A great product marketer has high technical aptitude, and that translates into these complex ideas. Sometimes you're selling products that super sex. There are product marketers out there who are selling self driving cars,. robots, cripto, anfts, rays. They're they're selling what's cool right now. And then there's product marketers who are selling stuff that's not sexy at all. It is a fundamental understanding and excitement about the product that is being built which gets translated in the copy the messageing how you sell to help sell. So do they light up when they talk about it, and can they rite? Well, those are two absolutely important components. Everything else can follow
Today’s episode is with Maya Spivak, the Head of Marketing at Mux, which is an API for developers to build video experiences. Maya recently joined Mux after five years at Segment, where she was the company’s second marketer and its Head of Global Brand Marketing and Communications, as well as a stint at Wealthfront as a marketing director.
In today’s conversation, she takes a magnifying glass to the core components of a startup’s marketing org. She starts by breaking down the three pillars of marketing roles — product, brand, and growth. She explains the leading indicators that your startup is ready to hire folks within each of these pillars — which starts with analyzing your sales motion and sizing up the founders’ strengths and weaknesses.
Next, Maya pulls back the curtain on how she architects interview loops for each of these different roles, and the unique capabilities that separate good candidates from great, must-hire folks. Finally, she reflects on her experience as one of the earliest marketing hires at Segment, and how she built the marketing org in the first couple of years to keep up with the shifting needs of the growing startup.
Today’s conversation is of course a must-listen for marketers, particularly marketing leaders and hiring managers that are trying to pluck out the best and the brightest to join their org. But there’s a ton for other folks to learn from this interview, which explains some of the nuances of startup marketing you may not fully appreciate.
You can follow Maya on Twitter at @papayamaya.
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