Ask HN: How do I find a marketing person for my startup?

You could also look at some of the companies like HubSpot that basically train you to do marketing and provide tools to measure effectiveness.

Good luck!

But as a marketing guy, I have to point out that the big mistake many people make in marketing their products is to go too big, too early -- if you have something great, being one genuine person instead of a bigger, less genuine company is going to get you a higher return on investment.

A few ideas, though:

* Pick someone who cares about your startup and offers suggestions;

* Make sure this person can relate to your users (but not too well to sell to them -- you want an honest lawyer, not an impartial juror);

* Figure out where you could be getting customers, but aren't (if bouldr.net is the product, you'll want endorsements from bloggers who love climbing -- few people will know to search Google for what your app does);

* Start small, start freelance. Since marketing and hiring are both so error-prone, your top priority should be to make your mistakes cheaply.

mail me at hajrice@gmail.com if you're interested...

Marketing people will purport to find out what kind of product the market wants, but will overlook actually getting people to want to buy said product... sales people will get letters of intent, or will sell the product before you make it (which is the way it should be apparently).

hope that helps

If I were in your position, my first tactic would be to search within my existing user community for people with the skills I need. Put a message out through your forums, Facebook page, and twitter account (which I note is small - consider tweeting less about your tech, and more about the interests of your market, then follow people w/ appropriate interests on http://wefollow.com)...

Broadcast something like: "Want to be more involved in helping Bouldr grow?" and link people to short survey you'll create that can identify two types of people: potential customer evangelists, that simply need more support from your company, and potential marketers, who would be most effective as part of your team.

The criteria you're looking for for both are:

  * active users of your app
  * passion for rock climbing
  * good communication skills

Customer Evangelists: large network, and either mobility across multiple geographic concentrations of your target market, or high amount of activity within a single large geographic concentration of your target market

Marketer: knowledge of incentives / motivating people to contribute effort / content, SEO skills, ability to create interesting content for inbound marketing.

Failing to find these people within your existing userbase, I'd identify the marketing people at services targeting a similar demographic, and ask them if they could recommend people.

Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like further explanation / detail on any of the above.

Good luck!