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Grit · 3 min · Sep 21, 2026

Product marketing fits an early, amorphous company

Decagon hired its first marketer, a product marketer, around employee 30. Jesse Zhang says that flexible role fits early companies before growth and performance marketing become more systematic.

Jesse Zhang is co-founder and CEO of Decagon.

Co-founded Decagon, a conversational AI platform for customer support, and previously founded Lowkey, acquired by Niantic.

Joubin Mirzadegan, Host · Partner, Kleiner Perkins
Took Palo Alto Networks' cloud business from $2M to $50M+ ARR in a year.

About this segment

Decagon hired its first marketer, a product marketer, around employee 30. Jesse Zhang says that flexible role fits early companies before growth and performance marketing become more systematic.

From “Inside Decagon: Finding PMF, Hiring Fast, and Scaling 10x”, Sep 21, 2026. Watch the full episode

“and i think the the thing with product marketing is because it's more amorphous that actually like fits better in your early early company”

Jesse Zhangat 42:50 · Grit42:50

Takeaways

Decagon's first marketing hire came around employee 30.
Product marketing can flex as early company needs change.
Growth and performance marketing make more sense as roles mature.

In this episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

41:10
that you most misunderstood? The first one that comes to mind is probably marketing. I think a lot of people probably say marketing like is so broad, right? And so fuzzy. Yeah, so fuzzy. And the people in marketing, just like in sales, are very good at marketing or selling themselves. Yeah, yes, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, marketing, I would say, one i think we hired it a little bit slow now i think that's that goes back to one of those like the original question of like could we have hired ahead there like probably yes but it's so hard to like decide like what is the pain point for marketing i think my perspective on it has changed now i've also learned a lot more about you know the field and you know we are very strong marketers but like marketing itself is also super different right like
41:59
like product marketing like kind of really being able to talk about like what you're working on is like very different from like growth and demand gen which is also very different from all like all like trying to improve your brand and uh like all like social media strategies and whatever it's just like like none of these are like very like systematic in a way where you can just like reason through everything there's like there's a little bit of art to it obviously you can you know build systems that track everything closely. But yeah, that's probably the function that where I had to learn the most on. What hire was your first marketing person? Like what number? It was first 30 people. 30. Yeah. Okay. And what type of marketer was it? Product marketing. And do you think you should have done something different? We don't know the counterfactual, but I think
42:50
product marketing has worked out for us as starting as the starting point um so ploma who's our vp marketing and uh actually came from glean yeah uh yeah i think she's she's done very well and i think the the thing with product marketing is because it's more amorphous that actually like fits better in your early early company because your early company is like very amorphous so like having a product market that's just smart and can kind of like flex around like what the needs are is like good and then once you kind of get to a point where you can be more systematic and like you know do more skilled like performance marketing uh that's when it's time to