Short YouTube discussion (transcript) advising founders on how to hire a CMO. Speakers contrast hiring someone with prior experience vs. hiring for drive—arguing founders should value ambition, grit, and willingness to take risks alongside demonstrated experience. Notes the average CMO tenure is a couple years and that messaging changes often when CMOs rotate.
So one of the things that founders want to know is how do they find the next you? Right. The average tenure of a CMO is a couple years. People change messaging because they change CMOs like spring outfits, so.
And then when they eventually wanted to build out product marketing, they gave me a shot at that, and I build out product marketing for the first couple of years. And so my big piece of advice when I talk to a lot of founders is you certainly want to look for the person who's been there and done it and manage a team that you're aspiring to be like and you're going to grow into. But don't overlook the person that's there that has drive, ambition, has a chip on their shoulder. One of the challenges with. With getting somebody who's been there and done it is do they have that drive to do it again. I told that story better than anybody, and it was still not easy for me to get the CMO job, but I'm lucky they took a chance on me.
