The Problem: Founders between €4M and €10M ARR often try to hire a "Unicorn" Head of Marketing—a generalist expected to handle strategy, copy, design, ads, and PR simultaneously. This leads to burnout and mediocre execution.
The Solution: Stop looking for one person to do everything. Instead, deploy the "3-Person Revenue Engine," a specialized pod consisting of an Architect (Strategy), a Journalist (Content), and a Promoter (Distribution).
The Outcome: This structure decouples "making" from "selling," creating a scalable system where strategy, production, and distribution function as a unified operating system, clearing the path to €10M ARR.
Every week, I see the same job ad on LinkedIn. It is usually from a Founder or CEO of a B2B company sitting between €4M and €10M ARR.
The title reads "Head of Marketing." But when you scroll down to the requirements, you see a wish list that would require an entire agency to fulfill. They want someone who can:
You are looking for a mythical creature. If you find this person, they will burn out in six months. If you don't find them, you will likely hire someone mediocre at all of the above, rather than excellent at the few things that actually drive revenue.
The problem isn't that you lack talent. It is that you are trying to solve a structural problem with a "Unicorn" hire (which you shouldn't). At €4M+ ARR, the "Jack of all trades" model stops being an asset and becomes your biggest bottleneck.
The "generalist" model fails at €4M+ ARR because the increasing complexity of product and market demands specialization. When one person owns both Creation (writing, design) and Distribution (ads, funnels), distribution usually suffers. This results in a "Black Box" department that produces activity without revenue outcomes.
When you were at €1M ARR, a generalist was perfect. You needed someone to just "get things done." But now, you need to decouple the functions.
The CEO sees activity (blog posts nobody reads, podcasts with 12 downloads), but no outcome. To fix this, you don't need a 10-person department. You need three specific competencies functioning as a single unit.
The "3-person revenue engine" is a specialized marketing pod structure designed for scale-ups. It replaces the generalist model with three distinct functional roles: The Architect (Strategy & Ops), The Journalist (Content & Messaging), and The Promoter (Distribution & Demand). This ensures that strategy, production, and distribution receive dedicated focus.
The most efficient marketing teams I work with operate as a "Pod." These roles are not defined by seniority, but by function.
The Architect connects marketing activity to revenue. They don't worry about "likes"; they worry about how fast deals move. They ensure that Sales and Marketing are speaking the same language and that the funnel mechanics actually convert strangers into leads.
The biggest lie in B2B is "we have nothing to say." Your team has deep expertise, but it is trapped in their heads. The Journalist’s job is extraction. They interview internal experts and turn those insights into assets (like LinkedIn posts, whitepapers, and sales collateral) ensuring the message speaks to the customer's pain.
You'll find a template to create content in 30 minutes with your CEO in this article: 30-Minute Routine (Extraction Protocol).
The best content in the world is useless if nobody sees it. The Promoter wakes up every day thinking about distribution. They take the assets the Journalist created and push them into the market via paid channels, newsletters, and communities.
This structure breaks the €10M revenue wall by creating specialization without bloat. It separates "Making" (The Journalist) from "Selling" (The Promoter), ensuring neither quality nor reach is sacrificed. It also establishes clear accountability: if content is bad, it’s on the Journalist; if no one sees it, it’s on the Promoter.
Furthermore, this model is scalable.
The core structure remains the same up to €15M ARR or more, allowing you to scale without restructuring.
A marketing Operating System (OS) is the infrastructure of SOPs, templates, and frameworks that supports the team. Even a talented 3-person pod will fail without it. The OS includes positioning frameworks for the Architect, extraction templates for the Journalist, and distribution checklists for the Promoter.
At Nima Labs, we don't just advise you to hire this structure; we install EnablementOS to make it work, and to build a predictable pipeline in 90 days. We train the Architect to think like a CMO and provide the infrastructure to build a machine that runs itself.
The ideal structure is a specialized "Pod" of three roles: an Architect (Strategy), a Journalist (Content Creation), and a Promoter (Distribution). This avoids the "generalist" trap and ensures professional execution across all revenue functions.
Hiring a generalist at the scale-up stage (€4M+) leads to bottlenecks. No single person can master strategy, copy, design, and technical ad management simultaneously. Generalists often focus on "busy work" rather than revenue outcomes.
Scale by keeping the core "3-Person Engine" and adding junior specialists below them. For example, add a video editor under the Journalist or a PPC specialist under the Promoter, rather than hiring more general marketing managers.
If you are stuck at €5M or €8M ARR, look at your org chart. Do you have a clear division of labor between Strategy, Creation, and Distribution?
You probably don't need to fire everyone and start over. You likely have the right people, but they are in the wrong seats, focused on the wrong metrics.
