The Founder’s Guide to Product Marketing: From First Hire to Scale

As a founder, you know that building a great product is only half the battle. The other half is ensuring the right audience understands its value, adopts it, and pays for it. This is where Product Marketing (PMM) steps in. Yet, for many early and growth-stage startups, PMM remains a gray area. Founders often find themselves asking: When is the right time to hire our first PMM? What exactly should they own? And how do we measure their impact? If brought in too early without a clear mandate, a PMM can end up as a glorified copywriter. If brought in too late, you risk sluggish adoption, confusing messaging, and a leaky sales funnel.

​In this targeted workshop, we will decode the role of Product Marketing specifically for early and growth-stage founders. We’ll cut through the buzzwords and break down exactly how a strong PMM function bridges the gap between your product, sales, and customer success teams.

• ​Defining PMM by Stage: Unpacking how the PMM role shifts from early-stage (finding product-market fit, foundational positioning) to growth-stage (scaling go-to-market motions, enablement, and competitive intelligence).

• ​The Full-Funnel Impact: A deep dive into how Product Marketing influences metrics across the entire customer lifecycle: from awareness and acquisition to activation, retention, and advocacy.

• ​The 30-60-90 Day Playbook: A realistic, actionable roadmap for your first PMM hire or consultant. You will learn exactly what they should achieve in their first three months to ensure rapid alignment and measurable ROI.

• ​Hiring vs. Consulting: A strategic framework to help you decide how to resource your PMM needs based on your current runway, product complexity, and growth targets.

​Meet Your Speaker: Saranya Ramamurthy

​Currently a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Whatfix, Saranya leads GTM strategies for the US Public Sector and Global Insurance verticals. Her journey to this role is a roadmap of SaaS excellence. She served as the first-ever Regional Marketing hire for Zoho in Europe, where she architected the expansion strategy for the UK and EU markets.

​Saranya’s leadership continued at Freshworks and later as the Director of Product Marketing and Sales Enablement at inFeedo, where she managed a cross-functional team and successfully launched 0-1 products like AI Assist. Beyond her corporate achievements, Saranya is a Top 1% Super Mentor on ADList, dedicated to shaping the next generation of marketing talent.

​Who Should Attend:

​Founders, Co-founders, and early functional leaders at seed to Series B startups who are looking to formalize their Go-To-Market strategy, accelerate product adoption, and build a scalable marketing engine.

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Host or Publisher Women in Product Marketing