You've been the solo PMM for 18 months. You built the function from scratch, proved its value, and now leadership approved two more headcount for your team. You're excited and terrified in equal measure.
Excited because you desperately need help. Terrified because hiring wrong at this stage doesn't just waste a headcount—it sets bad patterns for the function's culture and capabilities that are hard to undo.
I've built PMM teams three times at scale-ups. Here's what actually works.
Don't Hire Mini-Yous
The instinct is to hire people who think like you, work like you, and have similar backgrounds. This feels safe. They'll understand your approach and integrate quickly.
It's also a trap. If everyone thinks the same way, you get groupthink. If everyone has the same strengths, you have coverage gaps. If everyone comes from similar companies, you miss perspectives that could unlock growth.
Instead, hire for complementary skills and diverse experience. If you're strong on messaging and positioning but weak on competitive intelligence, hire someone who loves research and analysis. If you came from enterprise sales-led companies, hire someone from a product-led growth background who understands self-serve motions. If you're highly strategic but struggle with execution detail, hire someone who thrives on process and project management.
Your first team should cover three distinct capability areas. You can't cover everything with two or three people, so choose based on your company's biggest gaps.
Hire #1: The Specialist Who Fills Your Biggest Gap
Your first hire should be strong in the area where PMM is currently weakest or where the business has the most urgent need.
If competitive losses are killing deals, hire someone with deep competitive intelligence expertise. They should know how to build win/loss programs, create effective battlecards, and train sales on competitive positioning. Look for someone who's run structured win/loss at scale, not just created ad-hoc competitive content.
If product launches are chaotic and uncoordinated, hire a launch specialist. They should be exceptional at program management, cross-functional coordination, and ensuring launches have all the components—messaging, enablement, campaigns, metrics—done right. Look for someone who's scaled launch processes at a growth-stage company.
If sales enablement is broken and reps don't know how to sell your product, hire an enablement-focused PMM. They should understand sales deeply, know how to create effective enablement materials, and have credibility with sales teams. Look for someone who's worked closely with sales or came from a sales background.
The key: hire deep expertise in one area, not shallow generalists who can "do everything." At this stage, you need one person who can own an entire PMM function end-to-end and build it to scale.
Hire #2: The Generalist Who Can Do Anything
Once you have specialized expertise covering your biggest gap, hire a strong generalist who can flex across all PMM responsibilities.
This person handles product launches for non-strategic releases, creates sales enablement content when needed, conducts customer research, writes positioning for new features, and backfills competitive work when your specialist is swamped. They're a utility player who prevents things from falling through the cracks.
What makes a great generalist PMM: strong product marketing fundamentals across messaging, positioning, launches, and enablement; ability to context-switch between different workstreams without losing quality; self-directed and comfortable with ambiguity; excellent written communication; and collaborative instincts that help them work across teams.
Don't confuse "generalist" with "junior." The best generalists are experienced PMMs who enjoy variety and don't want to specialize deeply in one area. They're often more valuable than specialists for early-stage teams because they provide flexibility.
Hire #3: Another Specialist or Senior Generalist
Your third hire depends on your team structure. You have two options.
Option A is hiring another specialist to cover a second critical gap. If Hire #1 was competitive intel and you still have major launch or enablement gaps, hire a specialist in that area. This gives you deep coverage in two critical areas plus a generalist to handle everything else.
Option B is hiring a senior generalist who can lead projects and eventually manage people. If you're planning to grow the team to 6-8 people within 18 months, you need a senior PMM who can lead major initiatives and grow into a management role. Look for someone with 7+ years experience, strong strategic thinking, and leadership potential.
Most scale-ups should go with Option A first. Specialists deliver immediate impact in areas where the business is hurting. You can hire senior generalists later when the team is 5+ people and you need management layer.
The Experience Level Mix That Works
Don't hire all senior people or all junior people. You need a mix.
A balanced early PMM team looks like this: one very senior person with 8-10+ years experience who can operate strategically and eventually lead the team; one mid-level person with 4-6 years experience who's strong in a specialty area and can own major workstreams independently; and one earlier-career person with 2-4 years experience who's hungry to learn, strong on execution, and eager to grow into new areas.
This mix gives you strategic thinking, specialized expertise, and execution horsepower at different price points. All senior people is too expensive and creates unclear hierarchy. All junior people lacks strategic depth and requires too much management.
What to Look for in Interviews
Standard PMM interview questions often miss what actually predicts success at scale-ups. Here's what to assess.
