How to identify, interview and hire a head of growth for an early-stage startup

The waters are a great place to be. Never be calm when scaling up a startup. In fact, the majority of them are quite choppy. By making the right hire for the position of head of growth, you will be able to navigate much more easily.

The individual you’re looking for will create and execute growth strategies, manage marketing initiatives and, ultimately, drive revenue. My more informal take on this role is that it’s someone who deeply understands growth fundamentals, has significant expertise in one to two growth pillars and knows how to build an effective team.

I’ll walk you through when and how to hire your head of growth, their archetypes, how this role stands apart from other marketing executive positions, and what to expect from this hire during their first few quarters.

Head of growth archetypes

In my decade of growth marketing, I’ve seen quite a few growth leaders who began at various startups, all possessing varying levels of experience. To make it easier, I’ve grouped these candidates into three major categories, or archetypes:

1. Generalists: Extensive experience across multiple growth pillars.
2. Specialists: deep expertise in a specific pillar.
3. Tertiaries : data, finance/VC or product background.

While I’ve seen members of each category become successful as heads of growth, I strongly advise hiring from either category one or category two for seed to Series B startups.

When building a growth function from zero, it’s vital to have someone who can drive the execution for your early channels and campaigns. When it comes to category three, I’ve only witnessed success after a growth team was already in place, with their efforts centered around optimizing efforts across data analytics and product.

There are two flavors that are common to all groups, outside of these three archetypes:

As their marketing methods are so different, they can make or break your growth efforts. Someone with a strong background in web acquisition from a B2B firm like Rippling is not well-suited to manage growth at a B2C startup, such as Spotify.

As their careers tend to stay in one direction, most growth marketers will have a heavy indexing towards B2B or B2C. However, it’s quite common to see growth marketers who have experience in both mobile and web acquisition, and it’s absolutely acceptable to hire them.

You’ll occasionally find a unicorn who’s a generalist and has experience in B2B, B2C, mobile and web. If you do, Hire them now.

There are many varieties of Heads of Growth. Image Credits Jonathan Martinez

Interviewing: How to conduct an interview

I’m fortunate to have been on both sides of the interview table for head of growth positions, largely at tech B2C startups, so I have a good sense of what makes for amazing interviewees.

Below are example questions to ask and a few case studies I’ve seen work well:

Interview questions:

• What are some of the most important metrics to measure for a startup?
• What would you consider a successful growth strategy?
• We’re having issues in our funnel — how would you analyze and optimize?
• What are your thoughts on our biggest growth levers and why?