
Founder Resources
Early & Growth Stage Startup Founder Recruiting Insights
Through The Lens of Bearhug’s Executive GTM Search Practice
Why Founders Use Bearhug: The “Easy Button” Delivers Top 10% Talent Fast, Reduces Your Involvement by 90%, and Helps You Close Execs Who Can Actually Get You to $100M+ Revenue Scale.
Most executive search firms still operate like it’s 2015 — slow, expensive, and built for large, slow-moving enterprises. But you need a model that matches today’s speed, budget, and stakes. That’s why we created the Easy Button — a reengineered executive search model built specifically for VC-backed companies scaling from Seed to Series C and looking to unlock $100M in revenue scale. In this video, I’ll show you how Bearhug’s system helps you move faster, avoid costly mis-hires, and land top 10% passive talent — with guaranteed results, real-time visibility, and zero risk if we don’t deliver.
Bearhug’s Secret Sauce: The 5-Step Executive Search Method Trusted by Founders, CEOs, and Investors to Hire Top 10% Talent and Scale from Seed to Series C — Unlocking $100M in Revenue Scale.
In this video, Bearhug founder Kraig Ward walks through the 5 ingredients behind our reengineered executive search model — including our proprietary Search Blueprint and Scorecard, deep market mapping across 5,000–10,000 profiles, omnipresent outreach that breaks through the noise, our Long-Form Story Weaving process that gets passive candidates to pitch themselves, and our master controls that keep searches tight, fast, and aligned. If you're hiring GTM, Finance, or Product leaders to unlock $100M scale, this is the playbook.
(June 2025) What’s Really Shaping Startup Hiring in 2025 — AI Pressure, Founder Missteps, and a Talent Pool That’s More Selective Than Ever. Here’s What We’re Seeing Across Active Executive Searches.
June ’25 Update: VC dollars are flowing again, and executive searches are back in motion — but the hiring landscape in 2025 looks nothing like it did just a year ago. This post unpacks what we’re seeing in real time: AI-fueled distortion in the talent market, top operators being poached faster than ever, founders rushing into searches without clear scorecards, and world-class candidates walking when the narrative doesn’t resonate or the process falls apart. Whether you're a startup founder trying to land stage-appropriate executive leaders or an early-stage investor advising on critical exec hires across your portfolio, this is your short, high-signal read on what’s changed — and exactly what to do about it.
From Bread Loaves to Boardrooms: How My Unconventional Path Led to Building Bearhug Recruiting — and What It Means for Founders Hiring GTM, Product, and Finance Execs on the Road to $100M+
Born the 10th of 11 kids in a goat-milk, bread-baking Mormon household, I took a different path — one that led from online funnels to venture-backed GTM consulting to founding Bearhug Recruiting. After seeing firsthand how outdated executive search was, I rebuilt it for founders like you: faster, leaner, and purpose-built to land top 10% GTM, Product, and Finance execs. We call our new approach “The Easy Button” — a smarter system that cuts founder lift by 90% and delivers pre-sold, passive candidates in 7 days. If you're hiring for a mission-critical role and aiming for $100M+ revenue scale, this is how executive search should work.
How SpaceX’s Competition with Boeing Directly Relates To Your Startup’s Success – PLUS How You Can Avoid Blowing Up Your Next Executive Search While More Easily Hitting Your Stretch Goals.
SpaceX launched it’s fourth Starship test flight this morning. Once again they managed to achieve their pre-set objectives for this mission. However, what you may not realize is Boeing got $4.2 billion to develop their astronaut capsule, while SpaceX only got $2.6 billion. Yet they finished 4 years sooner. A true demonstration of the power and impact you can have by hiring the right GTM leaders for your team. This article provides a snapshot of some key recruiting data points and offers a simple solution for helping you stay focused on more easily hitting your stretch goals while being strategic about how you work with external talent partners.