Pi-Shaped Marketer Hiring
Your first marketer needs two deep spikes plus strategy skills — not one spike, and not a generalist smear.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
When hiring your first (and first several) marketers at an early-stage startup, look for a 'pi-shaped' marketer: deep expertise in one of three areas (product marketing, content marketing, growth marketing), proficiency in a second, and the ability to set strategy and hire contractors across the rest. Not the classic T-shape (one spike), and not a pure generalist.
Origin
Emily Kramer's own coinage, adapting the well-known 'T-shaped person' concept; she names the pi symbol (two vertical legs) as the visual metaphor.
Core principles
- 01The pi symbol has two vertical legs — a marketer with two areas of depth, not one
- 02The three hireable sub-functions are product marketing, content marketing, and growth marketing
- 03Business-model fit matters more than industry or audience experience — great marketers learn the audience quickly
- 04Content skill and growth/data skill rarely coexist in one person (different sides of the brain), so the common realistic pi is product+growth or product+content
How to run it
- 1
Decide fuel-first or engine-first
Use the fuel/engine diagnosis to identify whether you most need creation or distribution, which points you toward one of the three sub-functions as the primary spike.
- 2
Require one deep spike
Insist on genuine expertise in one of product marketing, content marketing, or growth marketing — the area that maps to your biggest constraint.
- 3
Require a second, adjacent spike
Add proficiency in a second of the three areas. The realistic combinations are product-marketing + growth-marketing, or product-marketing + content-marketing.
Watch out Do not expect one person to be both a great content marketer and great at growth/data — that pi-shape exists far less frequently because the two use opposite skill sets.
- 4
Require strategy + contractor-hiring ability
Ensure they can set strategy across all of marketing and know how to hire and manage specialist contractors (SEO, marketing ops, writers) for the third area.
Pro tip Hire specialists as contractors early rather than full-time — an SEO contractor or marketing-ops contractor covers depth you don't need in-house yet.
- 5
Screen for scope and standards, not seniority
Look for someone who worked somewhere early enough that they weren't siloed and could set strategy across marketing, and who has seen what 'great' looks like. Test that they can write both short and long form.
Pro tip Ask them to describe the product, why it's better, and who it's for — a basic positioning test many candidates fail.
Watch out Don't hire someone senior who only worked at a public company or big brand; marketing something everyone already knows is a completely different motion from building from scratch, and they won't be enough of a doer.
In the wild
VCs refer a senior marketer from a company like Google or Salesforce to a startup. Kramer's reaction: they may be great, but they're wrong for this role because they only worked where the brand and customer base already existed and don't know how to build a foundation.
→ The startup that hires this profile often fires their first marketer, having learned the person couldn't build from scratch or be a scrappy doer.
Because content and growth skills rarely coexist, the practical hire is usually a product-marketing + growth-marketing pi, or a product-marketing + content-marketing pi.
→ A first marketer who covers two of the three functions deeply and manages contractors for the third.
Common mistakes
Hiring for industry/audience experience over business-model fit
Insisting on someone who marketed to your exact vertical (HR, construction) narrows the candidate pool and matters less than business-model experience, since great marketers learn a new audience quickly and the business model (top-down vs bottom-up) dictates the actual marketing activities.
Hiring a siloed senior specialist as your first marketer
Someone who only worked at a large or public company has a narrow, siloed view (e.g. only ran launches after positioning was set), can't set cross-marketing strategy, and won't be the scrappy doer a startup's first marketer must be.
Is it for you?
Best for
A B2B startup founder making their first one or two marketing hires around Series A
Not ideal for
Larger companies staffing specialist roles within an established marketing org, where deep single-function specialists are exactly what's needed
From the transcript
“you want to hire pie shaped marketers and not pie like a dessert but pi like 3.14 where the pie symbol has has two vertical…”
“you want the first marker to be an expert in one of those three areas that i mentioned product marketing content marketing growth marketing and…”
“really hard to find someone that content marketer is also really good at growth like that pie shape marketer exists a lot less frequently”
“the business model really dictates what marketing does in a big way”
“you don't want to go out and hire someone super senior who's like only worked in a public company like that's the wrong person”
From the episode
How to build a powerful marketing machine
Emily Kramer (Asana, Carta, MKT1)