What to know before you make your first growth hire for a subscription app

You’ve been scaling up — dare I say, hustling — as a founder and early team. You’ve worked hard to build and improve your subscription app, and it’s finally starting to pay off. That initial traction is here, and for the first time, you’ve got the option to hire someone focused on growth. 

Exciting? Definitely. But also (if we’re being honest) a little scary.

I’ve had this conversation with a lot of founders, reviewed their setup, and helped them figure out not just if they’re ready to hire, but who they actually need. And the truth is, much of the advice I give ends up being the same. So it felt like time to bring it all together in one place — enter this blog.

When should you make a growth hire?

I like to start by zooming out: before we get into hard skills, soft skills, or interview questions, you need to make sure you’re truly ready to hire and that you’re setting the role up for success from day one.

Growth roles are often hired too early. The most important consideration is whether you have product-market fit (PMF) — you should have signals that your app is right for your audience, like solid initial retention and strong word of mouth.

This matters for a few reasons:

1. You can’t know which channels to focus on, or how you’ll grow, until you have product-market fit. Who you need for growth may change as you figure this out. I’ve often seen startups discover their initial audience wasn’t their true PMF audience and need to pivot.
2. It’s hard to grow with a leaky funnel. Product-market fit takes time to find, even with an app where product improvements happen faster than a physical product. After six months, you might think your Head of Growth has underperformed — when really, they’ve been fixing core product issues.
3. Not all growth hires have experience in finding product-market fit. You might be better off bringing on a product hire or go-to-market specialist first.

Another thing not talked about enough is your data infrastructure before hiring for growth. Even if I’m a fit to support a brand, one of the top reasons I turn them down is because their data isn’t ready. You don’t need a fancy dataset, but having tools in place to measure key parts of your customer journey and attribution is essential. Otherwise, your growth hire will spend their first weeks building that foundation, which delays impact.

The same goes for customer research. Your growth hire needs to immerse themselves in your users. If you don’t already have structured insights — like surveys, interviews, or feedback tagging — it’s harder for them to connect data to real human behavior. They have to know who you’re selling to!

Deciding the role setup for your growth hire

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of hard and soft skills in growth roles, you need to define what kind of role you need. There are typically three elements you need to think about:

• Fractional vs. full-time 
• Generalist vs. specialist 
• Experienced vs. junior

1. Fractional vs. full-time 

It can be tough to know which growth levers will work before you have a growth hire. If you’re still in a very early stage or unsure, I strongly believe in starting with a fractional growth role. They can move you in the right direction — especially if you have other team members who can support them (like a product manager, developer, designer, CRM specialist, etc.).

At some point, fractional support can hold you back. This usually happens when you have too many freelancers and things get fragmented, or when you need someone who’s around every day. You can’t expect timely replies if they’re only working a day or two a week.

I like to start with a fractional hire to test the waters and get initial traction, then bring on a full-time hire. Sometimes you can convince the fractional hire to go full-time, but don’t always assume that will happen.

2. Generalist vs. specialist 

For most organizations, a generalist makes more sense for the first hire. Someone with broad knowledge across growth, from acquisition to monetization, who has deeper expertise in your main growth levers. For example, if you’re struggling to activate new users, you want someone with experience fixing that.

The challenge with specialists early on is that they tend to focus on their niche. But growth is all connected — what looks like an acquisition problem can also require optimization, onboarding, and communication (email, push notifications). So, unless you already have others with expertise in those areas (like a product manager), I’d recommend starting broader and hiring specialists later as you grow.

3. Experienced vs. junior

Sometimes this comes down to experience vs. mindset, rather than just experienced vs. junior. Mindset isn’t optional. I’ve seen founders get excited about a very experienced hire who didn’t quite fit the approach or team culture, and every time, that hire didn’t work out. (This is why we’ll go over key soft skills — because mindset matters.)

When it comes to experience, it depends on who else in your organization can guide and mentor them. One of my best team members when I was Head of Growth had zero relevant experience and was just 19 when she started. Alexia Contoguris is now a successful Growth Manager, but she had strong mentorship throughout.

Don’t think of a junior hire just as a ‘budget cut.’ What can appear cheap can hurt you in the long run. Joseph Fitzgibbon, founder of Growth & Company, has helped hundreds of companies hire for growth roles and has seen this firsthand:

“I often see founders hiring in junior people who are cheap, but they won’t learn on the job if no one is able to teach them. So the founder(s)’s experience of growth is a key dimension in deciding between experienced and junior. If they don’t know what they’re doing, then they need to buy in help either way — either a course, a fractional, or an experienced Head of Growth.”

So if you have a clear strategy, direct experience yourself, and just need help executing, hiring someone junior can work — but be sure to provide guidance, training, and external support to help them grow.

What does the job role look like?

Growth roles vary a lot. I once analyzed dozens of job descriptions for ‘Head of Growth’ roles, and each one was completely different, with only a few overlapping skills. It felt like an impossible Venn diagram.

