As head of PMM at a startup, how did your PMM team grow over time, e.g. what positions did you hire, when, why? How did divide scope of responsibilities? What were the most strategic hires you made, including non-PMM titles if any?

When I started at Grammarly, I did an audit of how PMM mapped to the product organization, our consumer acquisition and growth teams, and our B2B sales teams. The audit revealed that we were significantly understaffed (did I mention we are hiring?) And as a result, PMM was focused on launches more than product strategy and messaging. My first cut of the org chart focused on coverage – ensuring that our product partners had identified partners and that we aligned to the sales org. I also develope ...Read More

In the beginning, you'll most likely have a smaller PMM team - maybe with just one PMM. That means you'll need a well-rounded PMM generalist. Someone who is comfortable taking on everything from product launch to sales enablement to segmentation. Prioritization will be key to make sure the team is working on the highest-impact projects.  As you scale, I'd recommend that you start structuring the team in a way that enhances and amplifies the partnership between product marketing and product manag ...Read More

I've had a bit of a unique journey including leading a small marketing team responsible for everything, as well as focused PMM teams. I don't believe in general blueprints like "your first hire should be competitive and second should be core product" since every business is different. More complex or technical products likely need more "product" PMMs as a early hire and a simpler product in a competitive market may need more PMM muscle around messaging to stand out and competitive marketing.  In ...Read More

Since ManyChat is a younger company, we don’t yet have a lot of product lines that merit the traditional squad PM <> PMM structure. Today the Product Marketing team is structured based on target customer personas with each PMM also responsible for a functional area like research or competitive intelligence. As we grow, I could see us moving to the squad model. Also we are a global company with diverse english language proficiencies and as a result product marketers ended up acting as copy ...Read More