"When a company does run a great recruiting process, it's such a rare bird. Candidates will choose a company based on that."
—Andrew Abramson, Co-founder of Fusion (ex-Riviera/Korn Ferry)
Welcome to Top Tech’s “How to Hire” Series
This is the first in a series on hiring great tech executives and leaders. In coming weeks, I'll be featuring insights from some of the most respected executive recruiters, VC talent partners, and top executives in the industry who specialize in product, engineering, and other technical leadership roles.
TODAY: Andrew Abramson (Co-founder at Fusion Talent, ex-Partner at Riviera)
Coming up…
Chris Johnson (CEO & Managing Partner at Artisanal Talent)
Jodi Jefferson (Founder, Managing Partner at People Project)
Hillary Mager (CEO at Sterling Strand, ex-Flatiron Health/Citadel/Bridgewater)
Lauren Ipsen (VC Talent Partner at Decibel Partners, ex-Daversa Partners)
(My VC, exec, and exec recruiter friends! Message me if you have a unique take to share)
This series is for founders, hiring executives, recruiters, and even job-seeking leaders to gain insights into how to hire great talent and how recruiters and hiring leaders think.
How To Hire Great Product Leaders With Andrew Abramson
Finding the right product leader can make or break your company's trajectory, but the search process is filled with complexities that even experienced founders struggle to navigate effectively.
For this inaugural article, I spoke with Andrew Abramson, co-founder of Fusion Talent and widely regarded as one of the best executive recruiters in the product leadership space.
Andrew has built an impressive track record working with companies across all stages - from Series A startups to industry giants like:
Airbnb, Chime, Atlassian, Character.ai, HubSpot, Webflow, Checkr, Lyft, PagerDuty, and more.
Andrew co-founded Fusion with Alex Zakupowsky (a top recruiter for CTs and other engineering leadership searches) with a vision of building a partner-led firm delivering exceptional outcomes through highly-specialized focus areas.
Andrew conducts Product Leadership searches (CPO, VP, and Head of) and has placed over 100 product leaders throughout his career.
Prior to Fusion, Andrew spent five years as a Partner at Riviera Partners, focusing exclusively on Product Leadership roles, and has over a decade of experience in Executive Search at Safire Partner and Korn Ferry.
He also used to be a sports agency Director of Analytics, helping rep NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, and Olympic athletes!
In our wide-ranging conversation, he shared invaluable insights on how to identify, attract, evaluate, and successfully close top product talent.
"Just hiring someone is not the goal. Hiring someone who's going to actually make a great impact and be a great fit is the goal." — Andrew Abramson, Co-founder of Fusion
What You'll Learn in This Executive Hiring Guide
This deep dive into product leadership hiring covers everything founders, executives, and board members need to know about finding the right product leader. Here's what we'll explore:
Andrew's Journey in Executive Recruiting - How Andrew built his expertise in product leadership recruitment
When Do Companies Need a Product Leader? - Five clear signals it's time to make this critical hire
Determining the Right Level of Seniority - How to match leadership level to your specific needs
Can Product Leaders Help Find Product-Market Fit? - When this works (rarely) and when it doesn't
The "Up and Comer" Pattern - Why first product hires often come from unexpected backgrounds
Evaluating "Up and Comers" - How to distinguish true contributors from passengers on rocket ships
The Art of Back-Channeling - Getting honest feedback without burning bridges
Why Use an Executive Search Firm? - The ROI calculation for professional help
Running an Effective Search Process - Step-by-step guidance for a rigorous yet efficient process
The Importance of Cultural Fit - Why this matters more for product leaders than almost any other role
The Art of Closing Top Candidates - Starting from your very first interaction
Managing Internal Team Dynamics - Navigating existing teams and passed-over internal candidates
Measuring Success - How to tell if your product leader hire is working out
Why Product Leader Hires Fail - The misalignment trap and how to avoid it
Real-World Examples - Stories from Andrew's work with top companies
Whether you're hiring your first product leader or looking to upgrade your existing leadership, this guide provides actionable frameworks and insider knowledge from one of the industry's most respected executive recruiters.
