Retained executive search for VP, CXO, and board-track roles. Engineering, product, and operating leadership for Series A through Series D+ companies. Confidential, calibrated, and built around your board.
Hiring an executive is the highest-leverage move a founder makes in a calendar year — and the most expensive when it goes wrong. The cost of a mis-hire isn't the severance; it's the 9–18 months of compounded velocity you lose around it. This page is the straight playbook for executive hiring at VC-backed companies.
Our retained practice is concentrated on the seats VC-backed founders ask us about most often. We don't do generalist exec recruiting — we run searches in the functions where we've placed dozens of leaders before.
Owns the eng org: hiring, process, on-call, delivery. Most common at 15–25 engineers and again at 60–80.
Technical vision, architecture, build vs buy. Earlier stage: most senior engineer. Later: also external face.
Owns the product function. PM hiring, prioritization, roadmap, delivery. CEO-staff seat.
Product + design + research as one function. Company-strategy seat.
Often a founder's operating partner. People, finance, GTM ops, business strategy.
Finance, FP&A, fundraising, audit-readiness, eventually IPO. The board's most-direct contact.
Demand gen, product marketing, brand, content. Highly motion-dependent (PLG vs enterprise).
Owns the revenue number. Sales, CS, often partnerships. The most common single-point-of-failure exec hire.
The most common executive-hiring mistake we see at Series A is hiring too senior, too early. The second most common is waiting until the wheels are off. Here's the working framework.
If the founder is spending more than 50% of their week on a single function — engineering delivery, product roadmap, GTM, finance — that's the signal a VP is needed. If they're spending it on the work only a CEO can do (board, fundraising, key hires, partnerships), the company is not yet bottlenecked on an executive.
| Stage | Typical first exec | Why this seat first |
|---|---|---|
| Series A | VP Engineering or Head of Product | Most founders are still CEO + one functional leader at Series A. The first VP frees them from being two people. |
| Series B | VP Product, VP Sales, or VP Engineering | Whichever function will most constrain the next 18 months of growth. |
| Series C | CFO + remaining VPs | Pre-IPO financial discipline starts here. Audit, FP&A, fundraising rigor. |
| Series D+ | COO, CMO, CRO | Operating maturity, brand, and revenue rigor. CXO titles arrive here. |
Hiring a "VP" when the company has 6 engineers is title inflation that you'll regret at Series B when you actually need a VP and the seat is filled by someone hired for a smaller scope.
Hiring a VP after the founder has been bottlenecked for 6 months means the company has lost compounding velocity. The right time to hire is when the founder sees the bottleneck coming, not after it has slowed the team.
Executive comp at startups looks expensive in absolute terms and is mostly equity in practice. The base sets the floor; the equity grant is the actual offer. Below are realistic ranges across the seats we run searches in.
| Role | Stage | Base (USD) | Equity (%) | Realistic total comp* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VP Engineering | Series A / B | $260K – $320K | 0.50% – 1.00% | $400K – $650K |
| VP Engineering | Series C | $280K – $360K | 0.30% – 0.70% | $500K – $800K |
| VP Product | Series B | $260K – $310K | 0.40% – 0.80% | $430K – $660K |
| VP Product | Series C | $280K – $340K | 0.30% – 0.70% | $500K – $760K |
| CTO (hired post-founding) | Series B / C | $280K – $360K | 0.50% – 1.50% | $500K – $900K |
| CPO | Series C+ | $320K – $420K | 0.50% – 2.00% | $650K – $1.1M |
| CFO | Series B / C | $300K – $400K | 0.40% – 1.20% | $550K – $900K |
| COO | Series B / C | $300K – $400K | 0.50% – 1.50% | $600K – $1.0M |
| CRO / VP Sales | Series B / C | $240K – $340K + var | 0.40% – 1.20% | $500K – $1.0M |
| CMO / VP Marketing | Series B / C | $260K – $340K | 0.30% – 0.80% | $430K – $720K |
*Total comp uses a 4-year vesting view at a realistic outcome (not the last preferred). Sales leadership ranges include OTE assumptions. Use the offer calculator for specifics.
