<story><title>Hiring the first head of marketing at a startup</title><url>https://helenmin.com/blog/first-head-of-marketing</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jjohansson</author><text>I was the first Head of Marketing for a high growth tech company (we raised USD $71 million last year). I&amp;#x27;ve been here almost 3 years, growing leads by 11x and revenue by millions with a tiny team and budget.&lt;p&gt;My advice to those hiring HoM for a B2B startup:&lt;p&gt;1. Hire a performance marketer (i.e. leads, revenue focused), not a brand marketer. Your sales team needs leads to grow, not &amp;quot;brand awareness&amp;quot;. Once you&amp;#x27;ve got a nice flow of leads, that&amp;#x27;s when the softer side of marketing becomes important.&lt;p&gt;2. If they are focused on how big of a budget they&amp;#x27;ll get, that&amp;#x27;s a major red flag. The first channels should not be paid. Budget needs to be small to start -- once you prove ROI&amp;#x2F;traction, it&amp;#x27;s now a conversation about scaling quickly, and not about blindly throwing money away.&lt;p&gt;3. A quick look at their resume or LinkedIn should tell you everything you need to know... is it full of numbers&amp;#x2F;data, or is it a list of tasks &amp;amp; buzzword bingo?&lt;p&gt;4. Hire someone who can do everything themselves. Make sure they won&amp;#x27;t need to rely on agencies.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Regarding the article&amp;#x27;s recommendation about hiring ICs to perform smaller tasks. I personally would find this unappealing because it means I can&amp;#x27;t build my own initial team, and I&amp;#x27;ll need to investigate what those ICs have done so far -- have they made poor decisions I&amp;#x27;ll need to undo?</text></comment>
<story><title>Hiring the first head of marketing at a startup</title><url>https://helenmin.com/blog/first-head-of-marketing</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cm2012</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re also interested in knowing which marketing channels to test first for your start-up, I charted most major channels by public spend data and level of customer intent here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rightpercent.com&amp;#x2F;b2b-guides&amp;#x2F;which-marketing-channels-are-best-to-grow-your-business-2020-update&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rightpercent.com&amp;#x2F;b2b-guides&amp;#x2F;which-marketing-chan...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;A bunch of other founders have told me they find this chart really useful.</text></comment>