There's a question every PMM leader eventually faces: how do you structure a team that drives real business impact while keeping people engaged, growing, and accountable? I've experimented with three fundamentally different approaches across three companies, each one solving different problems and revealing what actually matters.
Model 1: Product-Aligned PMMs
My first team structure was built around product ownership. Each PMM was responsible for everything related to their product area: launches, enablement, demand generation, competitive analysis. At Twilio, one PMM owned Developer Experience, another owned SendGrid Marketing Campaigns, a third owned Enterprise Editions.
The upside was clear ownership. Each PMM could go deep on their domain and become the go-to expert. Deep product knowledge and clear accountability are powerful. The limitation: the team operated in silos with minimal cross-PMM collaboration, and the role started to resemble how product managers work, mini general managers with little shared context. When one PMM left, their institutional knowledge went with them. Because each person handled every function for their product, nobody developed deep expertise in any particular PMM discipline.
Model 2: Functionally-Aligned PMMs
At Twilio Segment, I structured the team functionally around a single product, Twilio Engage. One PMM owned messaging, positioning, website, and PR. Another owned webinars and events. A third handled enablement, competitive intelligence, and use cases.
Specialization produces real excellence in a discipline. The PMM who owned competitive became genuinely world-class at it. The tradeoff: accountability became diffuse. Since everyone supported the same product, it was harder to connect individual work to specific outcomes. People felt disconnected from the bigger picture, and performance conversations got muddier.
Model 3: The Hybrid
At Kustomer, I built on both models and arrived at a structure I'm proud of. Each PMM owns four things: a product area, a functional area of expertise, a strategic program, and a vertical.
I built this team from scratch with four people, assigning each dimension based on individual interest. In practice: one PMM owns Workflows as their product, Competitive as their functional area, Win/Loss as their strategic program, and messaging for a vertical they chose. Another owns Reporting and Omnichannel, leads Customer Marketing, drives our G2 initiative, and owns a second vertical. A third owns our AI product suite, leads Positioning and Messaging, runs our ABM program, and covers a third vertical.
Product ownership creates accountability and domain knowledge. Functional ownership builds specialized expertise that elevates the whole team. Strategic programs give each person a high-visibility initiative with clear business impact. Vertical ownership means messaging is tailored to specific industries rather than generic buyer personas.
Two honest constraints worth naming. First, this model has a ceiling around five people. Beyond that, the coordination overhead requires additional layers and the structure breaks down. Second, four dimensions of ownership means prioritization has to be explicit. When everything is urgent, a PMM with this breadth can spread thin fast. The manager's job is to make the priority order clear before that happens, not after.
Performance works best when evaluated against individual OKRs rather than compared across roles. Competitive intelligence and customer marketing aren't comparable functions, so each person is measured against what they set out to do in their specific combination of dimensions.
Why This Model Drives Retention
PMMs who do only one type of work, even if they're excellent at it, eventually plateau. The PMM who only writes battlecards starts to wonder what else is out there. The PMM who only runs launches feels like they're on a treadmill.
Multiple dimensions of ownership create natural variety while maintaining clear accountability. The growth trajectory inside this model is concrete: a PMM who starts owning competitive intelligence and one product area is, within a year, running a strategic program that's visible to the executive team and developing a point of view on a vertical market. They're building the kind of breadth that prepares them for a senior IC role or a team lead position, without needing a promotion to unlock that growth.
Build for Growth, Not Headcount
Build an org chart that creates the dimensions of growth you want each person to experience, not one that solves your immediate staffing needs.
When I built the Kustomer team from scratch, the instinct could have been to divide work by what needed to get done. Instead I divided it by what I wanted each person to become. The structure created the growth paths rather than waiting for headcount or promotion cycles to create them.