Mostly Growth

Fantasy Startup Draft: The First 5 Hires We’d Make Today

18 snips
Feb 6, 2026
Two founders run a fantasy startup draft to pick the first five non-technical hires for a new company. They argue over marketing generalists, founding BDRs and AEs, product marketing, RevOps, customer success, fractional accounting, and demand gen. They compare tradeoffs like retention, pipeline ownership, and scalable GTM processes while teasing listener voting and a playful loser penalty.
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ADVICE

Hire A Scrappy Marketing Generalist

  • Hire a marketing generalist to run experiments, build the website, and set up basic growth systems early.
  • Founders should stay in founder-led sales while the marketer creates pipeline and messaging support.
ADVICE

Protect Founder Time With A Founding BDR

  • Bring on a founding BDR to qualify leads and protect the founder's time on high-value calls.
  • Hire someone scrappy who can later ramp into an AE role and document the sales process.
ADVICE

Delay Quota Until Sales Motion Is Clear

  • Hire a founding AE once you have repeatable pipeline to shadow the founder and then own their own book.
  • Use salary plus qualitative MBOs early, moving to quota once the motion is calibrated.
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