Andrew's Journey in Executive Recruiting
Andrew began his executive search career at a large publicly traded firm called Korn Ferry, where he worked on searches across diverse industries including commercial real estate, oil and gas, and consumer packaged goods. While he appreciated the foundational skills he developed there, he found himself gravitating toward the tech sector.
"I knew that I wanted to be in search at that point. I liked the job and what it entailed, but I wanted to work with clients that I could resonate with a bit more, that I was a bit more excited to work with."
This led him to Riviera Partners, where he joined the product practice in 2018 and spent about five years focusing on Chief Product Officer searches. Then, just over a year ago, he launched his own firm, Fusion, alongside his partner Alex Zack Kupalski, who specializes in engineering leadership recruitment.
Their vision for Fusion reflects a quality-first approach: "Our kind of view is that we're trying to stay small and focus on quality - the quality of the clients that we work with, the quality of the searches that we do, of the candidates that we interact with, and make sure that founders have the absolute best experience when they work with us."
When Do Companies Need a Product Leader?
One of the most common questions founders ask is when they should bring in dedicated product leadership. Andrew has identified several clear signals that it's time to make this critical hire:
1. Short-Term Roadmap Orientation
"The roadmap might be very short term or quarter-to-quarter oriented. And the primary features being shipped up to this point are all from customer requests, as opposed to building towards kind of this longer term vision or goal."
When companies can't prioritize between immediate customer requests and strategic long-term initiatives, it often indicates they need experienced product leadership to establish a more balanced approach.
2. Communication Breakdowns
"Communication is starting to break down and you see this more towards Series C, Series D when a number of other execs and different functions have been hired. Product, the communication is starting to break down kind of cross-functionally like engineering and/or go-to-market. They're not sure why certain things are being prioritized over others."
This issue becomes particularly acute as the company scales and hires more executives. When teams don't understand the reasoning behind product decisions, it creates friction and inefficiency.
3. Over-Involved Founders
When founders find themselves "needing to be way too involved in the details of the day-to-day of the product decisions," it's a clear sign they need to bring in leadership that can take ownership of the product organization.
4. Lagging Recruitment
"Recruiting or hiring might be lagging behind other functions. The current most senior product person, if they have a head of product, has been having trouble hiring or attracting senior talent. Their bar for talent isn't as high as it needs to be."
Product teams need talent magnets who can attract and retain top performers. If your product organization isn't growing at the same pace as other departments, it might be time for new leadership.
5. Founders Without Product Management Experience
"If it's the founders still running product, they might be getting to a point where they have, call it like, three to five PMs in the org and they're probably not a product person themselves. They're probably doing this for the first time. And so they'll admit, 'I'm not the best person to be managing product people. I'm not the right person to be firing product people. I don't know how to manage and how to grow PMs, how to put the right incentive structures in place.'"
Many founders reach a point where they recognize their limitations in developing and managing a product team, which signals the need for experienced product leadership.
Determining the Right Level of Seniority
Once you've identified the need for a product leader, the next question is what level of seniority is appropriate. Andrew emphasizes that this decision should be driven by the specific pain points you're trying to address:
"It really kind of comes back to what are the real pain points that exist. What are you kind of trying to solve for here? If the PM team and the role wants to own is going to own design too, and it's already at like six or seven people, you're going to need a head of product who's managed teams of probably like 12 to 15, I would think."
The key principle Andrew emphasizes is to "hire someone that the company can kind of grow into as opposed to having them kind of grow into and learn on the job too much." This approach reduces the risk inherent in the hire.
Different challenges call for different profiles:
If communication is breaking down, you need someone who "has been through hyperscale and has worked in more complex environments and worked with other senior leaders cross-functionally."
If you need more creativity and innovation, "you need someone who really spikes more on zero to one might be a former founder themselves."
Can Product Leaders Help Find Product-Market Fit?
