Six rules of hiring for growth

Elena Verna argues that a founder's first growth hire is one of the most consequential hires a startup makes, and that many founders begin with avoidable mistakes. She proposes six rules: define a growth model before hiring, invest in data, have the founding team write the first growth model rather than outsourcing it, hire a builder first, prioritize homegrown talent, and let the growth model determine where growth sits in the org. The core idea is that growth is an evolution of an existing business, built on product-market fit, and should be designed around specific levers and motions. The advice matters because misplaced or premature growth hiring wastes time and money and can stall a company that already has traction.

01Key takeaways

• Define your growth model (levers and motions) before hiring anyone for growth.
• Have the founding team draft the first growth model, since outside hires tend to copy past playbooks.
• Build a data foundation around a North Star metric before building a growth team.
• Make your first growth hire a builder to validate the model, not a Head of Growth.
• Look internally for early growth talent, since the function is young and strong leaders are rare and costly.
• Place growth according to the motion it needs, and start with an embedded team to keep it an evolution rather than a revolution.

02Key sections

Common first-hire mistakes

Verna lists six errors founders make when starting growth hiring, such as hiring a generalist without a clear definition of growth, or building a growth team before a data team exists.

Growth model before growth

A growth model combines levers (acquisition, retention, monetization) with motions (product-led, sales-led, marketing-led) that together form a predictable, defensible engine for distribution.

Invest in data and create the first model yourself

Data should be organized around the user journey with a North Star metric, and the founding team, not a new hire, should draft the initial growth hypothesis since they know the market best.

Hire a builder, then choose by traction

Growth profiles fall into innovators, builders, and optimizers; start with a builder to validate the model, then bring in optimizers if it works or innovators if it does not.

Homegrown talent and org placement

Experienced growth leaders are scarce and expensive, so promote people from analytics, product, marketing, or engineering, and place growth according to the motion needed, starting embedded before going stand-alone.

03From the post

“1. Picking a wedge 2. Breaking into growth 3. Community wisdom Q: When is the right time to hire my first full-time growth person? What should I look for when hiring for growth? As Paul Graham teaches us, “Startup = growth. The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.” Thus, your first growth hire is one of the most important hires you’ll make. To tackle your question, I’ve pulled in Elena Verna, one of the smartest growth people I’ve ever met (and who I’ve been trying to convince to write a guest post for nearly a year). Below, Elena generously shares her six hard-won lessons on growth hiring. Over the past 10+ years, Elena has helped hire and build growth teams at companies like Netlify, MongoDB, HP, and Krisp, and previously led growth at Miro, SurveyMonkey, and Malwarebytes. An early draft of this post has already become my go-to reference for helping founders figure out their growth hiring strategy, and I’m excited to share it with you all. You can find Elena on…”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.