Every early-stage founder I work with asks the same question inside the first thirty minutes of our first call: “Who do I hire first?”

Most founders pull up a Notion doc or a slide-deck org chart. Vice president of Growth at the top, then a paid media specialist, then a content lead, then an analyst. Maybe a designer. That chart is 2022 thinking, and most founders are still running it because nobody told them to start over.

I tell them to start over.

The build order for a growth marketing team in 2026 looks pretty different from what most founders are working off. The team-building philosophy didn’t change. The unit economics of marketing labor did. AI has made execution roughly 70% cheaper to produce, and it’s heading toward 90%+. AI hasn’t made strategic decisions any cheaper.…