Building a Marketing Team From Zero
The first five hires decide everything. Get them wrong and spend two years recovering. Here's the order I'd hire in — and why.
Most founders hire marketing wrong. They start with a content person or a designer because that's the output they see. Wrong. The output is the last thing you hire for.
Hire 1: A Marketing Operator. Not a junior marketer — someone with 3-5 years who can build process, set up tools, and turn vague briefs into plans. Without this person, every other hire becomes a solo contributor floating with no framework.
Hire 2: A Designer. Yes, before content. Because the visual system you set up in the first 90 days will brand every piece of content, every deck, every email for the next five years. Designers set the ceiling.
Hire 3: A Content/Copywriter. Now you have ops and visual system — they can write into a structure. Before this, any content you produce will need rework once brand/ops mature.
Hire 4: A Digital/Performance lead. Someone who can actually set up tracking, attribution, and run paid. Most teams hire this person third or even first, then wonder why they're running ads that attribute to nothing.
Hire 5: Your second operator. Not another designer. Another operator — a project manager, a CRM specialist, a marketing analyst. Because your bottleneck isn't output; it's coordination.
I've built this five-hire system at Taaeen, and shortened variations of it at every engagement. The team of five that follows this order produces more than the team of ten that doesn't.