Your first 5 marketing hires: who and when

One of the most common questions I get from founders is: "Who should my first marketing hire be?" It's the right question—because the order in which you build your marketing team has a compounding effect on everything that follows.

Hire the wrong person first and you'll waste months. Hire the right person at the wrong time and they'll be frustrated. Here's how I think about it, based on building marketing teams at companies from seed stage to 100+ people.

Before hire #1: what the founder should own

Before you hire anyone, the founder (or CEO) needs to have a basic grasp of what's working. You don't need to be an expert, but you should have run some experiments yourself—whether that's paid ads, cold outreach, content, or partnerships.

This matters for two reasons. First, you'll be a better judge of candidates if you understand the work. Second, you'll have an early signal on which channels might work, which helps you decide what kind of marketer to hire first.

If you've never spent a pound on marketing, your first hire isn't a marketer—it's a consultant or advisor who can help you figure out where to start.

Hire #1: The generalist operator

When: You've found some early traction and need someone to do more of it, better and faster.

What to look for: A hands-on marketer with 3-5 years of experience across multiple channels. They should be comfortable with paid ads, basic analytics, landing pages, and email. Not an expert in any one thing, but competent across several.

What they do: Run your core acquisition channels. Set up basic tracking and reporting. Test new ideas quickly. They're your marketing Swiss Army knife.

Common mistake: Hiring a brand marketer or a strategist as hire #1. At this stage you need execution, not PowerPoint. You also don't need a "Head of Marketing" title—you need a doer.

Hire #2: The channel specialist

When: You've identified one channel that's clearly working and need to go deeper.

What to look for: Someone with deep expertise in your highest-potential channel. If paid search is driving most of your growth, hire a SEM specialist. If organic search is your opportunity, hire an SEO. If it's paid social, hire that.

What they do: Take the channel from "working okay" to "really good." Optimise campaigns, build out structure, improve efficiency, and scale spend profitably.

Common mistake: Hiring a specialist in a channel you haven't validated yet. Specialists need a foundation to build on—don't hire an SEO if you haven't confirmed that organic search is a real opportunity for your business.

Hire #3: The analyst or data person

When: You're spending enough that you need to understand what's actually working.

What to look for: Someone who can set up tracking, build dashboards, run analyses, and help the team make data-informed decisions. SQL, GA4, and a marketing analytics tool (Looker, Metabase, etc.) are must-haves.

What they do: Build your measurement infrastructure. Attribution, conversion tracking, reporting dashboards, and experiment analysis. They make everyone else on the team more effective.

Common mistake: Waiting too long. By the time you have 2-3 marketers running campaigns, you're making budget decisions without data. The analyst should come earlier than most founders think.

Hire #4: The second channel specialist

When: Your first channel is scaling and you need to diversify.

What to look for: Expertise in your second-highest-potential channel. This might be a CRM/lifecycle marketer, a content person, a partnerships lead, or a second paid channel specialist—depending on your business.

What they do: Open up a new growth vector. Reduce your dependency on a single channel. Bring a different skill set and perspective to the team.

Common mistake: Diversifying too early. If your first channel still has room to scale, doubling down is usually better than spreading thin. Add a second channel when your first one is well-managed and starting to plateau.

Hire #5: The marketing leader

When: You have 3-4 marketers and the founder can no longer effectively manage them alongside everything else.

What to look for: A senior marketer (VP or Head of) who has managed teams, set strategy, and scaled marketing at a similar stage. They need to be both strategic and hands-on—pure strategists will struggle with the pace of a startup.

What they do: Set the marketing strategy. Manage and develop the team. Own the budget. Interface with the CEO and board on growth goals. Free the founder to focus on product and fundraising.

Common mistake: Hiring this person first. It's tempting to hire a "Head of Marketing" as your first marketing hire, but a leader without a team (or a budget, or proven channels) is usually a mismatch. They need something to lead.

The sequence matters more than the titles

The exact roles will vary by business. A marketplace might need a supply-side marketer early. A content-led business might need a writer before a paid specialist. An enterprise-adjacent B2C might need a partnerships person sooner.

But the principle holds: start with execution, then specialise, then add measurement, then diversify, then add leadership.

Each hire should unlock the next stage of growth. If you're not sure what that next stage is, that's worth figuring out before opening a job spec.

What about agencies?

Agencies can fill gaps, especially early on. They're useful for channels you want to test but don't want to hire for yet. The risk is that agencies are expensive, have divided attention, and don't build institutional knowledge inside your company.

My rule of thumb: use agencies to test and validate channels, then hire in-house for the channels that become core to your growth. Keep agencies for specialist execution in areas where in-house doesn't make sense (creative production, PR, niche paid platforms).

The cost of getting it wrong

A bad early hire doesn't just waste a salary—it wastes time. Time to recruit, time to onboard, time to realise it's not working, time to part ways, time to recruit again. In a startup, six months of misdirected marketing effort can be the difference between hitting your next fundraise target and missing it.

Take the time to get the sequence right. Your future team will thank you.