You just accepted an offer to be the first product marketer at an early-stage company. Congratulations. You also just signed up to build an entire function from nothing.
No playbook. No templates. No predecessor to ask "how did you handle this?" Every process you need doesn't exist yet. Every stakeholder has different expectations of what PMM should do. And you're expected to prove value while simultaneously figuring out what value means.
I've built PMM from scratch three times. Here's what actually works.
Start with Stakeholder Expectations
Before you build anything, understand what success looks like to the people who hired you.
Schedule 30-minute conversations with your CEO, VP Product, Head of Sales, and whoever leads customer success. Ask three questions:
"Why did you decide to hire a product marketer now?" This reveals the pain point you were hired to solve.
"What does success look like for PMM in six months?" This surfaces expectations you need to manage.
"What should I definitely not do?" This shows you the landmines—past initiatives that failed, political sensitivities, or approaches that won't work in your culture.
Write down every answer. You're building a shared understanding of the PMM function's scope and priorities. This becomes your informal charter.
Define Your First 90 Days Focus
You cannot do everything. Founding PMMs who try to launch competitive intelligence programs, overhaul positioning, redesign sales enablement, and build customer advocacy simultaneously get nothing meaningful done.
Pick three areas where PMM will focus first. Choose based on:
Business urgency: What's actively hurting revenue or growth?
Quick wins potential: What can show impact in 4-6 weeks?
Capability gaps: What critical work isn't getting done at all?
Most founding PMMs should start with:
Product launches (someone needs to coordinate these)
Sales enablement (reps need consistent messaging and materials)
Competitive intelligence (deals are being lost to competitors)
Everything else—customer marketing, analyst relations, content strategy, pricing research—comes later. You need credibility before you can expand scope.
Build Lightweight Processes First
The temptation is to create comprehensive frameworks for everything. Resist this.
Your first launch process shouldn't be a 47-page playbook. It should be a one-page checklist covering: what's launching, who needs to know, what materials are needed, what the timeline is.
Run a launch with your simple process. See what breaks. Add the missing pieces. Run another launch. Improve again.
Start with:
Launch brief template: One-page overview of what's launching and why
Battlecard template: Single-page competitive positioning guide
Sales deck structure: Outline of how to pitch your product
Launch checklist: Key milestones and owners for product releases
These four templates handle 80% of what early-stage PMM needs. Build these first. Add complexity only when simplicity stops working.
Establish Your Communication Rhythm
Founding PMMs often fail because they work in isolation and nobody knows what they're doing.
Create visibility into your work:
Weekly sales enablement update: Brief email to sales with new battlecards, customer wins, or messaging updates
Monthly PMM readout: Deck for leadership showing launches completed, win/loss insights, competitive intelligence, and upcoming priorities
Launch announcement process: Standard way you'll communicate new releases to internal teams and customers
Office hours: Two hours weekly when anyone can grab you with questions
This communication rhythm makes PMM's value visible. When sales knows you publish battlecards every Friday, they start expecting and using them. When leadership sees monthly progress, they understand what PMM delivers.
Build Your Intelligence Gathering System
Great PMM is built on great insights. Set up systems to continuously learn:
Sales call shadowing: Join 2-3 customer calls per week. Listen to objections, questions, and what resonates.
Win/loss interviews: Talk to 2-3 closed deals monthly (wins and losses). Understand why customers chose you or didn't.
Competitor monitoring: Set up Google Alerts, follow competitors on social, join their email lists, use their products.
Customer feedback synthesis: Review support tickets, NPS comments, and customer success notes weekly.
Block time for this research. It's not "extra" work—it's the foundation of everything PMM does.
Get Your First Quick Wins
You need visible wins in your first 60 days. Pick projects that are:
High visibility (people will notice)
Low risk (hard to fail completely)
Fast execution (deliverable in 2-3 weeks)
Three that work consistently:
Update competitive battlecards: Interview top sales reps about what messaging works against key competitors. Create one-page battlecards. Share broadly. Usage proves immediate value.
Fix one broken sales asset: Every startup has a sales deck or demo script that everyone complains about. Fix it based on shadowing real sales calls. Ship the improved version.
Run a structured product launch: Take an upcoming release and apply an actual process—launch brief, enablement plan, timeline, success metrics. Show launches can be less chaotic.
These wins buy you credibility to tackle harder strategic problems later.
Know What to Postpone
Founding PMMs get pulled into everything. Learn to say "not yet."
Can wait until month 4-6:
Customer advisory board
Analyst relations program
Content marketing strategy
Pricing research
Can wait until you have product-market fit:
Brand positioning overhaul
Customer advocacy programs
Expansion into new segments
Can wait until you hire PMM #2:
Comprehensive competitive intelligence platform
Developer relations program
International GTM strategy
Protect your focus. Doing three things well beats doing ten things poorly.
Measure and Communicate Impact
Track how PMM is affecting the business:
Sales metrics: Win rates, deal velocity, average contract value
Launch metrics: Feature adoption, customer awareness, sales team readiness
Enablement metrics: Sales asset usage, rep confidence scores, time to productivity for new hires
Research metrics: Number of customer interviews, win/loss insights gathered, competitive intelligence reports delivered
Every month, share a simple dashboard showing: what you shipped, what metrics moved, what you learned, what's next.
This makes PMM's impact tangible instead of theoretical.
The Real First Goal
Your first goal isn't building the perfect PMM function. It's proving that PMM matters.
When sales trusts you. When product asks for your input. When leadership sees revenue impact from your work. That's when you've successfully built the foundation.
Everything else—team expansion, sophisticated programs, comprehensive processes—comes after you've proven the function's value.
Build simple. Ship fast. Show impact. Expand from there.