Many founders hope to bring in a product leader who can help them find product-market fit, but Andrew has observed this rarely works well, especially for consumer products:
"If it's a consumer product, no, like you should not be hiring an external head of product to find product market fit for your consumer product. If you need that, it's already too late, most likely."
However, he notes two important exceptions:
1. B2B Products Transitioning from Open Source to Monetization
"If it's a B2B product and maybe like an open sourcey type product where the go-to-market motion so far has been about user adoption, not about monetization... That doesn't necessarily mean that you have product market fit because no one's paying for your product yet. And so having someone who understands how you can transition from open source to a strong kind of go-to-market monetization muscle... Having a product person who understands how to do that can come in and make an impact in an earlier stage."
In these cases, the technical foundation exists, but the product leader adds value through monetization strategy, pricing, and packaging expertise.
2. AI Startups with Research-Focused Founders
"So many founders of AI startups now are coming from research backgrounds, especially if it's foundational models company, and they might not understand how to even like ship commercially viable products before they just understand the models themselves and the AI around the models... When it comes to actually putting the processes in place, experimenting, testing and learning, scaling, things like that, I'm seeing product people add a lot of value to founders who aren't even like software engineers, they're researchers."
For AI startups with technically brilliant but commercially inexperienced founders, the right product leader can bridge the gap between technological capability and market viability.
The "Up and Comer" Pattern for First Product Hires
Interestingly, Andrew has observed a consistent pattern in successful first product leader hires - they're typically not individuals who have already held the top product role multiple times:
"The odds are it's going to be someone who has not been a head of product before. It's someone who has seen a lot of success going through hyperscale at another company where they learned a lot of amazing lessons. They saw things that work that didn't work. They've seen a level of scale beyond where that company is today, but they haven't been in the number one seat before, and now they're ready to do that for the first time."
This "up-and-comer" profile is not just common but often more viable than recruiting someone who has already been a head of product. Andrew explains why:
"Probably more than 50 percent of the people who've been a head of product before, or just coming off of a head of product stint, they don't want to do that again right away. It's a very draining job to be a head of product, to be working so closely with a founder all day, every day or founders all day, every day can be very demanding. It can be a very soul-sucking job."
Many experienced product leaders follow a pattern: "They took a swing on something early stages, they did it for a year to two and a half or three years. And they're like, 'That was fun. I need to go do something later stage. I have a family now, I need liquid comp, and then I'm going to kind of take another swing in four or five years.'"
Evaluating "Up and Comers" vs. Passengers on Rocket Ships
With "up and comers" being the most viable candidates, how do you distinguish between someone who truly contributed to a company's success versus someone who was "just along for the ride" on a rocket ship? Andrew acknowledges this is challenging but offers practical advice:
"The best way to find out is through back channels, understanding is what they're saying and what they're telling me about their impact lining up with what other people at the org feel that their impact actually was."
He emphasizes that you're not necessarily looking for someone who "set the vision" for a major company like Airbnb. Instead, you want to understand:
Incremental metrics they improved
Net new ideas they contributed
How they navigated the organization to bring ideas to fruition
Their ability to convince others that something was the right thing to build
The ultimate question: Were they providing the fuel, or were they just along for the ride?
The Art of Back-Channeling
"Back-channeling is definitely an art, not a science. And it can go very wrong if you go about it the wrong way."
— Andrew Abramson on the delicate nature of reference checks
Back-channel references are essential for effective evaluation, but they require finesse and relationships built on trust:
"Back-channeling is definitely an art, not a science. And it can go very wrong if you go about it the wrong way. I think that the biggest thing with back-channeling is it just kind of comes through relationships and building up a network of people who will trust you, who will know that you will keep this hyper confidential."
Andrew offered several key principles for effective back-channeling:
Build trust over time: "There's really no substitute for that other than just time in the market and doing this job and doing it for a number of years."
Don't overuse references: "You don't want to overuse one person too frequently for back-channel requests."
