For search and recruiting firms
The desk behind your next mandate.
Research the way you want it. Every firm runs a search its own way, so we work to your method: which reads matter, your definition of a fit, your brand on the document. You buy a search, brief it, and ask for any report off that one search until it is right.
Your next mandate, before the brief
A seat changes hands and it lands on your watch list the same week — while the move is still news and nobody has been briefed.
MoneyGram International
Dallas, TX · Madison Dearborn Partners
A new chief financial officer took the seat in February 2026, arriving from Wells Fargo. The layer beneath a newly seated finance chief is where the next mandates come from. This is on your watch list because you work this corridor.
Why it matters
Win the mandate. Then fill the seat.
Those are the only two things a search firm is paid for, and research decides both. Three to ten firms pitch the same mandate, and a week of research costs a week whether or not you win it. Then the firm that won it has to find someone — against a market it may only have read about.
Winning it
| Pitching without the research | Pitching as the expert |
|---|---|
| General credibility, and a promise to get up to speed. | The market sized, the pool named, the money benchmarked, before the meeting. |
| You learn the sector on the client’s time. | You already know who is movable, and what the seat pays. |
| The firm that lives in the sector takes it. | You are the specialist in the room, on paper they can check. |
Filling it
| Delivering on instinct | Delivering on the read |
|---|---|
| The pool is who you can remember and who answers. | The pool mapped and named, ringed by fit, every name carrying its source. |
| You find out it is a hard seat once the clock is running. | Depth and movability read before you commit to a timeline. |
| A generic approach, rewritten per candidate. | The angle per profile, written so it goes straight into your outreach. |
One figure, traced
"Benchmarked" is a word anyone can print. This is what it looks like in the document you hand your client: the number, the filing it came from, and a link that opens on the page it sits on.
The money
What the seat pays, from the filings
Benchmarked against six filed proxies, first-year total cash for the seat centres on $538,333Fact. The rows foot exactly to the $9,377,269 total the company itself reported.
Re-fetched from the live filing at build time.
How it works
Three steps.
01
Brief the search
Two fields is a valid brief: the seat, and the market it sits in. Attach the spec and the notes you already hold and we read them.
The search
CFO, PE-backed healthcare services roll-up
Field or market
US healthcare services, multi-site providers
twelve more fields · every one optional
02
We do the research
A short call to scope it, then the market, the people and the money behind that seat. We come back with the two questions that sharpen it.
Four steps from a number in your client's hand to the filing it came from. You can walk it yourself, right now.
- The claimCFO first-year cash, benchmarked
- The figure$538,333
- LabelledFact
- The recordHubSpot DEF 14A, filed 27 April 2026
Open the filing— a real one. The rows foot exactly to the $9,377,269 total HubSpot reported.
03
Ask for anything
Any report on the menu, whenever you need it, revised until it is right. It all comes off the one search.
| Company | CFO appointed | Route in | Pay disclosed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alkami TechnologyPlano, TX · public | Nov 2025 | External | DEF 14A |
| MoneyGramDallas, TX · Madison Dearborn | Feb 2026 | External | no finding |
| Fortis Payment SystemsPlano, TX · Audax / Lovell Minnick | Nov 2025 | External | no finding |
| REPAY HoldingsAtlanta · public peer | Sep 2025 | External | DEF 14A |
| EverCommerceDenver · public | Sep 2024 | Internal | not covered |
no finding = looked, nothing published
The menu
Fifteen reports, four groups.
One search carries the lot. Take one report or every one of them, revised until they are right.
The market
Market map · Compensation benchmark · Feasibility check · Success profile
Before you pitch
The people
Talent map · Longlist · Person brief · Pool read · Approach kit
While you run it
The companies
Company brief · Org brief · Succession read · Opportunity brief
Around the seat
Between searches
Opportunity monitor · Client update
Always on
Payments / ISV, CFO
Dallas–Fort Worth · sponsor-backed, ~$200M
- Market mapwk 1
- Compensation benchmarkwk 2
- Talent mapwk 2
- Person briefnow
Industrial machinery, CEO succession
US Midwest · no client yet
- Market mapmo 2
- Succession readqueued
Two searches, and the reports each one has been asked for so far.
- Reports to choose from
- 15
- Revisions on every one
- Unlimited
- To a first draft
- One day
- On everything you send on
- Your brand
Pricing
One mandate pays for years of it.
The floor on a retained fee is $100,000. The desk starts at $2,495 a month with two searches included.
- One retained fee, at the floor
- $100k
- The minimum in our own published formula — the worked mandate in that pack is ~$240k
- Of the desk, covered by it
- 3 years
- A month to start
- $2,495
- Two searches included
Put us on a search you are already fighting for.
A short call, and we start on it. You will have a first draft in a day.