Every early-stage startup asks the same question eventually: who is the first GTM hire? The honest answer depends on the business, but the wrong answer is almost always “a VP of Sales,” at least not yet.

Before you hire a leader, you need someone who can do the work and tell you what is actually working. That usually means a generalist who can run outbound, close deals, and report back what objections keep coming up, not someone whose job is to manage a team that does not exist yet.

Founders often wait too long to make this hire because they assume they should be doing sales themselves until the product is “ready.” In most cases, the sales conversations are exactly what tells you whether the product is ready, so waiting delays the signal you actually need.

Once you have proof that a repeatable motion exists, that is the moment to think about a leader who can scale it. ScrumAID’s recruiters help startups make both calls, the first GTM hire and the leader who comes after, at the right time for each.