The conversation happens more often than you'd think. A founder closes their Series A, gets pressure from the board to "build out the commercial team," and posts a job for a Marketing Manager. A few months later, they have someone who's great at scheduling social posts and absolutely lost when asked to own the go-to-market strategy.
Or the opposite: they bring in a VP of Marketing with a strong track record at large pharma. Six months later, the VP has produced an excellent 40-page brand strategy and hasn't shipped a single piece of content.
Both scenarios are expensive. Neither is the fault of the hire.
The three-level mismatch
Marketing roles in life science generally split into three levels, and each one does something fundamentally different:
| Level | What they actually do | What they need from you |
|---|---|---|
| Coordinator / Manager | Execute defined tasks — schedule posts, manage vendors, track metrics, keep the calendar moving | A strategy, a system, and someone to set priorities |
| Director / Senior Manager | Own a channel or function — build the content program, run demand gen, manage the website | A clear mandate and budget authority in their lane |
| VP / CMO | Set strategy, manage a team, represent marketing at the executive level | A team to manage and budget to allocate |
Early-stage life science companies usually need someone who can both set strategy and execute it — a combination that essentially doesn't exist at any one salary band. Coordinators can't set strategy. CMOs won't make content. The gap in the middle is where most first hires fall short.
"You need someone who can think at the VP level and work at the coordinator level. That person either doesn't exist or costs more than you want to pay full-time."
What early-stage companies actually need
At seed or Series A, the marketing priority isn't management — it's infrastructure. You need a content engine, a lead generation system, brand positioning that translates the science, and a process for turning conferences into pipeline. None of that requires a full-time employee.
What it requires is someone with enough seniority to make the right architectural decisions, and enough bandwidth to actually build things. That combination is why fractional engagements work well at this stage. You get strategic direction and hands-on execution without paying for a full-time executive or hiring two people to cover both ends.
The full-time hire makes sense once the infrastructure exists. Then a coordinator or director-level person can run what's been built. Hiring before the infrastructure is in place means the first hire spends most of their time figuring out what to build — and usually gets it wrong because they don't have enough organizational context yet.
A better sequencing
The companies that build commercial traction fastest tend to follow a similar pattern: outside expertise builds the foundation, then an internal hire takes ownership of the running system. It's faster than hiring first, less expensive, and the internal hire succeeds because they're inheriting something functional instead of starting from scratch.
The question isn't "when do we hire." It's "what needs to exist before we hire, and who's going to build it."
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