A company's first product hire usually comes at the point where the founder, or sometimes the CTO, can no longer hold every product decision alone. Engineers wait for answers, customer feedback piles up without anyone to sort it, and the sales team starts promising features nobody has agreed to build. Someone needs to own the product full time.
We also see a growing number of first product hires in businesses that have run on bespoke client work for years and are now building a software product, often after new funding. Their first product manager is joining a company that knows its customers very well but has never had to decide what a product should do on its own terms.
Either way, the hire tends to shape how product works in that business for years afterwards, so it is worth getting the brief right before the search begins.
Product manager or head of product?
This is the decision most first product hires turn on, and it is easy to get wrong in either direction.
Hire too senior and you may end up with someone who expects a team to lead and a strategy to set, when what the business needs is someone to write the tickets, talk to customers and make daily decisions with the engineers. Hire too junior and you get someone who can do the day-to-day work but needs a clear direction from above, which is exactly what the founder was hoping to hand over.
In most cases, the first product hire has to do both. They need to be hands-on enough to run the work with a small engineering team, and experienced enough to set up how product decisions are made as the company grows. Titles vary, from senior product manager to head of product, and the title matters less than being clear about which of those two jobs will take most of their time in the first year.
Many first product hires grow into leading the function. Duncan McCarthy's experience is a good example:
"Consortia have come through for me again and again - placing me in my first Head of Product role, finding me good product managers, benchmarking salaries, assessing competencies, and finding me contract work."
That pattern is common. The first hire often goes on to build the team around them, so it helps to hire someone who could credibly do that in time, even if they are hands-on for now.
What to look for
The most useful experience is having worked somewhere without an established product process. Someone who has only worked in large, well-organised product teams may find the first months uncomfortable, because many of the things they relied on will not exist yet. Someone who has been an early product hire before, or who helped set up the way a team works, usually settles in faster.
They also need to be able to work closely with a founder. Until now, the founder has usually been the product manager, often with strong views about what the product should be. The right person can hold their own in those conversations, disagree when the evidence points elsewhere, and keep the working relationship intact. In interviews, it helps to ask about a time they changed a senior stakeholder's mind, and a time they didn't.
Look for someone who talks about customers without being prompted. A first product manager will spend much of their time working out what customers actually need, and the good ones tend to bring examples of what they learned from users and what they changed as a result.
Handing over the product
The part founders often underestimate is letting go. If every decision still goes back to the founder, even the strongest product manager will struggle, and good people tend to leave when they realise they cannot make decisions.
It helps to agree early which decisions the new product manager will own outright, which they will make with the founder, and which stay with the founder for now. That conversation is worth having before the offer, not three months in. It also makes for a much better interview, because strong candidates will ask about it.
Pay, and moving quickly
Salary is often the first sticking point. A first product hire needs a broad mix of skills, and experienced candidates know that. If the base salary is below market, equity and the chance to build something from the start can make up some of the difference. In our experience, many strong product people are drawn to that kind of opportunity. The package still has to be realistic, and it is worth checking current rates before you advertise.
Speed matters as much as pay. The most common reason we see companies lose good candidates is a slow process, particularly when there are several rounds spread over weeks. Strong product managers are often talking to more than one company, and some will receive a counter-offer from their current employer. A short, clear process, with a decision soon after the final interview, gives you a much better chance.
Getting help with your first product hire
We have recruited product managers and product leaders since 2010, including many companies' first product hire. If you are working out the scope, level or salary for the role, send us a brief or read our product manager job description template.
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