Stewarding talent. Building legacies. We carry no off-limits list, no junior bench and no reason to leave your search unfilled. If the leader we place does not last twelve months, we run it again.
Ten questions that tell you whether the mandate is ready, and which gaps to close first.
Start the diagnostic → 02What the market actually pays by revenue band, with the sources and the limits stated plainly.
See the benchmarks → 03Budget a retained or contingent search at your compensation level, using published market mechanics.
Plan the budget →
Ricky WestManaging Partner
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Ricky founded and runs the firm that keeps their books. A CFO search here starts from the balance sheet, not the job description.
Tim Vida Jr.Managing Partner
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A deliberate load with no junior bench underneath it. Partner attention is a structural fact here, not a promise in a pitch.
Both partnersFounders and operators
Owners
And lived with the ones that did not work. It is why we will tell you a candidate is impressive and still wrong for the seat.
Every standard on this page is published because we sign it. The 21-day shortlist, the weekly written report and the 12-month guarantee are in the engagement letter before the first call is made.
Ten questions. A scored answer on the spot. No email, no download, no call.
Executive search is an act of stewardship. Most firms fill seats. We place leaders who compound, in results, in culture, and in the people they develop long after the search closes.
Search has consolidated into two poor choices: global firms where your mandate is one of hundreds, and contingency shops that trade in resumes. We built a third way. One senior partner runs your search from first call to close, with the discipline of an institution and the conviction of an owner.
We serve boards, owners and investors at companies from $50M to $500M, including private equity portfolio companies, in the three markets we know deeply: finance and accounting leadership, industrial and mining operations, and software and technology.
Every board we meet has lived through one. The pattern almost never changes, and almost none of the cost appears on the invoice for the first search.
The doubts start around month four. Nobody says it out loud until month six. The exit lands near month nine and the replacement starts after that. A full fiscal year of the strategy this seat was hired to carry simply does not happen.
Strong operators do not complain about a weak leader. They leave, quietly, and they leave first, because they are the ones with options. You set out to fill one seat and end up backfilling four.
The second search is harder than the first. The market has watched someone leave the role, the internal candidates have already been passed over, and the board approaches the shortlist with less confidence than it had a year earlier.
This is the entire reason our standards are published and our guarantee is written down. The expensive part of a search was never the fee.
We chose depth over breadth. Every mandate we accept sits inside a market where we already know the operators, the compensation reality and the failure patterns.
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Industrial, Manufacturing & Mining
Operating and technical leadership for the companies that make and move real things, including critical minerals.
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Software & Technology
Go-to-market, product and engineering leadership for growth-stage software, from first institutional capital through scale.
A search is disruptive whether or not anyone says so. People notice the calendar holds, the closed doors and the consultant in reception. Confidentiality is not a courtesy in this work, it is part of the method, and it is agreed before a single call goes out.
Three words, in order. We discern before we search, so the mandate is right. We find leaders, not just executives. And we steward every placement past the offer letter, because the search is not the outcome. The leader is.
None of this is a criticism of the people who work there. It is arithmetic. A firm built for the Fortune 100 is the wrong shape for a company between $50M and $500M, and the cost of that shows up in your search rather than on your invoice.
At a global firm. Every company that has paid them in roughly the last two years is off-limits. That list runs to hundreds of companies, it includes the ones most likely to hold your strongest candidate, and you are never shown it.
Here. We carry no off-limits list. If the right person exists, we are free to call them.
At a global firm. A senior name attends the pitch. An associate builds the list, screens the calls and writes the notes. You pay a partner rate for a delivery model nobody described to you.
Here. The partner on your first call runs the research, the outreach, the references and the close. There is no bench to hand it to.
At a global firm. Six-figure minimums make a search at this compensation level uneconomic. It gets declined, or it gets the least experienced team in the building.
Here. This band is the whole business, not the bottom of the pipeline. It is the work we chose.
At a global firm. An abandoned search is a rounding error against thousands of mandates a year, and a ninety-day guarantee expires long before an executive hire shows whether it worked.
Here. Two partners carry a deliberately small number of searches, and the guarantee runs a full twelve months because that is when the answer is known.
No search begins until the mandate, the fee basis, the expense policy and the guarantee are in a letter you have signed.
You leave it with a clearer read on the seat whether or not you ever engage us. That is the point of it.
Not month three. The market tells us early, and we pass that on while changing course is still cheap.
A second full search on the same standards, at no additional professional fee. Written into the engagement letter.
Ten questions, five minutes, and a scored result on the page immediately. No email, no download, no call.