Never cold back-channel: "Never ever cold message to someone to try and get a back channel on a candidate. That's the surest way of having it blow up in your face. That could put their job in jeopardy."
Avoid current colleagues: "Back-channel someone with a current employee of the company that the candidate is employed at - that's another kind of no-no."
Time it right: The timing varies by situation - sometimes it's before introducing candidates to clients, sometimes it's further along in the process.
Andrew's bottom line: "I don't think you should ever make a hire without getting a back-channel read from someone somewhere."
Why Use an Executive Search Firm?
For founders weighing whether to conduct searches themselves or engage professionals, Andrew points to several key benefits of working with experienced search firms:
Access to Passive Candidates
"The best candidates are not the ones who are actively seeking jobs. The best candidates are ones who are happily employed or being paid really well, have great scope, have great impact, and it's about like, how do you get to those people? And again, that's just through the network and through relationships."
Efficiency and Quality
"It's about efficiency in your search and not spending time with unqualified candidates or candidates that aren't A+, which is a huge drain of time for a founder or CEO. And it's about getting access to people that might otherwise be out of reach."
Domain Expertise
Internal recruiters working across all functions can't possibly match the depth of knowledge that specialists have: "There's just going to be this knowledge that the recruiter should have on the candidates, on the candidate ecosystem, that even an internal recruiter at a company, if they're working in doing searches, recruiting across all the different functions, there's just no way that they could have."
While search firms represent a significant investment, Andrew notes that once founders have a positive experience with a retained search, "they tend to get religion around that and then money doesn't really become the barrier."
When comparing different search firms, Andrew likens it to any service:
"Just like any service, the more that you pay, the better the outcome that you'll probably get. Just like with consulting, with a design agency, with a branding agency, et cetera, the best firms just charge more because they're better at the job."
Running an Effective Search Process
Andrew emphasized that how you run your search process significantly impacts who you'll attract:
"When a company does run a great recruiting process, it's such a rare bird in the wild that candidates will choose a company based on that, rather than a company that might be better, that might pay a little bit more, that might look sexier, but it was just such a jumbled process and a bad candidate experience."
Here's his step-by-step approach for running an effective product leader search:
1. Define Your Interview Panel Upfront
"At the front end of a search, you need to determine who you want to have on your interview panel, whose buy-in on the leadership team that you want to make sure that you have, and who is going to be kind of like the veto votes of 'if this person is a no, I just can't really see a path to hiring them.'"
2. Align on Evaluation Criteria
"You need to sit down with them in a group setting and say, 'Okay, here's the context. Here's what we're looking for. Would love to get all of your input,' and have a very open dialogue with the team on what they think is going to be needed in this person and what the founder wants each person to be evaluating for in the interview process."
3. Assign Specific Focus Areas to Each Interviewer
"Each person should be tasked with evaluating for a specific attribute or attributes. You don't want multiple interviewers asking the same questions to candidates. That's a bad candidate experience."
4. Involve Investors Early
"If you're doing an exec search, you should probably always loop in your investors because your investors not only will provide their thoughts, but they also will have a network or they'll have talent partners who work with them at their shop who will probably make some intros for you, who can help with back channels."
5. Create a Detailed Scorecard
A comprehensive scorecard should cover two key areas:
General product leadership criteria:
Strategic thinking
Process orientation
First-principles thinking
People management capabilities
Communication style
Company-specific requirements:
Commercialization expertise
Technical depth for engineering collaboration
Domain knowledge (e.g., marketplace dynamics)
Experience with similar end users
Stage-appropriate scaling knowledge
By defining these criteria upfront, you create alignment and reduce the likelihood of making decisions based solely on charisma or gut feeling.
The Importance of Cultural Fit
Cultural fit of the hire is just P0 in my opinion for product."
— Andrew Abramson on why cultural fit matters
For product leaders especially, cultural fit is absolutely critical:
"For product, you're such a kind of a cultural bellwether at a company. It's such a cross-functional role in nature. You're interacting with so many different departments that the cultural fit has to be there. You cannot make a hire that's not going to be a good cultural fit for your company. The cultural fit of the hire is just P0 in my opinion for product."
