Jason M. Lemkin advises startups on timing hires for sales and marketing leadership: wait to hire a VP of Sales until you have two sales reps who can reliably hit quota (proving the playbook and product-market fit), while hiring a VP of Marketing (demand-gen/growth) can be done much earlier—around the stage of ~$20K MRR or when you have 10–20 customers—to generate leads that scale sales. He cautions against hiring marketers focused only on branding/logo swag.
Chapters
So find two reps you would buy from, work with them, help them so they hit quota and then hire a sales leader. The other mistake people make, I mean it's become so trite. But the last panel I'm sure will recite it like it's hyper risky to hire a head of sales, even a stretch one before you have two reps that hit quota. Because a head of sales job is to hire Reps 3 through 300 not to create product market fit, not to create the playbook, but to take a really rough playbook that it's not really clear why it's working. But you've proven twice two reps can hit quota. A smart first time VP sales will listen, they'll learn, they'll get on calls, they may carry a quota, they may carry a bag and they'll hire you 3, 300. So 2 you would buy from then wait, then hire the head of sales, right? And then the last one then we could break. We go along is and I wrote this so early and people still think it's controversial today but I wrote one of the first Saster posts and I've upset updated it which is I hired my VP of marketing at 20k MRR. It wasn't a week too early. Okay, I used to have like cuter titles but I hired it 20k Mr. It wasn't a week too early. And I went through the math. I hired Loretta at 20K. I didn't know much about marketing at the time but I think we went from like 2020 so 20kmr240 to maybe 800 in a year. It wasn't like a rocket ship. Right? But you come in and all she had to do was help get me enough leads to close another couple hundred thousand dollars and that one more than covered two fueled the sales team. Three built our bones so we could do more demand gen and things. And so don't hire someone that works on your logo all day. There's another old classic Saster post. Don't hire the wrong VP of marketer. You'll just get a bunch of pens with your blue logos on it. Half the folks here will tell you their mis hire of marketing just did like branding and product marketing and corporate marketing. No, but you can't hire a growth marketer, a true demand gen marketer. You can hire them too early when you have no customers. But as soon as you have even a hand 1020 customers, you can hire a great senior growth marketer, demand gen to get you more leads. So hire that person as early as you can find her. Him. That's.
