Goldcast's founders actively connected their marketing leader with an experienced CMO and sponsored the engagement. This demonstrates a powerful, tangible investment in professional development that accelerates a leader's growth in navigating executive and board-level challenges.

Alpine recruits top MBA graduates into a two-year training program where they are mentored by experienced portfolio CEOs. This creates a homegrown, internal pipeline of leaders steeped in the firm's playbook, de-risking future leadership needs and ensuring cultural alignment.

3G's playbook involves installing a high-urgency culture, typically found in cash-strapped startups, into established companies. This is achieved by hiring people "who want to get everything done yesterday" and creating extreme transparency around ambitious goals, focusing 95% of energy on execution.

Delaying key hires to find the "perfect" candidate is a mistake. The best outcomes come from building a strong team around the founder early on, even if it requires calibration later. Waiting for ideal additions doesn't create better companies; early execution talent does.

To protect a distinct and powerful culture at scale, a firm should avoid hiring senior leaders from the outside. Instead, hire talented people earlier in their careers and grow them into the firm's specific ways of operating, ensuring cultural alignment for the most critical roles.

Venture capitalists' common advice to 'up-level the team' with outside executives often overlooks a better option. Parker Conrad argues that promoting homegrown leaders is 'really underrated.' They possess deep institutional knowledge and established trust, which significantly lowers the risk compared to external hires.

BBDO's Andrew Robertson became CEO at 29 not just for his talent, but because two older, conflicting leaders saw him as a neutral third party they could both agree on. This highlights how political dynamics can create unexpected opportunities for junior talent.

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.

The founder hired an experienced CEO and then rotated through leadership roles in different departments (brand, product, tech). This created a self-designed, high-stakes apprenticeship, allowing him to learn every facet of the business from experts before confidently retaking the CEO role.