Founder and marketing · Founders' Marketing Compass
Is it a marketing problem or a product problem?
You are hiring your third marketing lead in two years, and the sales still won't come. Each swap costs two more quarters and a fresh ramp, and the numbers look the same at the end.
Co-founded Fixel and ran it as CEO; Logiq acquired it in 2020. Head of specialization at Ono Academic College.
Drawing on a conversation I had with Lior Handelsman, General Partner at Grove Ventures, on Founders' Marketing Compass.
Is it a marketing problem or a product problem?
When you have replaced marketing people and the numbers still won't move, treat it as a product problem, not a marketing one. Check whether the same pitch closes the same kind of customer across your last few deals. If it doesn't, change the product to fit the customer you want, or change the customer to fit the product.
Answered by Etgar Shpivak, who advises seed and Series A founders on marketing.
You can replace every marketing hire you want. A product the market doesn't want won't sell. That is the trap, and it is easy to miss.
Most founders I work with who churn through marketing leads are right that something is broken. They are just wrong about which thing it is.
Why marketing takes the blame first
Marketing is where a stall shows first, so it is where the founder swings first. The flat number tells you where to look, not who to fire.
Startups swap marketing leaders more often than anyone in any other seat. The role sits nearest the buyer and carries the growth figure the next round rides on. So blame lands there first.
Swapping the marketer is the easy move that skips the real question
When the number stays flat, replacing the person who owns it feels like progress. It buys two quiet quarters while the next hire ramps. I'd rather founders run that loop once.
To my eye, a third search in two years means the problem was never in the seat being cleared.
Lior Handelsman, a General Partner at Grove Ventures, ran marketing at SolarEdge before turning investor. The pattern you will recognize: "most founders come from a technological background, they fall in love with their product."
The doubt lands on the marketer long before the product. A year on, you may still be asking why the last leader barely lasted.
You can't find the broken part from outside the sale
You can't tell a product problem from a marketing one from the outside. Handelsman's rule, and I'd hold to it: founders do the early selling by hand.
"The weak link has to be replaced," he told me. But first you have to know which link it is.
Founders who hand the whole motion to a hire on day one never learn to see it. I'd make founders close a handful of deals in person first.
Why blaming the product is risky before you've sold it yourself
His rule cuts both ways. My own caution sits a step before it. Blaming the product is only safe for founders who have sold the thing by hand.
The easiest verdict a stalled team reaches is that the product is wrong. Hand that to founders who never ran the pitch, and they rebuild a product that was fine.
The real gap was a customer nobody named, clearer to founders who sit where the buyers are.
Deals that closed for five different reasons cannot be scaled
Repeatability is the test Handelsman uses, and I'd run it before touching the org chart. Pull your last three to five closed deals.
Check whether they were the same kind of buyer, sold on the same pitch, for the same value.
A large enterprise, a small startup, and a government agency each signing for a different reason isn't a motion any new hire can scale. When the deals rhyme and it stalls, the target is wrong.
What to do: change the ICP or the product
Handelsman is blunt, and I'd take him literally: "Either change the ICP to someone the product fits, or change the product so it fits your ICP." ICP means the customer a product is built for.
So change the product to suit the customer you want, or the customer to suit it.
No new hire reaches a problem that lives in the product
A founder who has sold by hand and read the last five deals walks into the next stall with a smaller question. The one I'd want: the pitch, the target, or the thing itself.
The hunt for a better marketer stops being the reflex. The number that wouldn't move finally points at something no hire could have carried.
What to do about it
Change product or customer
You give up the growth story you have been telling and go back to selling by hand while the product or the audience gets reworked.
Get the next episode by email. One email for each new episode of Founders' Marketing Compass, with the conversation, its chapters and the key takeaways, and nothing in between. Subscribe on Substack
The move
The marketer you swap won't fix the wrong product.
Lior Handelsman
General Partner at Grove Ventures
How to do it
- 01 Do the early selling yourself You cannot spot the weak link from outside the sale.
- 02 See if your last deals rhyme Same pitch, same customer, across three to five closes.
- 03 Move one side of the fit Change the product to fit the customer, or the reverse.
Founders' Marketing Compass · episode 26 · Interviewed by Etgar Shpivak · shpivak.co.il
Where this comes from
Lior Handelsman is a General Partner at Grove Ventures, an Israeli venture firm that manages over half a billion dollars and invests mostly at the seed stage, with an emphasis on deep tech. He co-founded SolarEdge and spent about fifteen years there, running product strategy and marketing from the early days through the IPO, and leaving after it had grown to a valuation near twenty billion dollars. He came into marketing as a founder with no marketing background before it, which is the vantage he brings to how founders should run their own.