To assess cultural fit, Andrew recommends looking beyond the companies on a candidate's resume:
Consider timing at previous companies: "If they grew up in Uber in the early days, they probably are going to operate a bit differently than someone who spent the last two or three years at Uber. You always kind of have to understand the years or the point in time when someone was actually at Uber and what the culture of that company was like because cultures of companies change over time."
Use back-channel references: Ask specific questions about "what does this person like to work with? What are they like when they disagree with someone? How strongly held are they in their opinions? Are they a jerk?"
Arrange out-of-office interactions: "Spend time with your team as well outside of just the standard interview process... What is this person like when they're not working? Could I be stuck with this person for five hours in the airport? And like, I would actually enjoy that time spending that time with this person."
Andrew shared an illuminating example of how cultural fit can influence decisions:
"There was an example of a search that I did a few years ago where it was a really hot company and they had amazing candidates that they were talking to. And one of the candidates came in to interview. It was after the workday. So he came in at like six o'clock to meet the founder. And as he was walking out, the company was setting up to do a full company all-hands or something at seven o'clock on a Wednesday night. And he was like, 'Great company, great founders. I can't like that's not good for my lifestyle. I just can't do that.'"
His advice to companies: "As a company, you shouldn't apologize for that if that's how you operate and that's how you've been successful. But you also shouldn't obscure that fact that that's who you are either just to get the person because that comes back to misaligned expectations."
The Art of Closing Top Candidates
When it comes to closing candidates, Andrew advises that the process starts with the very first interaction:
"Closing really kind of starts in the very first conversation that you have with the candidate. It's not like you're interviewing, interviewing, interviewing, decide you want them, and now it's time to close. You are continually, ideally if a process is being run the right way, building the candidate's interest with each interaction that they have with your company."
Here are his key strategies for effective closing:
1. Build Rapport from Day One
"If it's a great candidate and that's a great conversation, you should send a thoughtful follow-up. 'Thank you so much for the time. Here's what I liked about the conversation. Here's like what I would propose as next steps.' You should start establishing that direct line of communication with a candidate as soon as you possibly can."
This is especially important for product leadership roles:
"Candidates at this point are savvy enough and they've heard enough horror stories about working with founders to know that the success of your job as a head of product is going to all come down to fit with the founder. And so building comfort and rapport between candidate and founder is so critical to do from the outset of a process."
2. Create Multiple Touch Points
Andrew recommends several ways to keep candidates engaged:
Making yourself available for questions outside formal interviews
Meeting in person when possible
Sending materials like decks or demos
Walking them through what you're currently working on
3. Only Make Offers When You Know They'll Accept
"You shouldn't make an offer unless you know that the candidate wants to join the company. You have to spend political capital, social capital, all that to get a very strong offer green-lit. You might have to go to comp committee, etcetera. You should only do that if you have conviction that this person, this candidate wants to make it work too."
4. Watch for Red Flags in Negotiation
When candidates focus exclusively on compensation without showing genuine enthusiasm for the company and role, it's concerning:
"If it just comes down to numbers for them, then that might be a red flag to me because it's not necessarily clear that they're doing this for the right reasons. Maybe it's not something that's a super big passion area for them. Or they, the team doesn't stand out to them over all the other teams."
5. Encourage Clear Communication During Negotiation
The most effective candidates are direct about their requirements:
"Where I've seen candidates have the most success when negotiating is if they're honest and transparent and then if you do want to negotiate with your counter being like, 'Okay, if you can get to this number, I'm in.' If you're just very explicit to a founder of like, 'I want this. If you can meet this, I sign tomorrow,' that will then, even if it's a big ask, the founder will then be more incentivized to go back to their board, to go back to their comp committee, to try and move mountains to make it work because they know that doing that results in a yes."
