Sparsh Mehta explains when founders should hire their first growth person. Founders need to own sales and growth until they hit product-market fit and have a basic sales process working. Then hire a hungry generalist who can copy what you've done, not a senior specialist used to big-company sales.
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So actually, a question that a founder asked in the— or wanted me to ask in the community that they posted in advance, which is around, you know, moving from growth being founder-led to, you know, making your first hire. So how do you advise early-stage, you know, founders and teams think about, you know, when the right time to make the first growth hire is? And then do you have any tips for doing so?
It's a great question. And I will caveat with, I have not yet been the founder that had to hire that first person. I have been the first hire. So, you know, I have a specific perspective on that. which may not apply always, but my learning there is it is absolutely imperative for the founder to do the job until they have found product market fit, let's say, right? So they have done the sales job and gained the confidence in doing so because only when the founder does that, they care the most about the company, they know the most about the company, Will you iterate quickly to find that product market fit, right? Hear firsthand from the customers what's working and not. And that is a journey that is invaluable. So I think the founder needs to do that, one of the founders, right? And once they found product market fit and they have at least the backbone of a process that might work, I think then you bring in your first hire and then The first hire, as long as they're a generalist, which I think makes sense in the early stages because there's a lot to learn still. And if you bring in someone that's like, you know, 15 years of sales experience at large organizations with a lot of resources, systems, tools, processes to be successful, that's going to be the wrong person for this job. So again, who you find, I think for that first hire matters. But if you, in my opinion, find a generalist, that has that hunger and ability to want to like replicate almost what the founder did and have that same passion for it. As long as they have the skillset, I think that's the right first hire once we have product market fit. And this is even if the, you know, the founding team is fully technical, does not have a salesperson on the docket, in my opinion, it does not matter. Like someone needs to go Take on where that sales at, figure it out, or you're gonna face many problems down the line if you just brought someone else in too soon to do that job.