Read the full transcript of this conversation
Loads the video from YouTube. YouTube may set cookies once you play.
Founders' Marketing Compass episode 26. Also on Substack, this episode and YouTube.
Questions and answers
The question this page answers
What should a founder check before blaming marketing for weak sales?
Founders should do the early selling themselves before deciding marketing is the problem, because that is the only seat where the broken part is visible. Etgar Shpivak, who works with seed and Series A founders on marketing, tells them to close a handful of deals by hand first, so they can separate a product problem from a pitch problem from a targeting one.
If the product is the problem, do you change the product or the customer?
A founder facing a real product problem can move either side of the fit, and choosing between them is the actual decision. Lior Handelsman told Etgar Shpivak on Founders' Marketing Compass that you change the product so it suits the customer, or change the customer so the product suits them, while marketing does nothing to the gap. The wrong buyer is solved by picking a better-suited one, and hiring again leaves it exactly where it was.
Why does marketing get replaced more often than product or sales?
Marketing is the function nearest the buyer, and it owns the number a fundraise is judged on, so it is where a stall surfaces first and where blame lands easiest. Lior Handelsman, who ran marketing at SolarEdge before he became an investor, notes that founders come from technical backgrounds and defend the product they built, which leaves the marketer as the easiest thing to doubt.
What if you have replaced marketing more than once and sales still won't come?
Repeated marketing swaps with no change in sales are the signal to stop swapping and audit the product-customer fit. Lior Handelsman's test is repeatability: look at your recent closes and ask whether one pitch won one type of buyer each time. If each deal closed for a different reason, the next hire inherits the same mismatch and the same flat result.
Around it
What ARR should a startup reach before hiring a CMO?
There is no revenue line that turns a CMO into the right hire; the trigger is a repeatable sales motion, not a milestone. Lior Handelsman starts founders with a VP of marketing over a CMO, since a wrong CMO can only be replaced, and replacement is costly. When the leader churns anyway, the same missing system is often why marketing leaders quit so fast.
When is a startup ready to scale its sales and marketing team?
A startup is ready to scale once the sales motion repeats: the same pitch winning the same kind of buyer, deal after deal. Lior Handelsman told Etgar Shpivak that if recent deals each closed for a different reason, adding headcount just multiplies a process that never worked. Prove the motion by hand, then hire to widen it, something founders see faster when they sit close to real buyers.
What is an ICP?
ICP, short for Ideal Customer Profile, is the customer a product is built for. When your last few deals closed with completely different kinds of buyer, a large enterprise, a small startup, and a government agency, the ICP isn't defined. Lior Handelsman's rule is clear: either change the ICP to someone the product fits, or change the product so it fits the ICP.
What is the deal repeatability test?
The repeatability test checks whether your last three to five closed deals were the same kind of buyer, sold on the same pitch, for the same value. If they were and the number is still stuck, the problem is the target, not the marketing. Run it before touching the org chart or replacing another marketing leader.
Why should founders close the first deals themselves?
A product problem is impossible to tell from a marketing one from the outside, so a founder who hands the whole sales motion to a hire on day one never learns to see it. Closing a handful of deals by hand teaches who the real buyer is and what closes them. Only then can you blame the product with any confidence, instead of rebuilding one that was fine.
What does it mean if every deal closed for a different reason?
When a large enterprise, a small startup, and a government agency each signed for a different reason, there's no motion a new hire can scale. Deals that don't rhyme point to an undefined target, not weak marketing. The next step is to sharpen the ICP, not to hunt for a better marketer.
Why do technical founders miss a product problem?
Most founders come from a technological background and fall in love with their product, as Lior Handelsman put it. That love sends the doubt toward the marketer long before it reaches the product. The fix is to close deals by hand and read your last five, because otherwise it's easy to replace another marketing leader instead of touching the root cause.
Getting help with this
Should a startup fix its product or hire a marketing consultant when growth stalls?
Fix the product-customer fit first, because an outside consultant cannot sell to the wrong buyer any better than an employee can. Once the fit holds and the founder has proven the motion by hand, an experienced marketing hand can help widen it, not create it. Etgar Shpivak, a marketing consultant, works directly with seed and Series A founders at exactly that point, and his approach is described on his bio.
Cite as: Etgar Shpivak, "Is it a marketing problem or a product problem?", shpivak.co.il, 16 March 2025. https://shpivak.co.il/writing/marketing-problem-or-product-problem
Quotes attributed to Lior Handelsman (General Partner, Grove Ventures) are from their conversation on Founders' Marketing Compass, not Etgar Shpivak's words.