For anyone in #productmarketing working closely with a founder…
Don’t forget, they were the first product marketer.
They created the first positioning
They wrote the first narrative
They designed the first go-to-market
They closed the first deal
A quick story:
When we were working on Klue’s narrative earlier this year, we hosted a workshop with our executive team to walk them through some of our initial ideas and messaging.
After the workshop, our CEO, Jason Smith, sent me a quick note on Slack sharing 5 different Evernote files of things he had written over the years. There was so much gold in those pages.
"Duh," I thought to myself. "Jason’s been internalizing this narrative for years." 🤦♂️
Luckily, we were early in the process, and since then we’ve been able to work together to build our narrative, and more importantly, make sure he’s fully invested in it.
So, even if you get hired as the first PMM, there’s always someone you can learn from.
Will you always agree, or need their input on everything? Of course not. Trust your abilities, while taking advantage of an experienced leader that’s done it before.
Chances are they love (and miss) talking about it.
I mean, how could they not.