I have been the first Marketing VP at 3 dev-facing unicorns: Neo4j, Sourcegraph, and JFrog. I write about creating developer categories for startup founders.

Founders often ask me which marketing role they should hire first.

First: Hire no one

Before you get to product-market fit, the founders should do all the marketing. No one understands the problem or the product like you. And if you are not at product-market fit, no one will help you get there faster than you.

Second: Developer Advocate (maybe)

Once you reach product-market fit, you need developer advocacy. I prefer that term to developer relations, but opinions may vary. You need someone to talk directly to developers in their languages, represent you at meetups and conferences, and in videos and social media.

I say maybe because sometimes the CEO or CTO can perform this role. For a while anyway.

Third: Demand Generation Manager

You will need a DG manager to operate and measure your outbound and inbound communications, whether or not you are ready to generate leads. This is a specialized position, and you should find someone who already knows HubSpot, Marketo, or whatever technology you use.

Fourth: Community Manager

This person recruits and manages your community. This includes running IRL events and online events and managing online communities, including your slack channel. Simply dumping all your users into a slack or discord and expecting a community to emerge is hallucinatory. A mob is not a community anyone but anarchists and trolls, and anarchist trolls want to join, even if it's fun to watch.

Fifth: Head of Marketing (could be first)

Someone to understand the founder's vision, the market's needs, the team's capabilities, and articulate and execute a marketing plan. "Head of" is a great title that indicates responsibility, but for someone who may be too junior for VP or Director. If the founders just are not cut out for doing marketing, start here.