Over the last year, I’ve been advising several early-stage startups with strong, visionary founders. Inevitably, the question comes up: When should we hire our first PM, and who should we hire? Too often, that first hire doesn’t work out—sometimes because founders weren’t ready to loosen the reins, or because the PM came in with the wrong skills.
At its core, product management is three interconnected activities: understanding what customers want, turning that understanding into a working product that serves customers, and translating that product into a valuable asset for the business.
What this essay explores
- Understand product management as connecting customer needs, working products, and business value.
- Use the five-engineer benchmark while accounting for founder involvement, design leadership, and team capability.
- Identify early-stage PMs who can build hands-on and work fluently with technical teams.
- Find candidates beyond traditional PM backgrounds and test them on real product challenges.
- Assess cultural fit and a candidate’s ability to grow into a key company leader.
Key takeaway
A quick guide for founders and early stage PMs