The most common question we get from founders. Here is the honest version, including when each one is right.
| Dimension | Retained Search | Contingent Search |
|---|---|---|
| Payment | Staged — typically 1/3 up-front, 1/3 shortlist, 1/3 on close. | Paid on hire only. |
| Exclusivity | Exclusive to the firm. | Non-exclusive. |
| Best for | VP, CXO, confidential or replacement searches. | Senior IC and senior manager hires. |
| Calibration | Deep — sample candidates before launch, market map. | Lighter — typically faster start. |
| Confidentiality | Built in. | Limited — multiple firms in market. |
| Typical fee | ~25–33% of first-year cash comp. | ~20–25% of first-year cash comp. |
Retained: any seat where calibration with the board, confidentiality, or a careful market map matters. All VP/CXO roles. Any replacement search where the current incumbent doesn't know.
Contingent: volume IC hiring, senior manager roles, and any role where you'd benefit from multiple firms competing.
What to avoid: running a VP/C-level search contingent across 3 firms. The exec candidate market is small enough that doing this usually burns the candidates you most want.
This is the highest-failure-rate moment in a startup's leadership life. The hire might be great; the transition is what fails. Three things have to be true:
Not "I'm tired of doing this" — "I am willing to let someone else make a call I would have made differently." If you can't honestly say that, don't make the hire yet. A VP who doesn't have decision authority is a glorified senior IC, and they leave.
Hiring, architectural decisions, and budget within the function need to belong to the VP from week one — even if the founder remains accountable. The single most common failure pattern: founder hires VP, then continues to override decisions on hiring or roadmap, and the VP either leaves within a year or shrinks into a chief-of-staff role.
Before the VP starts, explicitly tell the rest of the team what the new VP owns and what the founder is no longer the decider on. Skip this step and you create months of "who do I escalate to" ambiguity.
A retained search is not "we send you better resumes." It's a structured 12–20 week engagement with the board's involvement built in. Here's the working timeline.
| Phase | What happens | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Intake & scorecard | Founder + board alignment. Scorecard, comp band, market map, sample candidates. | 1–2 weeks |
| Market mapping | Build the full universe of qualified candidates. Targeted, confidential outreach. | 3–5 weeks |
| Shortlist & calibration | 3–5 finalists. Calibration call with the board. Adjust scorecard as needed. | 2 weeks |
| Loops & references | Founder loop, team loop, board interview, backchannel references. | 3–5 weeks |
| Offer, close, 90-day | Negotiation with full comp context. Close. We stay through the first 90 days. | 3–4 weeks |
Series A or early Series B for most companies, when the founder is spending more than 50% of their week on one function. The first VP is usually the function that most constrains the next 18 months of growth.
At Series B, $260K–$340K base + 0.30%–0.80% equity is typical, with realistic total comp $430K–$700K. At Series C, base climbs to $280K–$380K with 0.20%–0.60% equity. See the full table above.
Retained, almost always. The exec candidate market is small enough that running the same VP search across 3 contingent firms burns the candidates you most want. Retained gives you exclusivity, confidentiality, and calibration the candidate pool will respect.
VP searches: 12–20 weeks end-to-end. CXO searches: 16–24 weeks, almost always with board involvement at calibration and loop stages.
~25–33% of first-year cash comp, typically structured as 1/3 up-front, 1/3 on shortlist, 1/3 on close. For VC-backed startups with budget constraints, we sometimes structure part of the fee in equity rather than cash.
Replacement searches are the highest-confidentiality work we do. Outreach is done without naming the company; finalists sign NDAs before interview loops; and we coordinate with the board and counsel on transition timing.
Standard retained engagements include a replacement guarantee: if the placed executive departs within a defined window (typically 6–12 months), we run a replacement search at no additional fee. Specifics are detailed in every engagement letter.
