There's a version of this story where the role lasted longer and the metrics are cleaner. That's not this story. This one is three months inside a B2B payments infrastructure company with no PMM function, a strong product, a fast-moving team, and every lesson I wish I'd had on day one.
I joined as the first PMM at a Series C B2B payments infrastructure company.
No function existed before me. No launch methodology. No messaging framework. No centralised sales toolkit. Product releases were being shipped without a GTM layer. Bug fixes were going out without customer communication. The growth marketer was doing what they could, the product team was doing what they could, and somewhere in the gap between the two, the commercial opportunity was getting lost.
That was the brief. Build the function. Build it fast.
What I built first.
The launch tier framework came first. Not because it was the most exciting thing to build. Because without it, everything else would be chaos.
The problem was simple: every product release was being treated the same regardless of its impact. A major feature launch got the same internal communication as a minor bug fix. Nobody was making a deliberate decision about how much GTM effort each release deserved.
The tier framework changed that. Three tiers. Each with a clear definition and a clear GTM motion.
Tier 1: a major launch with meaningful customer impact, competitive significance, or revenue potential. Full GTM: messaging, sales enablement, external comms, content. Tier 2: a significant update. Targeted enablement, customer communication, internal briefing. Tier 3: a minor release or fix. Internal notification only. No external GTM motion.
Simple on paper. Transformative in practice. Product teams suddenly knew what to expect from PMM at each tier. PMM knew where to focus. Releases stopped disappearing into silence.
What followed.
The PMM portal came next: a centralised hub for the sales toolkit. Battlecards, one-pagers, ICP sheets, demo guidance, competitive intel. Before it existed, assets were scattered. BDRs weren't using what little existed because they couldn't find it.
The virtual credit cards GTM ran alongside it. New product, new vertical, new ICP to define entirely from scratch. The travel sector had its own language, its own buyer type, and its own pain points. Travel finance teams buying virtual cards for B2B expense management were not the same buyer as the payments compliance professional we usually spoke to. Building that ICP from zero, partnering with the growth marketer to make sure the messaging reached the market through SEO, landing pages, and content rather than sitting in a Google Doc, was one of the more stretching things I did in that period.
Speed over accuracy was the operating principle. Good enough and shipped beats perfect and delayed at that stage of growth.
The moment I remember.
When I presented to the company what PMM should look like for them specifically, something shifted.
Not a polished slide deck. A practical explanation: here's how product releases get communicated to customers. Here's what a Tier 1 launch looks like. Here's how a bug fix goes out without going unnoticed. Here's how the sales team gets what they need when they need it.
The product team's reaction stayed with me. Taking ownership of the release communication process meant a genuine workload came off their plate. The educational part landed across the board. The speed with which collaterals were produced and consensus was reached on the travel GTM reinforced that PMM, done well, makes everyone else's job easier.
That's the case for PMM that most PMMs never make explicitly enough.
What I'd do differently from day one.
Never go unidirectional.
The instinct in a founding PMM role is to arrive and immediately produce. A framework. A template. An asset. Proof that you're adding value. It's an understandable instinct and it's almost always the wrong move.
Before you build anything, you need to know the people. Not just their names and titles. Their perceived gaps. Their expectations of PMM. Their frustrations. Who calls the shots. Who is genuinely bought into the idea of PMM and who is quietly waiting for a domain expert or vertical specialist. What the business actually needs: structure and process, or execution of an existing strategy.
The framework I'd apply now before starting any founding PMM role: flesh out your org's ICP.
You spend weeks defining the ICP for your product: who the buyer is, what their pain is, what the buying criteria are, what signals to look for. Apply the same rigour to your own organisation before you produce a single asset.
Who is the decision maker? Who are the key influencers in the room? Who is bought in and who needs convincing? What does this business actually need from PMM right now, at this stage of growth, with this team? If you can't answer those questions clearly by the end of week two, you're building for an audience you don't fully understand. And that's exactly what we tell our sales teams not to do.
One more thing I'd do differently: build in a feedback loop from the start. A monthly or bi-weekly check-in with one or two key stakeholders. Not a formal review. A conversation: how is PMM being perceived? What's landing, what isn't? What do you wish I was doing more of? I didn't do this proactively. I should have. In a founding role where you're establishing the function's credibility from zero, knowing how you're being perceived in real time isn't a nice-to-have. It's infrastructure.
The founding PMM toolkit
The Org ICP - before building anything, map your internal stakeholders the way you'd map an external ICP. Decision makers, influencers, bought-in advocates, sceptics, buying criteria. Know the org before you serve it.
The alignment audit - a structured set of questions for the first 30 days. What does the business need from PMM? Who calls the shots? What does success look like in 90 days? How will you know if it's working?
The perception loop - a bi-weekly or monthly check-in with one or two key stakeholders. Structured questions, documented answers, tracked over time. The feedback you don't proactively ask for is the feedback that blindsides you.
Next issue: the cross-functional PMM. When sales and product are telling the market completely different stories, and what PMM actually does about it.
Hit reply if this resonates. I read every one.
Sneha
PMM Ungated is a newsletter about real product marketing. One story per issue. No theory. No gate.
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