Managing Internal Team Dynamics
When bringing in a new product leader over an existing team, you'll need to navigate complex dynamics, especially if you're passing up internal candidates for promotion:
"If you're passing up people for a promotion in order to hire someone externally, or there's a team of people who came in to work for one person, that person's no longer there, you have to hire someone with credibility. Like it has to be someone where it's like, okay, it's obvious why they'd want to hire this person. 'Oh yeah, that makes sense. Like that person is a lot more senior and more accomplished than I am.'"
Andrew's approach to involving the existing team depends on your specific situation:
If You're Looking to Upgrade the Team:
"Maybe you don't care as a founder CEO or as a VP of product, what your team thinks, because maybe you feel like your team's underperforming. And a big reason why you want to hire this person is because you want them to be very critical and evaluating how's my PM team doing? Can we uplevel this team? Is it okay if people leave?"
If You Value Your Current Team:
"Including them in the process, not necessarily as a critical, evaluative part of the process, but a like, 'Hey, we're getting towards the end here. We have one or two people that we're seriously considering, would love for you to just spend a session with them, whether it's a lunch, whether it's a group zoom, just kind of getting to know this person, asking about their background, their leadership philosophies, et cetera, and just kind of making sure that you would be good reporting to this person.'"
Andrew advises against having candidates formally interviewed by their potential direct reports:
"You don't put candidates in there to be interviewed by their subordinates or the people that they're going to be inheriting necessarily. It's much more making sure it's not going to be some organ rejection, cultural type, asymmetrical fit at the end, making sure that your team feels like they were at least included and consulted as part of the process."
Measuring Success of a Product Leader Hire
How do you know if your product leader hire was successful? While it's difficult to attribute company success to any single hire, revenue growth is typically the North Star metric:
"Nine times out of 10, I would think that it would probably be revenue as the biggest thing that you're looking to in terms of like, is this a successful hire or not? How did revenue, what shape did revenue take in the time that this person was in the chair?"
However, Andrew candidly acknowledges the challenge of attribution:
"It's hard to know, would that have happened with the next best hire that they could have made? Was the company already going to be on that trajectory regardless? As an exec recruiter, I will never claim to say that I have that all-knowing power of like, 'Yeah, this never would have happened if you had hired the second, the backup candidate as opposed to this candidate.'"
Success can manifest in multiple ways:
"There's plenty of examples that I can speak to where it's like made a hire at a series B or series C. And that person was still the CPO at series E series F and company had raised three or four rounds and revenue was three X."
But even when quantitative metrics look good, qualitative factors matter:
"The company does great and person's been in the chair for that long and they won't reference well. And you'll be like, what the heck? Maybe they were really difficult to work with. Maybe the founder was really the CPO. And so that person is not really granted the credit that they think they should be getting. And they have an outsized opinion of themselves and their impact on the product relative to what other people at the company thought their impact was versus the founder."
Why Product Leader Hires Fail
"Before you hire a CPO, you need to have the anti-sell conversation with them and just be super honest about these are the things that are broken right now."
— Andrew Abramson on setting realistic expectations
The biggest reason product leader hires fail is misaligned expectations:
"There was a misalignment of expectations on day one of what the founder and/or team was expecting out of this person versus what this person felt like they were walking into and what their strengths really are."
This is particularly challenging for product roles because:
"Everyone at the company has an opinion about the company's product and therefore the company's product leader. I don't know if everyone at a company is going to really deeply care about the CFO, but product is something that is very, there's a lot of opinions that exist and a lot of different opinions at the company about how the product should look and how it should feel and how it should be used."
Andrew advocates for the "anti-sell conversation" to prevent misalignment:
"Something that I've seen work really well is before you hire a CPO, you need to kind of have the anti-sell conversation with them and just be super honest and transparent about 'these are the things that are broken right now. If you're scared of this, if you're not excited about jumping into these challenges, if you don't feel like you're good at solving these types of problems, you should probably not come.'"
He cautions against prioritizing closing the deal over finding the right fit:
"Sometimes founders can get so wrapped up in trying to close and trying to get the person that they'll do anything in order to make it happen. But hiring someone is not the goal - hiring someone who's going to actually make a great impact and be a great fit is the goal."
