Executive Search
Retained search for CEO, COO, CFO, and other executive roles: the hires that set a company's trajectory for years, not quarters, run personally by a partner, with our founding partners behind them.
Retained, and run by people who've operated
A senior hire that's technically qualified but wrong for your culture, your board, or your next chapter can set a company back further than an empty seat ever would. Executive search demands the judgment of someone who can evaluate a leader the way a board or an owner would, and our partners can do that because we've been owners, board members, and executives ourselves.
Every executive search is retained, meaning we commit the time and discretion the search deserves from day one, rather than racing other firms to the same candidate pool.
A CEO search isn't a bigger version of a director search
Filling a senior seat isn't a bigger version of filling a director role. Most of the people worth considering for a CEO, COO, or CFO search aren't applying to anything. They're doing well where they are, which means finding them takes direct outreach and real relationships, not a job posting.
A sitting CFO can't be seen exploring.
Handled badly, a single conversation costs a sitting executive their standing where they are, so discretion is the condition for having it at all. And the decision doesn't sit with one hiring manager. It sits with a board or an ownership group that often doesn't converge on what it wants until a real candidate is in the room.
Executive hires rarely fail on capability.
They fail on a mismatch with culture and expectations that nobody tested for before the offer, and by the time it shows up, the company has lost a year.
Why we're effective
Every one of these is a direct response to a specific way executive searches typically go wrong, not a generic list of promises.
Where searches usually go wrong
- The search handed off to associates after the pitch
- Candidates judged on résumé and technical skill
- Fit surfaces after the offer
- A board that never converges on what it wants
How we search differently
- One partner runs it start to finish
- Judged by operators, with the right experience pulled in for the seat
- Fit established before the offer goes out
- A requirement set agreed in writing before the search begins
The Ahoy Compass Report
We read the company as rigorously as we read the candidate. The Compass Report sets both sides against the same requirements, then shows exactly where they align and where they don't, instead of profiling a candidate in a vacuum and hoping the rest works out.
Structured analysis organizes and surfaces the evidence. The assessment itself is a partner's, based on documented experience, interview performance, what the role actually requires, and where the company is trying to go.
What's included
| Executive SearchExec |
Professional SearchPro | |
|---|---|---|
| A partner who runs the search personally | ||
| A fee fixed to an agreed target compensation figure | ||
| Replacement guarantee | 12 months | 90 days |
| A structured 30/60/90-day check-in | – | |
| A structured 30/90/180/300-day executive check-in | – | |
| A Compass Report for every candidate |
When the seat isn't the one you thought
Sometimes a search starts as one role and the intake conversation shows it's a different one. A COO search that's really a VP of Operations plus a genuine second in command. A CFO search where the actual gap is a controller who never got built out. We'd rather have that argument at the start, when it costs a conversation, than at offer stage when it costs the search.
Filling a senior seat?
Tell us about the role and the board or team it reports to. A founding partner reads every message personally.
