As we enter the AI era, early-stage companies enjoy a significant advantage when building their marketing teams. There’s no legacy martech stack to untangle, no complex integrations powering cross-functional workflows to break, and few marketing specialists whose roles might soon be automated.

But this advantage comes with a challenge: How do you design a marketing organization when yesterday’s playbook no longer applies? 

That tension inspired the presentation we’re sharing today: The Founder’s Guide to Building an AI-Native Marketing Team. Many of the questions I receive from early-stage founders circle this very topic. Some ask which AI tools to prioritize. Others want to discuss how AI fits into outbound prospecting or other tactical functions. These are all valuable conversations, but to truly unlock AI’s potential, founders need to approach org design from first principles.

This guide walks founders step-by-step through the process. It outlines which roles to hire, in what order, and which categories of AI tools to incorporate. One decision I made—perhaps controversially—was to represent AI tools in the org chart as if they were team members. Each reports to a human director, because these tools increasingly replicate the work once done by junior or mid-level marketers. This placement isn’t just cosmetic; it reinforces a mindset shift. If AI tools are doing the work of people, they should be evaluated, and even managed, like people too.

Of course, the hiring sequence I propose isn’t one-size-fits-all. In fact, some leaders who previewed the deck disagreed with my suggestion to delay hiring a product marketing lead. They argued that AI-accelerated feature rollouts will create earlier demand for that role. I’ve included caveats to account for those situations.

While this presentation answers many foundational questions, it also surfaces a more existential one: If AI replaces many of the roles traditionally held by early-career marketers, how will we develop the next generation of marketing leaders? That question—far more than which tools to choose or when to fill a specific role—is what keeps me up at night. I don’t yet have a clear answer. (And, for what it’s worth, ChatGPT’s answer —”replace the ladder with a lattice” — wasn’t all that practical either.)

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