Real-World Examples
Throughout our conversation, Andrew shared several illuminating examples from his extensive experience:
The After-Hours Culture Shock: A candidate for a hot company came in for an evening interview, only to discover the entire company was setting up for a 7 PM all-hands meeting. Despite liking the company and founders, he immediately knew the culture wouldn't work for his lifestyle.
The Public Company Searches: Andrew has worked with companies like "HubSpot, PagerDuty, Atlassian" on the public side, and seen how different their search processes are compared to early-stage startups.
The AI Researcher Founders: He's observed founders from research backgrounds building AI companies who understand the models but struggle with productization - making them perfect candidates for bringing in product leadership.
The Series B to Series F Journey: He's placed CPOs who stayed through multiple funding rounds and saw companies triple their revenue, demonstrating long-term value.
The Black War AI Company: He recently completed a head of product search for an AI company called Black War at the seed stage, showing his range across company stages.
Conclusion
Hiring great product leadership is both art and science. It requires understanding your company's specific challenges, creating a rigorous yet flexible evaluation framework, and running a process that builds candidate interest from day one.
The best product leader hires often aren't the most obvious ones on paper - they're the up-and-comers ready to step into their first leadership role, with the right combination of experience, potential, and cultural alignment. As Andrew emphasizes, "Just hiring someone isn't the goal. Hiring someone who's going to actually make a great impact and be a great fit is the goal."
For founders navigating this critical hiring decision, Andrew's parting advice is to focus on alignment of expectations above all else. The clearer you are about your challenges and what you need, the more likely you are to find a leader who can truly transform your product organization.
This interview has been edited for clarity and organization.
If you're a founder, executive, or board member looking to hire great product leadership, you can reach Andrew at andrew@fusiontalent.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
About This Executive Hiring Series
This article is part of a series on hiring great technical leaders. In upcoming articles, I'll be featuring insights from other expert recruiters including:
Chris Johnson (CEO & Managing Partner at Artisanal Talent): One of the most highly sought-after search consultants in the field who placed Yukhi who became CPO at Figma and has completed searches for elite tech companies including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, GitLab, Loom, Superhuman, and Zuora. Chris quickly rose from Analyst to Partner at SPMB before co-founding Artisanal.
Jodi Jefferson (Founder, Managing Partner at People Project): Conducts C-Level, VP-Level, and Director-Level searches across Engineering, Product, AI & Data for major companies like Dropbox, Oscar Health, Weight Watchers, Audible, and Grubhub Seamless. Her clients include companies backed by Bain Capital, Tiger Global, Union Square Ventures, Thrive Capital, and dozens of other top-tier VC firms.
Lauren Ipsen (Talent Partner at Decibel Partners): Previously a top performing executive recruiter at Daversa Partners and talent partner at General Catalyst, Lauren has placed over one hundred product and engineering leaders at high-growth companies including Airbnb, Canva, Discord, Reddit, Twitter, and Snap. Her recent portfolio includes build-outs for Grammarly, Hippocratic.ai, Reddit, Nextdoor, and Opendoor.
Hillary Mager (Founding Partner & CEO at Sterling Strand, ex-Flatiron Health, Citadel, and Bridgewater): Hillary built Flatiron Health from 30 to 1000 employees in five years, working directly with the founders, leading all executive searches herself and building all hiring processes and operations along the way. She’s also spent time at top hedge funds, including Bridgewater and most recently Citadel, as MD, Global Head of Technical Recruiting. She started Sterling Strand because she wanted a search firm to exist that would serve the needs that were most pressing for her as an in-house recruiter. “Hiring is a science. Not an art.”
My Top Tech Newsletter typically focuses on job search strategies and salary negotiations. This series explores the other side of the table - helping founders and executives build world-class leadership teams.
Are there specific executive hiring topics you'd like to see covered in this series? Drop a comment below!
Share this post