I am a startup founder, when do I hire my first product person?

The answer to this question lies in the question itself. I am not trying to be zen like here. After advising really early startup founders…

The answer to this question lies in the question itself. I am not trying to be zen like here. After advising really early startup founders, interviewing for product executive roles, working in startups, here’s my tuppence on how to answer this question. And while at it, I want to dispel some myths.

Founders are product people — Every startup comes from some semblance of a combination of a great idea, good team and some good luck (let’s hope). Usually in the beginning the team is relatively small, sometimes even as small as two people. They have an idea, and start working on the idea, iterate through an MVP, find customers, iterate more and start building out the team. If you are not sure what the idea is, or how to execute to it, and expect your first product hire to solve some of these problems. Know that its not going to happen. Let me spell out the scenario logically and you will see why this is an impossible situation to be in.

Early startup founders and first product hires — A gruesome love story: You are an early startup founder with a small team of you and your co-founder. You have a semblance of an idea, you manage to raise some money and you have a technical co-founder. However, you don’t know what the product is. Let’s say you bring a product person in, he will bring his own ideas to the table and build the product the way he thinks through it, identifying users, use cases, features and building out a roadmap. And this is where the chink in the effervescent relationship emerges. First a founder who has a vague idea of a product may like the product at hand. Its like telling one artist telling another to create a sketch. And then not being pleased with the results. Secondly, they do not have a clear, structured approach of figuring out what works either. In that case, all you have successfully done is waste your product hire’s time, your precious funds as PMs don’t come cheap and wasted many cycles because you do not have a clear vision and you are not happy with someone else’s vision. This is the most often repeated scenario in early stage companies where the PM hire has been brought in at the suggestion of a board member or an investor to fill the void that actual vision can solve. If you are a strong founder, chances are that you already have a vision for the product. Now that I’ve said my piece, let me clarify how this relationship can work. The product person can help you clarify your thinking.

Sometimes its okay to so no. I was brought in to interview for an executive PM role for a fast-growing e-commerce company. The company doesn’t have a product team, and I would be their first VP of Product. The COO thought it would be a good idea to start a product team to help with driving some of the initiatives that seem to be falling off the wayside. The CEO, however, refused. She felt, she had clear product vision and she could continue to execute to it. And respectfully, I agreed with her. It wouldn’t help either her or me to be treading each other’s toes. In fact, I wish more founders had that level of clarity.

So, when is a good time to hire your first product hire? You are the founder of the company. You had a great idea, you’ve managed to build it out with your co-founder, raised seed money, found your customers and are now growing like crazy. Your role as the CEO and founder is only to do three things — raise money, hire the best team and build the company. Now here’s the catch, at this point, even though you have some great ideas for your next version of the product, you should hire a product person. Why, you may ask? Because your company needs you. Its not you and your co-founder and a handful of customers anymore. There are things that need to be taken care of — sales, marketing, customer support, employee issues — payroll, finances etc, fundraising to be taken care of. If these things need to be done right, you need someone who can understand the product vision and execute to a product cycle. ie.., not just define features but do his due diligence to capture priorities, and execute repeatedly to a regular cadence. You can sit in on these decisions and offer your inputs to the product vision, but you need to let someone manage the day-to-day needs of product management. The science of product management, helps prioritize roadmap decisions which when your funds are running low and you have growth or profitability targets, the product strategy has to be data-driven and gut driven. Thats where hiring the right PM head will save you cycles of pivots.

I am ready to scale the company, what should I do? This is when you start hiring a product team. You get organized, and give the product team has much trust as you would to a developer team. Most early stage teams think of product management as an after thought. Trust me, a stitch in time saves nine. If you want to scale and scale fast, you need strong execution skills. Execution comes with both vision and discipline. And you will need both developers and product managers to help with it.

For most senior PMs who are looking to join early stage startups, I would assess each scenario independently and look at the relationship between the founder and product before you accept a job offer. Remember at the end of the day, your goals have to align with the company’s goals and your primary objective is to help the CEO fulfill his end goals. Your job can vary from helping clarifying those goals to building product to hiring the right folks.

Always happy to connect with founders and product folks looking for advise or if you want to brainstorm. Please feel free to reach out at yrdeepika@gmail.com or on twitter at @yrdeepika.