The short answer
Can a company do product marketing without a product marketing manager, and what changes when it grows from a startup into a scale-up?
Yes: in a startup, product marketing is spread across several people, usually the founder and the revenue and marketing leaders. As the company becomes a scale-up, the spread stops working and the question of a dedicated product marketing manager arises. In this long, unscripted conversation, Terry Michel and Mathieu cover what product marketing is, whether it is a new discipline or the structuring of existing practices, the startup and scale-up difference, and how to fit product marketing into a product organisation.
Key takeaways
- Product marketing can exist without a product marketing manager. In a startup, its work is shared between the founder and the revenue and marketing leaders.
- The move from startup to scale-up is when the question of a dedicated person comes up, because the shared model stops holding.
- The episode asks whether product marketing is a new discipline or the structuring of practices companies already have, and how to integrate it into a product organisation.
- Mathieu's written position, developed on rocket.pm: the signal for a first hire is the number of product managers and the noise between the people who wear the hats, more than headcount.
- In his method, the job itself changes with the stage: one generalist close to the product in a startup, then product marketers specialised by product line, segment or motion in a scale-up.
What the episode covers
Terry Michel’s description opens on the thesis of the conversation: you can do product marketing without a product marketing manager. In a startup, the work is distributed between several people, typically the founder and the revenue or marketing leaders. When the company grows from startup to scale-up, the question of hiring someone dedicated to the discipline arises, and the search for a product marketing manager begins.
From there, the episode covers three questions: what product marketing means, whether it is a new discipline or the structuring of practices that already exist in tech companies, and how to integrate product marketing into a product organisation.
When it came out, Mathieu described it on LinkedIn as an hour and a half of unscripted discussion, with detours through positioning and fishing nets.
Mathieu’s written position: who wears the hats
The same question runs through Mathieu’s writing on rocket.pm. Every company that sells a product does product marketing, whether or not anyone holds the title: someone chooses which customers to chase, someone sets the price, someone writes the pitch sales actually use. The early question is therefore not whether to hire a product marketer, but who owns the system today and whether they are allowed to.
A founder close to the field and one product manager can cover the seam between product and market for a while. The signal that it no longer holds is rarely headcount. It is the second or third product manager, and the moment the spread of hats creates more noise than value: three pitch decks, a founder who explains more than they sell, releases nobody checks a month later. The full reasoning, with a decision checklist, is in when to hire your first product marketing manager.
Startup and scale-up: same title, different job
In Mathieu’s method, the title stays the same while the job changes with the stage.
In a startup, the first product marketer is a generalist next to the product, carrying what the founder lets go of: positioning, the first price, launches, enablement of the first sales hires. Range, customer contact and the ability to decide alone matter more than process.
In a scale-up, the team splits by product line, by segment or by motion, such as self-serve, sales-led or expansion. Reporting lines become a real question, launch tiers and portfolio pricing appear, and the trap is the early product marketer who keeps doing everything personally instead of building the tools others use. The career ladder shows how that shift reads level by level.
How this maps to the twelve disciplines
Who carries product marketing, and how it fits the product organisation, is Run the Operating Model: how you are organised beats what you want to do. The hats a founder hands over first are positioning, Own Your Unfair Advantage, and launches, Orchestrate the Landing. For the definition itself, read what product marketing actually is.
Go further
- Grow · discipline 12Run the Operating ModelHow you’re organised beats what you want to do.
- Shape · discipline 04Own Your Unfair AdvantagePositioning doesn’t describe the product. It designs the profit.
- Launch · discipline 08Orchestrate the LandingA feature announced but not adopted is a cost dressed up as news.
- When Should a Startup Hire Its First Product Marketing Manager?Headcount is a weak signal. Hire your first PMM when product marketing, spread across too many people, creates more noise than value.
- What Product Marketing Actually Is (and What It Is Not)Product marketing turns a product into a business. What a product marketer does, which strategies count as product marketing, and what it is not.
- Product Marketing Career Ladder: Manager, Director, VPProduct marketing levels from PMM to Senior, Principal, Director and VP in one table: what you own, what you must prove, what keeps you stuck.
Just a Click is made by Terry Michel, host of Just a Click. The episode, its recording and its original description belong to the show: follow Just a Click for the other episodes.