Before clicking ‘post ad’, you need to identify what skills you want the hire to have, and how they’ll be using them. Let’s break down the skills that tend to be most relevant, and how I review them with candidates. (Resist the temptation to skip the section on soft skills — I see you!)

Soft skills

What surprised me in those job descriptions was how 80% of the focus was on hard skills — channel knowledge, tooling experience etc. I’m not saying relevant experience isn’t valuable. But don’t underestimate the power of soft skills. The knowledge your growth hire needs will change constantly, and with the pace of the industry, even an expert will need to keep learning.

Joseph also noticed another ‘skill’ that founders get caught up: 

“A big mistake that founders make is to focus on where a candidate has been before and put too much emphasis on their experience vs. ability. Industry knowledge is generally overrated — it’s easy to learn, expires quickly, and is not as relevant as it looks on paper.

Hiring someone who has been at Airbnb is actually not a great hire for a small travel company as the sizes of business, reality of the role etc. is massively different, even if it’s in the same industry.”

Even if you don’t include soft skills explicitly in your job posting, have a clear list of the skills you want to review during interviews. This will vary depending on the role and team they join, but here are some general ones I always check for.

1. Ability to balance strategic thinking and tactical execution

You might think this is a hard skill — knowing frameworks or tactics. But in my experience, it’s actually a soft skill: the ability to make good judgment calls, balance focus, and resist chasing every shiny new thing.

In a large organization, a growth role is likely to be more managerial and strategic, but that probably isn’t your first growth hire. In a startup, especially if the founder doesn’t have growth experience, you’ll want someone who can mix strategic thinking with hands-on execution.

This combination is hard to find. It’s easy to be wowed by shiny tactics like testing a new channel or exploiting a new regulation change. But that can lead to short-term growth-chasing instead of building scalable approaches. You need someone who can do both.

How I test for this

The way I test for this is by giving candidates an assignment with a wide range of data and insights (including customer insights) across different areas. I ask them to share their approach and identify where they see the biggest opportunity. I also ask what other data they’d want to see to get a clearer picture of where to focus.

I usually do this live on a call, about an hour long, to keep it fair and make sure they’re not getting outside help. It also mirrors the fast-paced environment of a growth role. For example, if the role focuses on acquisition and onboarding, I might share funnel stats from ads to app store to onboarding to trial sign-ups.

This approach reveals a lot. Often, candidates try to optimize every step, which isn’t realistic in an hour and shows a tactical mindset. Others talk only in broad strategic terms without suggesting concrete experiments or next steps.

What you want is someone who reviews the data and customer insights, narrows down where to focus, and can zoom in on one key area. They should also think beyond the obvious; wanting to understand the bigger picture before choosing where to prioritize. For example, if trial sign-ups are low, they might want to explore which plans people choose, how sign-up rates compare across channels, or how your pricing stacks up against competitors.

Whether you do this through an assignment or targeted questions, the key is finding that balance. You can also learn a lot from their past roles, how their team was set up and what responsibilities they had. You want someone who knows how to strategically pick focus areas but can also roll up their sleeves and execute.

2. Ability to take feedback

Despite the stereotypes about people in growth, there’s no room for ego or stubbornness in growth. Especially in a role where the ‘best practices’ are constantly challenged and you need tons of insights to make smart decisions. Growth comes from the whole organization, so your first hire will be working with lots of different people, and they need to be open to feedback and ideas from all of them.

If you do a live assignment like the one above, it’s a perfect way to test this. I usually give live feedback at the end of the call and watch their reaction closely. Consider facial expressions and how they respond. Is it a simple “Thanks”, or do they ask questions to understand better? Explanation can be helpful, but too many justifications of “Well, I did that because…” can imply defensiveness. My favorite response? Questions, because that shows another key trait…

3. Curiosity

The old saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’ definitely doesn’t apply in growth — unless you add the second part, ‘but satisfaction brought it back’. Growth people need to be curious: about what the data is telling them, what customers are saying, what the team thinks, and what they can learn next.

The sure sign of a curious growth hire? They ask questions in every interview. They want to learn about you as much as you want to learn about them. They ask things they couldn’t find answers to online, they make suggestions, and seem eager to absorb new information.

4. Raw intelligence

This was one that Joseph suggested, and it felt very true. I’m not talking about academic intelligence, IQ level, or how many degrees people have, but about how people approach things — from the questions they ask, to the way they tackle problems. 

Thinking back to my junior at Heights, she was quick to understand everything and keen to learn more. Many of the best growth people I worked with were clever in a way that drove them to learn, be curious, and think of unusual paths to success. 

Hard skills

As mentioned, these skills really vary depending on the experience level of your hire. The below is most for those with some experience. For juniors, you’ll want to look at the soft skill that relates to each hard skill — for example, for data analytics, someone who genuinely loves numbers and analysis (they get excited about the idea of a pivot table!).

