[hcal]

As always it depends on a lot of things, but anyone with a background marketing should be pretty versed in product-market fit. It is a fundamental concept to marketing in the same way double-entry bookkeeping is fundamental to accounting... I'm sure there are a bunch of people calling themselves marketers who are really just sales drones, but there are also a lot of developers who are just spaghetti coders and accountants who are really just glorified filers and data entry specialists.

[Jensson]

> anyone with a background marketing should be pretty versed in product-market fit. It is a fundamental concept to marketing in the same way double-entry bookkeeping is fundamental to accounting.

It isn't though, marketers aren't experts in understanding if a product is worth building. Some become experts at that, but it isn't a standard part of their job. Instead find people who are experts in product design or just regular business, they will likely be better at this than marketers and could do the marketing bits as well.

It feels as if developers do the same mistake here as they accuse others of. Even a developer can learn marketing, so why not make a product designer learn marketing? Its just useful to have another person on the team who takes care about product market fit etc, looking for a marketer for that role just limits who you can find.

[stingraycharles]

Maybe, I would just look for qualities of finding PMF over marketing qualities. Getting a startup’s product strategy in the right direction is something entirely different than “just” marketing; it means understanding how to change the product based on lack of demand, and understanding it is, in fact, a product problem rather than a marketing problem.

I’m sure great marketeers qualify for these traits, but if that’s the case, why not just select for these traits in the first place, rather than marketing?