Startup founders with deep product backgrounds have a well-documented playbook for when to hire their first product leader or manager: wait until after they’ve hit product-market fit.

But this strategy seldom works for what I’ll call a “non-traditional Product Founder,” meaning a founder responsible for product at their company who is not only non-technical (i.e. they don’t code) but also doesn’t have significant experience as a product manager working alongside designers and engineers to create a technical product.

If you’re what I call a “non-traditional Product Founder” — meaning that you’re responsible for product at your company but don’t have deep product management experience — there’s a strong chance that you’ll want and need to buck conventional wisdom and hire your first product manager before you hit product-market fit.

I’ve written about this dynamic, and why I think your first product hire should usually be an experienced but relatively junior product manager, in another post “The product challenge for non-traditional founders.”

In this post, I dive a bit deeper into: 1) Why it’s tempting to hire a more senior product leader; 2) The unexpected and surprisingly bad things that tend to happen when you do.