Hiring a Head of Growth: From The Lens of a Head of Growth
- Feb 20
- 3 min read
Hi, I'm Khushi.
I've been the first growth hire at multiple companies, and eventually got to be Head of Growth. I've also consulted several companies in a fractional capacity.
One company grew to millions of users with majoiry of F100 companies as clients, bootstrapped!
You can view my portfolio of work, testimonials, and blog if you've got time to spare.
Hiring for a head of growth is fundamentally different from hiring your first growth marketer or your first growth product manager.
If you've reached a level of scale where:
marketing is working in its own silo
product is working in its own silo, and
there's a clear activation, onboarding, and retention opportunity that a growth team should be working towards
That's when you need a head of growth.
But what that role looks like depends heavily on your business model.
Sales-Led vs. Product-Led
In a sales-led company, your head of growth will have a background in outbound motions.
A sales-led company's head of growth will have a background in outbound motions. How do you create sales teams? How do you build complex, clear workflows? LinkedIn ad campaigns, all of that would be part of a head of growth role in a sales-led company.
A PLG company that is primarily B2C or consumer-oriented is a different story. In that case, your head of growth role is going to focus more on activation, onboarding, retention, voluntary and involuntary churn, referral programs, loyalty programs, and monetization levers like watermarks.
How to Structure the Team
When it comes to resource allocation, the team you're building around this head of growth typically includes developers, product managers, designers, and marketing support. Depending on your scale, you may also need customer support.
For sales-led companies, you'll lean more toward marketers and salespeople, with fewer developers but definitely some data analysts and RevOps support.
How to Hire
Start with your investor and advisor network.
The best way to hire is through investor and advisor networks, because a lot of these amazing people are not scrolling through a job board. Go to your investors and advisors and ask for introductions. People like Gaurav Vohra, Kyle Poyar, Elena Verna, Lenny Rachitsky will point you to the right people. Kleiner Perkins also makes these introductions.
Follow people before you approach them.
Read their blogs. Watch their work. Then reach out and tell them what you stand for, what you're building, and why you think they can help. Most people respond. And from experience, a good product excites people far more than who's making the introduction. If someone looks at your product and thinks "I can help this company be successful," that excites them more than anything else.
Consider a fractional or pilot engagement.
Bring someone on board and see if you work well together. A pilot can be anywhere from a month to six months. If it works, you can go full-time. If you want to keep it fractional, you can do that too.
If your local network comes up short, go broader.
If after two to three months you haven't found the right person, look across different geographies. The right person might not be local.
Get creative with sourcing.
Post in the communities where these people actually are. Host a dinner with really amazing growth folks and mention you're hiring. It costs money, but it pays dividends if you hire someone good. Put up billboards. Run quirky, targeted campaigns.
There are some paid communities that you may not have access to such as Reforge that costs $2000/year. In cases like this, if you want to write me a note, I can post on your behalf.
Keep the Contract Simple
The best contracts are short. Sometimes 3-4 pages.
When contracts are longer, like 25 pages, it's harder for people to accept the terms.
Non-competes are fine in moderation. Something like don't work for a competitor for a year is reasonable. But don't list seventy or a hundred companies in the non-compete, because that is going to turn people away.
Don't have indemnity clauses, or ask folks to have millions dollar worth of insurance before they sign you on. '
Growth is non-linear, so it's really hard to accept with unhealthy terms.
Hope this helps!
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