This week, I am inspired by a fantastic post about the experience of founders hiring their first marketing leader…
A couple of days ago, Andrew Davies, founder of Idio (that got sold to Optimizely), now CMO at Paddle, and someone who I had the fortune to interview on the Rockstar CMO podcast a while back, posted something jolly interesting here on LinkedIn.
In his post, he took his experience and laid out some advice for founders when they are at less than $5M in revenue and suggested an answer to the key question that I agree, from conversations I’ve had, that founders face:
When should you hire your first marketer?
Andrew makes some good points about first understanding the founder’s strengths (and I guess this extends to the existing founding team), whether the entrepreneurial culture is sales-led or product-led, the marketing challenge of the product and the category, and which lever needs the biggest pull, whether it’s brand awareness, demand, or product marketing.
His post alludes to the fear this first marketing hire decision brings to founders.
Hire someone senior, and they will know what needs to be done but may expect a budget, team, and agency support to get anything f’in’ done.
I envisaged a founder contemplating a quick puff of the marketing crack pipe that they worry will plunge them into a lifetime of marketing addiction, and before long, their kids will be thrown onto the street.
Or, hire too junior, and well, they’ll be able to do the things but will look to the founder for strategy and direction, tugging on someone already busy cranking out a great product and growing every other aspect of a new business.
I envisaged a founder contemplating getting a puppy that would need constant care. They would take their eye off the business, and their kids would be thrown onto the streets.
Yes, the classic choice: puppies or crack!
The solution he suggests, which I particularly enjoyed, was that founders need to:
“Look for a ‘strategic enough’ T-shaped marketer.”
In the comments, I mused that this is someone who can not just get shit done but knows why.
And that’s the point of this post.
Andrew characterized marketers as having a skills bias toward brand, demand, or product marketing. The inference will be that if you have a specific hammer, every marketing problem will be that nail.
This is a bit of the curse of the modern marketing career: you start as a generalist, but the big company marketing career path takes you down a specialist path, you get labeled as one kind of marketer, and then you get senior and need to be a generalist again.
I understand and advocate modern marketing teams being run this way, shit, I do it as it’s a complex business in a large organization, and we need specialists and people focused on keeping the multitude of spinning plates spinning that fall under our marketing purview.
Then, when you do become a leader, it’s also hard to find the balance of being focused on the high-value strategy stuff while keeping your hand in on how shit gets done.
I’ve discovered that some CEOs don’t want their CMOs to spend time in the CMS, analytics tools, or generally getting their hands in the dirt of marketing.
And, I personally know CMOs that would be completely ineffective without the life support of their agency of record and a team of do-ers; their marketing brain and function are entirely outsourced. Hire one of them, and you are going to need a bigger box.
And then your children will be thrown onto the street.
This all suggests that a T-shaped senior marketer is a bit of a unicorn, but I think the post from Andrew is a call to arms, as I feel that B2B marketing is changing.
Maybe you don’t want to work for a startup, but we will all be doing more with less, and it’s not going to be enough to jump on the hamster wheel and do all the things, we need to know why.
Similarly, we can’t just know why and be disconnected entirely from the how. We just aren’t going to have the resources to be, what they call in soccer, a luxury player, we all need to contribute.
We need to be T-shaped.
I’ve read a lot into Andrew’s relatively short post there, and I hope you check it out.
Get shit done, but know why.
Please check out Andrew’s post:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7284596152056844289/
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I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.
You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or now Threads! – or listen to my weekly podcast at Rockstarcmo.com
The half-baked thoughts shared on this blog may not reflect those of my employer or clients, and if the topic of this article is interesting or you just want to say hello please get in touch.