NBT #3: Don't Hire Specialists

Plus, qualities to look for in your first hires.

One thing Venmo did well in its early days was hiring smart, ambitious generalists vs. tons of specialists. This wasn't intentional or by design. It was more of a byproduct of the fact that we were all young and didn't know what types of specialists were needed. We didn't even know what product managers were.

Fast forward over a decade – I'm hired to run marketing for a fintech company. As soon as I am hired, the CEO pushes me to hire a growth marketer. I tell him that I would much prefer to hire a generalist because in my experience, you need generalists to help identify what types of marketing activities really move the needle in the early days. However, the CEO points to several other companies and competitors that he would like to emulate and shares that growth marketers were critical early members of those teams. He insists that I recruit a growth marketer as my first hire.

We do end up hiring a growth marketer, and she's fantastic. In fact, she's the best growth marketer I've worked with in my career thus far. She can target ideal customers like a ninja and optimize growth campaigns like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, this exceptionally talented human sat bored for many months. Why?

1. The company was not yet in a position to fully scale growth marketing campaigns; you generally want to have a strong content creation mechanism going so that content can be effectively leveraged by your growth marketer across various campaigns.

2. The company decided to pivot more towards a B2B model in which growth marketing became a lower priority than sales enablement and traditional PR.

Rather than trying to replicate the exact composition of your competitors, optimize for individuals who are passionate about the problem you are trying to solve.

Hire generalists who:

• Are driven to succeed and make a name for themselves

• Desperately want that IPO or acquisition as much as you do

• Have the confidence to flex into new roles without much experience or expertise

• Love to learn from those who do have more experience or expertise

• Are well organized and thoughtful

• Understand that success is the result of consistent hard work

Give those generalists a high-level vision and goals. Ask them to report back on what's working and what's not working. These insights should guide your hiring plan. These insights will tell you whether your next hire should be a growth marketer, content creator, or a BD professional.

Stop looking at how your competitor is hiring. You need to hire based on your own strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. For all you know, your competitor's CEO could be killer at BD, and that's why she has hired zero BD professionals even though BD is what's moving the needle. And perhaps you are absolutely shit at BD and should be hiring an experienced BD rockstar even though your competitor has seemingly hired none.

In sum:

1. Evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses

2. Hire kickass generalists who complement and amplify your own skills

3. Garner insights from the generalists (LISTEN and OBSERVE)

4. Hire specialists based on your insights from the generalists