Nov 25, 2022 · 33m · 20vc
20VC: When to Make Your First Growth Hire? Senior or Junior? How To Onboard Them? How To Monitor Their Progress? from Growth Leaders @ Facebook, Instagram, Lyft, Instacart, Miro and more
compilation · excluded from per-person scoring
Harry Stebbings · 8m spoken Casey Winters · 4m spoken Ed Baker · 3m spoken Andy Johns · 3m spoken Adam Fishman · 3m spoken Elena Verna · 3m spoken Kieran Flanagan · 2m spoken Bangaly Kaba · 2m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
This masterclass episode of 20 Growth brings together seven prominent tech growth leaders to share actionable strategies on when startups should make their first growth hire, how to evaluate candidate seniority, and how to execute successful onboarding frameworks.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 26.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.4 Guest teaching 3.7 Guest disagreement 1.3 Harry pushing back 1.4
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 7:25 Elena Verna rejecting pre-PMF growth hires
Elena aggressively challenges founders wanting an early head of growth, asking what they are growing if they lack PMF and calling early growth hiring a waste of resources.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 16:53 Harry challenging Kieran on pre-PMF growthHarry directly refutes Kieran's opening premise by highlighting that all seven previous growth guests explicitly claimed growth pre-PMF does not exist.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 11:16 Ed Baker oil drilling analogyEd clearly educates the host and audience on why focus on growth pre-PMF fails, using the vivid analogy of drilling for oil in the wrong place.
Harry holds his own ▶ 16:53 Harry demonstrating domain synthesis across interviewsHarry showcases deep topic mastery and host expertise by synthesizing insights from seven previous growth interviews to test the guest's contrarian position.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Transition: Destination ID Sequence | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks open prompt questions about showing growth priority and onboarding processes. Casey explains that growth leaders usually scale internally post-PMF and details how new growth hires should immerse in data and user interviews. | |
| Elena Verna on Avoidable Growth Hiring and Onboarding Mistakes | 2 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Harry prompts Elena on common onboarding errors. Elena passionately dismantles the mistake of hiring a head of growth pre-PMF or before setting up a dedicated data function. | |
| Ed Baker on Product-Market Fit and Onboarding Frameworks | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks about cross-functional growth timing and month-one expectations. Ed Baker uses the oil drilling analogy to explain finding PMF before fueling growth, outlining practical North Star goals. | |
| Kieran Flanagan on Pre-PMF Growth Features and Onboarding | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Harry actively challenges Kieran by noting that seven previous guests stated growth only occurs post-PMF. Kieran counters with a contrarian view using Genius.com as an example of built-in pre-PMF growth features. | |
| Andy Johns on Organic Growth Signals and Holistic Frameworks | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry prompts Andy on initial hires and onboarding framework. Andy educates on avoiding disheveled metric-chasing by establishing a 4-part strategic growth equation in early onboarding weeks. | |
| Bangali Kaba on Flywheel Mechanics and Starting Junior | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks whether to start with senior or junior growth hires. Bangali recommends starting junior to execute on specific core mechanics before scaling up into broad systems. | |
| Adam Fishman on Player-Coach Roles and Onboarding Success | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry inquires about tenured versus junior growth talent and onboarding structure. Adam outlines the director-level player-coach sweet spot and treats employee onboarding as customer activation. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Casey Winters: Startups should build growth capabilities immediately after product-market fit
“As soon as possible after product market fit, that's when growth becomes the number one concern of most startups, and that's where you need to be building out that capability.”
Casey Winters: Proven growth leaders won't join startups that haven't prioritized growth
“There are perhaps 50 people that are capable, that have shown previous, like, head of growth experience. And they're not going to join your company until they've seen that you've already prioritized growth and shown that you value it inside an organization.”
Winters: Most successful Heads of Growth are early internal hires who scaled
“So a lot of the people that you look at that were head of growth, We're just really early employees that took an interest in that area and then scaled a team around it.”
Verna: Early startups shouldn't outsource growth entirely to a growth team
“On the other side, I also think that not putting any pressure of growth on your original founding team of those first 30 50 people is a mistake. If you immediately hire head of growth or growth team and say, hey, none of my PMs, none of my marketers are respon…”
Verna: Hiring a growth team before establishing data infrastructure is a mistake
“Not having data team ready for growth team. So hiring growth teaming before you have data analysts or data literacy in your company before you're data informed or hiring growth and not attaching any data analysts into their for you. Because if you do that, wha…”
Verna: Expecting growth wins within three months ruins onboarding
“And then there's number two, expecting wins right away. You hire your growth person, your growth team, and then the three months you expect the forecast lift where you put assumptions that they didn't drive forecast lifts. It's the worst thing that you can do …”
Ed Baker: Experienced growth hires do not require elaborate onboarding setups
“I don't think you necessarily have to have an amazing onboarding set up for this new head of growth that you're hiring. And again, if it's an experienced person, they'll be able to figure out a lot of it on their own.”
Ed Baker: Growth hires who do not ask founders for help are a red flag
“I'd say it's almost a red flag if the person you've just hired is not asking you for help as founder or CEO.”
Flanagan: Startups should build growth mechanisms before finding product-market fit
“Growth could be applicable pre-product market fit, right? When you actually are trying to figure out how do I instill these mechanisms within my product To better acquire people, to better onboard people, to better retain people. It's built into your product r…”
Kieran Flanagan: Genius.com outranked competitors using pre-PMF annotation features
“One of my favorite examples is Genius.com, right? Used to be Rap Genius back in the day when there were large lyric sites. Now, when you were building another lyric site, there was already well-established lyric sites. Like, how do you differentiate in that? B…”
Andy Johns: Do not hire growth roles before product-market fit
“I wouldn't even consider hiring a head of growth or building a growth team until you have a clear indicator of product market fit, which is some amount of exponential organic growth.”
Andy Johns: First growth hire must bridge product and technical skills
“You don't want the person to be so senior that they're just thinking about Strategy and orchestrating, you know, a large team. You don't want to hire the person who's a nation builder who just wants to come in and hire lots of folks. I think that first hire fr…”
Kaba: Founders must understand their product's growth flywheel before hiring growth roles
“It really works best when the founder understands one of their own Primary flywheels. And I figured it out. And so what I mean is like, it's really hard to outsource growth and say like, Hey, how do growth come like make us grow. If the founder doesn't really …”
Kaba: Discord's founders mapped their own network flywheels before hiring growth
“I happened to have the fortune of working with the discord founders last summer. And it was incredible how well they knew their own kind of, like, network and fly rule. Stan, the CTO, was, like, drawing diagrams for me on paper of, like, you know, how, you kno…”
Kaba: Early-stage startups should hire junior growth specialists, not senior executives
“I usually actually tell people to start junior. The reason why is a couple things. One is, you know, when you hire people who are more senior, they tend to be really, really good at, like, understanding systems, building for scale, Like helping to enable teams…”
Fishman: First growth hires must be mid-level player-coaches, not junior specialists
“Two junior, and you just have a bunch of order takers that can't prioritize their way out of a wet paper bag and figure out what they should be doing. Or they've maybe only seen it done one way before. They just sort of like want to rubber stamp it and say, we…”