Hiring Your First VP

When the First VP Hire Is Right

The right time to hire your first VP is when a specific function — sales, engineering, product, marketing — has grown to a point where it exceeds what the founder can effectively manage alongside their other responsibilities. This is usually somewhere between 10 and 30 people in the function, when coordination failures are starting to appear and the founder is consistently the bottleneck to decisions the team should be making themselves.

The wrong time to hire your first VP is when you are hoping the hire will solve a problem you have not diagnosed. VPs cannot fix unclear strategy. They cannot fix a dysfunctional team that the founder created. They cannot fix a market that has not validated product-market fit. Bringing in VP-level leadership before the function has enough operational foundation to be managed at scale is a recipe for an expensive hire that leaves within 12 months.

Which VP to Hire First

The first VP hire should address the function that is most directly constraining the company's growth. If revenue is the constraint and the sales team is struggling without experienced sales leadership, the VP Sales is the right first hire. If engineering delivery is the constraint and the technical team is missing deadlines or lacking process, the VP Engineering is the right first hire. The mistake founders make is hiring the VP they are most comfortable with — often the one in the founder's own domain — rather than the one the business most needs.

The VP hire that generates the fastest business impact is almost always the one that addresses the function the founder is least equipped to lead. The engineering founder who is struggling to build out the commercial function generates more value from a VP Sales than from a VP Engineering. The commercial founder who is struggling to manage a growing engineering organisation generates more value from a VP Engineering than from a VP Sales.

Setting the First VP Up for Success

Most first VP hires fail because the founder did not transfer authority effectively. They hire a VP, then continue making the decisions the VP was hired to make — because it is faster, because they trust their own judgment, and because delegating authority feels uncomfortable. The VP who is hired but not empowered will leave within 12 months, and the founder will conclude the hire was wrong rather than recognising that the problem was their own inability to delegate.

The conversation that must happen before the VP joins: What decisions will this person own completely? What decisions will they make with founder input? What decisions will the founder retain? Making this explicit before the first day prevents the authority confusion that kills most first VP relationships in the first 90 days.

What Compensation to Expect

First VP hires at Series A and Series B companies typically receive base salaries of $180K–$280K depending on function and seniority, with equity of 0.3%–0.8% on a four-year vest with a one-year cliff. The equity component is often more important to the right candidate than the base — because a VP who is genuinely excited about the company's trajectory is making a bet on the equity outcome, not optimising for near-term cash compensation. Candidates who are primarily negotiating on base are often not the ones who will build your function as if they own it.