Founders we've placed for
A bad hire at Series A doesn't just cost a salary.
It costs the whole year.
$340K
Runway consumed
Salary, severance, recruiter fees, re-hiring costs
4 months
Lost velocity
Product decisions paused, roadmap delayed a full quarter
2 engineers
Downstream attrition
Left because they couldn't thrive under the wrong leader
The Harvard Business Review puts the average cost of a bad executive hire at $240,000. At a 30-person startup, it's not an HR statistic. It's an existential event. We've seen it. We've helped founders recover from it. And we've built a process specifically designed to prevent it.
You've heard the pitch.
It didn't sound like your company.
Traditional agencies are built to fill enterprise roles at companies with an HR department, a compensation band, and six weeks to decide. You have none of those things. Here's what the difference sounds like in practice.
"We have a deep bench of pre-vetted executive talent ready to deploy."
"We leverage our proprietary candidate database and AI-matching technology."
"Our process ensures cultural alignment through competency-based interviewing."
"We'll have a slate of candidates to you within ten business days."
"We've spent three weeks mapping every VP of Eng who scaled a team through a Series B in the last four years. Here are seven. These two are actually looking."
"We called Marcus directly. He said the timing is wrong — but in six months he's open. We'll stay on it."
"Before we brief anyone, we need to understand what happened with your last hire. Not to judge — to protect you from repeating it."
"You'll hear from us every Thursday. If there's nothing to report, we'll say that too — and tell you why."
Four steps.
One honest conversation at a time.
Every step has a story behind it. These are real placements — names used with permission.
01 — The Honest Brief
Before we open a search, we spend 90 minutes with you — not on job requirements, but on what went wrong last time. Every founder has a story. We need to hear it.
Priya Mehta
VP of Engineering → Stackform (Series B)
Priya had been passed over twice at larger companies for being "too direct." Stackform's CTO called it their best hire. The brief told us exactly who to look for.
02 — The Operator Map
We don't post a job description and wait. We identify every operator who has done this specific job at this specific stage — and we reach out personally.
Tobias Wren
Head of People → Brightpath (Series A)
Tobias wasn't looking. He was three months from his cliff at a fintech that had just been acquired. We called on a Wednesday. He started on a Monday six weeks later.
03 — The Culture Screen
We screen for the things your interview loop can't easily surface — how they talk about their last boss, whether they go home on time, what they protect.
Amara Diallo
COO → Plinth AI (Series A)
Three finalists. Two had better résumés. Amara was the only one who asked about the parental leave policy in the first call. She's been there 18 months. The other two have already moved on.
04 — The Honest Debrief
After every interview, we talk to you and the candidate. We tell you both the uncomfortable things. You deserve that. So do they.
Marcus Thiele
VP Sales → Crescent Bio (Series B)
We told the founder Marcus was overqualified and would be bored within a year. They hired him anyway — but adjusted the equity and the mandate. He's now their CRO.
Ready to start your search?
20 minutes. No pitch deck. Just your hiring problem.
The best operators
have something to go home to.
We believe sustainable companies are built by people who protect their boundaries. We screen for that. We ask founders about it. We won't place someone into a culture that will break them — no matter how good the comp is.
We screen for people who go home on time
Sustainable companies are built by people who protect their families. We ask every candidate how they define work-life balance — and we mean it.
We verify the policies before we brief
Parental leave, mental health days, flexible hours — we confirm these exist and are actually used before we send a single candidate your way.
We ask about the last boss
How a candidate talks about their previous manager tells us everything about how they'll lead your team. We listen for what they protect.
We tell you when it's not a fit
We've walked away from placements because the culture wasn't ready for the candidate. That's not lost revenue to us. It's how we sleep at night.
"Sarah asked us on the first call whether we had a parental leave policy. We didn't. She told us to build one before she'd brief any candidates. We did. Our first Head of People started three weeks later and called it the reason she chose us over two Series B companies."
Imani Nakamura
CEO, Orca Systems — Series B, 47 employees
You've been afraid to admit
hiring is broken.
We already know.
Book a 20-minute First Hire Strategy session. No pitch. No agency-speak. Just you, your hiring problem, and someone who's seen it before — and helped founders come out the other side.
Still researching? See our placements →