Strong opinion, strongly held: If you're a pre-product market fit startup hiring product people, you're doing it wrong.

Product people have a time and place. Just not before PMF.

Product people = don’t code or design or sell

So basically pre-pmf, only hire people who add material value to the company. 

🫡

Good thing post-pmf companies don’t have to follow this rule.

“What is it that you say you do here, exactly”

Yea this changes my view, I agree with OP then. My initial assumption was product people: devs who focuses on the product and shipping the product with only-essential features rather than focusing on code quality and perfection.

Maybe an exception would be a founder who is super strong technically and rich enough to self fund — bringing in a product person who is a salesy product person. But that is really a cofounder without title and equity, which is kind of dumb, and exception that proves rule.