LinkedIn thought-leadership post
LinkedIn post that earns engagement by saying something specific and slightly contrarian.
Try LinkedIn thought-leadership post free →How to use this template
Example output
Your first PM should not be a real PM.
In 2024, I made the standard mistake. We hired a senior PM out of FAANG — strong resume, glowing references, every box ticked. Four months later we let them go.
The problem wasn't competence. The problem was that they wanted to build the process before they built the product. They asked for a roadmap framework. They booked discovery interviews. They wrote a beautiful PRD for a thing nobody had decided we should build.
We replaced them with an engineer-turned-founder whose last role didn't even have 'product' in the title. In six weeks they shipped three features, including the one that lifted free-to-paid conversion 8 percentage points.
The difference: one was trained to find product, the other was trained to ship it.
When you're hiring your first PM, the question I'd ask is: have you shipped a product without anyone telling you how?
If the answer is no, they're probably not the first PM hire. They might be the third.