Adding Product To Your Startup Team

When you start Growing Your Startup Tech Product Team, one or both of your Founders typically fills the Product Management role.

There are a variety of reasons this should come to an end, and it's time to hire a First PM.

Some people say you should wait until you reach Product-Market Fit.

• (2016-02-12) Norton Product Manager Zero To One

If you get immediate traction from your MVP, maybe that will work.

• Though in some cases that early traction is scattered across market segments, in a way that doesn't scale.

But if you need serious Customer Discovery, and co-iteration of all the Strategic Context, a co-founder probably won't have the time/focus to do that, and is probably a little over-committed to the initial vision/plan.

Likewise, this is not the time to hire a "junior" (3-5yrs experience) Product Manager: such a person hasn't seen a broad enough variety of challenges to have the "product taste" necessary to find the path to success. (A-Player)

What should that Product person do when they arrive? Product Management from MVP to Product-Market Fit