First, test strategic thinking with ambiguous problems. Give candidates a real challenge your company faces: "We're losing deals to Competitor X in the enterprise segment. How would you approach this?" Strong candidates ask clarifying questions, structure their thinking, identify root causes, and propose a phased solution. Weak candidates jump to tactics without diagnosis.
Second, evaluate execution through past work examples. Ask: "Walk me through a launch you're proud of. What was your process? What went well? What would you do differently?" Listen for structured processes, cross-functional coordination, and honest reflection on mistakes. Red flag: candidates who only talk about successes and never mention learning from failures.
Third, assess communication skills with a writing exercise. Ask candidates to write a positioning doc or battlecard as a take-home assignment. This reveals their ability to synthesize complexity into clarity, which is essential for PMM. Poor writers struggle at PMM regardless of strategic ability.
Fourth, check sales and product credibility through role-play. Ask the candidate to pitch your product or handle a sales objection. Strong PMMs can articulate value clearly, handle pushback, and adjust messaging based on feedback. Weak PMMs sound academic or can't think on their feet.
The Onboarding Plan That Prevents Regret
How you onboard your first hires determines whether they succeed or struggle. Most scale-ups fail at this.
Create a structured 30-60-90 day plan. In the first 30 days, new PMMs should learn the product deeply, understand customer pain points through call shadowing and customer interviews, and meet all key stakeholders across product, sales, marketing, and customer success. Give them small, achievable projects to build quick wins and credibility.
In days 31-60, assign them ownership of one major area aligned with their specialty. If they're competitive intel focused, they own the next battlecard update and win/loss interview program. If they're launch focused, they own an upcoming product launch end-to-end. Pair them with you on strategic work to learn your thinking process.
By days 61-90, they should be operating independently in their area with light oversight. They're running programs, making decisions, and building relationships across the organization. You're providing feedback and coaching, not directing every task.
Document your processes, frameworks, and past decisions before they start. Create a PMM wiki or shared folder with messaging docs, launch templates, battlecards, competitive research, and key meeting notes. New hires should spend their first week reading everything before creating anything.
When to Promote from Within vs. Hire Externally
As your team grows beyond the first few hires, you'll face this decision repeatedly. Both approaches have merit.
Promote from within when someone has demonstrated capability growth, strong cultural fit, and specific skills that are hard to find externally. Internal promotions reward performance, retain top talent, and maintain institutional knowledge. They're especially valuable for roles requiring deep company knowledge like senior PMM or team lead positions.
Hire externally when you need capabilities your team doesn't have, fresh perspectives to avoid groupthink, or faster scale than internal promotion timelines allow. External hires bring new approaches, industry connections, and experience from other companies. They're especially valuable for specialized roles or when entering new markets.
The best teams do both. Promote strong performers into expanded roles while hiring external talent to fill new needs and bring fresh thinking.
The First Team Culture You Set Matters Forever
Your first few hires establish the team culture. If they're collaborative, the team stays collaborative. If they're territorial, the team becomes siloed. If they focus on impact over politics, that becomes the norm.
Hire for culture contribution, not just culture fit. Look for people who will strengthen your culture by adding something valuable—diverse perspectives, operational excellence, customer empathy—not just blend in with existing norms.
Make collaboration a core value from day one. Create shared goals across the team, not just individual OKRs. Run weekly team syncs where people share work, ask for help, and celebrate wins. Build mechanisms for knowledge sharing like lunch-and-learns where team members teach each other new skills.
Avoid hero culture. If your first hire is a superstar who delivers amazing work but never shares knowledge or helps others, they set a bad precedent. The best early hires are strong individual contributors who also make their teammates better.
Your Job Changes When You Have a Team
Managing people is fundamentally different from doing the work yourself. Many founding PMMs struggle with this transition.
Delegate real work, not just grunt work. Give your team ownership of strategic projects, not just execution tasks. If you only delegate low-level work, you'll burn out and your team won't grow.
Provide context, not just tasks. Explain why decisions matter, how they connect to business goals, and what success looks like. Context helps people make better decisions independently.
Create feedback loops. Weekly 1-on-1s with each team member. Monthly feedback on their work. Quarterly discussions about career growth. Most first-time managers give too little feedback too late.
The hardest part: accepting that your team will do things differently than you would. They'll write positioning that's 80% of what you'd write. They'll structure launches differently than your approach. That's okay. Different isn't wrong, and your job is developing people, not cloning yourself.
Build your first PMM team thoughtfully. Hire for complementary skills, diverse experience, and culture contribution. Onboard deliberately. Delegate meaningfully. These first few hires set the foundation for everything that follows.