You've raised your seed round. Product is functional. Early customers are paying. Now comes the hardest question: who do you hire first for your GTM team?
Most founders get this sequencing wrong. They hire a sales rep before they have repeatable messaging. Or bring on a marketer before they understand who converts best. Or build a team based on what worked at their last company, ignoring what their current business actually needs.
I've watched this pattern repeat across dozens of early-stage B2B companies. The ones that scale efficiently follow a consistent hiring sequence. The ones that burn through cash and runway don't.
Here's the playbook that works.
The Critical Sequencing Mistake
The most common mistake is hiring for function before you have process.
A salesperson can't sell effectively without proven messaging and a defined ICP. A marketer can't generate qualified pipeline without understanding what makes customers convert. A customer success manager can't reduce churn if you haven't identified what drives value.
But founders are under pressure. Board wants revenue growth. Competitors are moving fast. The temptation is to "just start selling" and figure it out along the way.
This creates expensive chaos. Your first sales hire churns out after six months because they couldn't hit quota with unclear positioning. Your marketer burns budget on campaigns targeting the wrong audience. Your CS team fights fires instead of driving expansion.
The fix isn't hiring different people. It's hiring in the right sequence.
Phase 1: Foundation Roles (Pre-$1M ARR)
Before you build a team, you need the foundation. These roles establish the GTM infrastructure everything else depends on.
First hire: Founding Product Marketer
- Why first: They translate product into customer language. This unlocks everything downstream—sales conversations, marketing campaigns, positioning, messaging.
- What they do: Customer research, ICP definition, messaging framework, competitive positioning, enablement materials.
- Success metric: Sales
team can articulate value without founder on every call.
Second hire: Founding Account Executive
- Why second: Now that you have messaging and positioning, you need someone to test it in real sales conversations and develop a repeatable process.
- What they do: Run full sales cycle independently, document what works, identify objections and friction points, close $500K-$1M ARR themselves.
- Success metric: Repeatable motion with 30%+ close rate on qualified opps.
Third hire: SDR / Lead Gen Specialist
- Why third: Once your AE is closing deals consistently, they're capacity-constrained on prospecting. An SDR feeds them pipeline while they focus on closing.
- What they do: Outbound prospecting, qualification, booking qualified meetings, documenting what messaging resonates.
- Success metric: 15-20 qualified meetings per month that convert at similar rates to founder-sourced opps.
Don't hire yet: VP Sales, Marketing Manager, CS team. You're still learning what works. Premature scaling kills momentum.
Phase 2: Scaling Roles ($1M-$3M ARR)
You've proven the motion works. Now you scale it by adding specialized roles.
Fourth hire: Marketing Lead / Demand Gen
- Why now: You have a proven ICP and messaging. Marketing can now generate inbound pipeline to supplement outbound SDR work.
- What they do: Content strategy, demand gen campaigns, lead nurture, partnership marketing, events.
- Success metric: 30% of pipeline comes from marketing-sourced leads within 6 months.
Fifth hire: Second AE
- Why now: Your first AE is hitting capacity. You need to test if the playbook transfers to another rep (this validates you've built a process, not just hired a unicorn).
- What they do: Follow the documented sales process, close deals at similar rates, identify gaps in enablement.
- Success metric: Ramps to 80% of Founding AE productivity within 90 days.
Sixth hire: Customer Success Manager
- Why now: You have 15-30 customers and retention is becoming a risk. CS ensures they get value and identifies expansion opportunities.
- What they do: Onboarding, adoption tracking, QBRs, expansion conversations, churn prevention.
- Success metric: Net revenue retention above 100%, expansion pipeline generation.
Phase 3: Leadership Layer ($3M+ ARR)
You've proven product-market fit and repeatable growth. Now you add leadership to scale beyond founder-led GTM.
Seventh hire: VP of Sales
- Why now: You're managing 3-5 AEs and need someone who can build process, forecast accurately, and scale the team.
- What they bring: Sales process rigor, forecast discipline, rep development, territory planning.
- Success metric: Team hits 90%+ of quota with predictable growth.
Eighth hire: VP of Marketing
- Why now: Marketing is generating significant pipeline and needs strategic leadership beyond tactical execution.
- What they bring: Brand strategy, positioning evolution, multi-channel campaigns, marketing ops.
- Success metric: Marketing-sourced pipeline grows to 40-50% of total pipeline.
Ninth hire: Head of Customer Success
- Why now: You have 50-100+ customers and CS is becoming its own function with onboarding, adoption, and expansion motions.
- What they bring: CS process and metrics, expansion playbooks, team structure, customer health frameworks.
- Success metric: NRR above 110%, predictable expansion revenue.
Common Sequencing Mistakes to Avoid
Hiring a VP of Sales too early - You need a process before you hire someone to scale it. A VP can't build from zero the way a founding AE can.
Skipping the founding PMM - Without clear positioning, every downstream hire struggles. Sales can't sell what isn't clearly articulated.
Hiring CS before achieving product-market fit - If you're still figuring out who your customer is and what value you deliver, CS can't systematize success.
Building a marketing team before proving sales works - Marketing amplifies a working motion. If sales isn't converting, more leads won't help.
Hiring too many AEs before proving the second one works - If your second AE can't replicate the first's success, you have a process problem, not a hiring problem.
The Right Sequence Compounds
Here's why sequencing matters: each hire makes the next hire more successful.
Your founding PMM creates messaging that makes your founding AE successful. Your successful AE creates a playbook that makes your second AE successful. Your successful AEs create pipeline data that makes your marketing lead successful. Your growing customer base makes your CS hire successful.
Get the order wrong, and each hire struggles independently. Get it right, and success compounds.
The pattern that works: build foundation → prove it scales → add leadership. Don't skip steps. Don't hire for vanity. Hire in sequence, and each person sets up the next for success.