Madrigal defied the typical 12-18 month pre-launch hiring window by bringing in a new CEO just seven months before approval. He leveraged his network to quickly assemble an experienced commercial team he had worked with before, enabling the company to build a sales force and launch in record time.

Mid-market private equity funds build internal value creation teams to support portfolio companies with critical functions like hiring. These teams leverage established processes and headhunter networks, enabling a new CEO to build an executive team far faster than they could alone.

To build a resilient team during a tough economic period, CEO Sean Ainsworth prioritized finding people who deeply understood the 'why' behind the science and its patient impact. This created a committed core team that could navigate funding challenges when capital was scarce for unproven gene therapies.

Counter to the adage that "startups shouldn't buy startups," Cursor successfully uses M&A as a core recruiting strategy. They acquire small, talented teams working on complementary problems, viewing acquisitions as a way to onboard the best people who happen to already be working on their own companies.

A scaling founder can avoid "breaking the model" during hypergrowth by hiring senior leaders with proven track records in similar environments. For example, Profound hired a CRO who previously scaled a company with the same target customer to $250M, bringing invaluable experience to manage chaos.

Actively recruiting entrepreneurs whose own ventures recently failed brings in smart, driven individuals with high ownership and a hunger to prove themselves. This is invaluable in the early, capital-constrained days when you need a team with a founder's DNA.

Instead of a traditional executive search, Miro took an unconventional route to fill its C-suite: it acquired competitor InVision and appointed its CEO, Jeff Chow, as Miro's Chief Product and Technology Officer. This move secured proven leadership and an experienced team in a single strategic transaction.

Cereno's CEO reconnected with a prominent cardiologist he'd worked with 20 years earlier. This long-dormant relationship was pivotal; the expert agreed to chair the Scientific Advisory Board and then recruited other leading physicians, instantly giving the company top-tier scientific validation.

Hiring external executives is risky because the best talent is rarely looking for a job. A better strategy is to promote hungry internal candidates, even if they seem underqualified, and support them with rented expertise from executive coaches and advisors.