building, pivots, and go to market strategy. Her work focuses on helping early stage founders build leanly, operate clearly, and make better decisions earlier.