1. Experience creating and improving the growth strategy

This one’s obvious, but assuming you want someone more experienced, this is a must-have. It’s great if they’ve done it in a subscription app before, but I wouldn’t say it’s essential. There’s a learning curve moving into apps, but I’d rather pick someone with the right mindset and experience over a specific subscription app background.

2. Data analytics

Obviously, they need to know how to use RevenueCat. (Just kidding, it’s very intuitive, they’ll figure it out in no time!) Roles tend to focus on experience with [insert analytics tool], but I think it’s more the experience of analyzing data and understanding the full customer journey that’s important. Once someone has worked with one or two analytics tools, learning new ones is usually straightforward. Focus on data analysis experience, and consider your tool stack a nice-to-have.

3. Experience running experiments

Experimentation is a huge part of turning subscriptions into success. You don’t want a growth hire who just throws stuff at the wall, hoping something sticks. Things won’t keep sticking, trust me on that. They need to see the value in experiments, actively pursue them, and learn from them. Ask them how they structured experiments in the past and what that process looked like.

4. CRO and UX experience

Expertise here is super valuable. With apps, the app is the product, so CRO knowledge helps not just with optimizing purchase flows, but also activation, retention, and monetization. Understanding UX is another area I’d recommend including for most growth roles. Knowing (and placing value) on user experience is key to good app design and retention; this belief should already be ingrained when you hire them.

5. Specific area knowledge related to your growth opportunities

We touched on this early — even generalists usually have one–two areas they’re most passionate about or experienced in. This could be something like monetization, retention, or more specific areas like paywall optimization. It could also be channel-specific skills, like ASO or paid ads, which they’ll manage until you can hire an expert.

If there is a must-have area for you, or a mission-critical area you need to optimize for success, include this as a required hard skill.

A final word of warning: keep it specific

When I analyzed growth roles, I noticed many ads list 20–30 different skills that are ‘must-have’. It reminded me of my nephew at the Harry Potter gift store in Warner Bros. Studio. In a burst of excitement, he raced around, filling his little arms with everything from a Hedwig stuffed toy to a book of spells — because duh, every wizard needs that. 

Amused, I watched his mum explain his holiday budget to him. Though slightly deflated, he did some quick math and put a few things back. I’d like to say he was thrilled on the car ride home… but after six hours at the studio, he promptly passed out.

The point? As much as you want it all, you can’t have it all — and honestly, you don’t need it all. It won’t fit your budget, and some skills aren’t essential. Focus on the very specific skills that matter most, not a ‘must-have everything’ checklist. 

💡 Pro tip
One of my favorite first interview questions is: “What do you not enjoy working on?” followed by, “What areas do you have little experience in?” Everyone has these, and it’s a quick check to see if they’ll dislike or struggle with any fundamental parts of the role that are key to your success.

Setting your hire up for success

Rosie Hoggmascall (Growth lead at Fyxer.ai) and I once interviewed a group of growth leads about their careers. We wanted to understand why so many growth hires fail or leave within the first year. Our findings were eye-opening and inspired us to create a short course on the topic.

One of the biggest patterns was poor, or even nonexistent, onboarding. Hires were brought in without structured onboarding or clear guidance, while founders juggled a million other things. As a result, it often took much longer than necessary for them to understand the organization, and many didn’t even know what questions to ask.

The takeaway is take the time to build a clear, structured plan for their first 30, 60, and 90 days:

• Who should your hire meet with? 
• What insights do they need to review? 
• What deliverables do you expect?

The goal isn’t to limit their focus, but to ensure they truly understand the objectives they need to hit, and avoid spinning their wheels for months, hearing ‘we’ve tried that before’. 

Time to get hiring

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably worked out that you’re ready to start searching for your growth role. Congrats!

Growth is a broad field, and if you’re not careful, your job description can turn into an unrealistic wishlist. That creates two problems: attracting overconfident generalists who sound great on paper but aren’t the right fit, and/or losing focus on the few key skills that actually matter right now.

The best way to avoid this? Run your job spec by others. Share it with your team, ask a fellow founder, or even better, ask someone who specialises in hiring growth roles. 

Questions to ask:

• Who do you think we’re looking for based on this?
• What do you think isn’t important for us based on this job description?
• Given our growth model and team, is there anything we’ve missed?

And before you post that role, run through this quick readiness checklist:

✔️ You have product-market fit (or strong leading indicators)
✔️ You have the ability to measure key parts of your funnel and attribution
✔️ You’ve identified your current growth bottlenecks
✔️ You know which soft and hard skills are truly critical for this stage
✔️ You have the time and structure in place to properly onboard your hire

Keep a critical eye throughout the process and stay focused on what truly matters. If you do that, you’re much more likely to find someone who not only looks good on paper, but actually drives growth in your subscription app.