Vertical SaaS Executive Search

SAFESEND

vertical saas

FinTech and WealthTech

ACQUIRED | Thomson Reuters, 2025

INVESTORS | Lead Edge Capital

Pe-backed

Everyone automates tax preparation. Almost nobody automated what happens after it.

SafeSend Returns automates the last mile of the tax process: assembly, delivery, e-signature, and client follow-up on the finished return. It became the standard for accounting firms that had digitised everything up to the point where a partner still printed, signed, and mailed.

the engagement

Lead Edge Capital introduced 33eleven Partners to SafeSend in 2021. We ran five searches over three years across customer success, product, engineering, and marketing, through to the company's acquisition.

5

Searches completed

5

CANDIDATES PLACED

97

avg. days to close

1.5K+

executives evaluated

PLACEMENTS

SafeSend's customers are accounting firms in the middle of tax season, where a support failure is a missed deadline. This role owned that relationship.
Closed in 60 days. 349 executives evaluated.
As the customer base scaled, customer success became an executive function rather than a team.
126 days. 303 executives evaluated, 9 submitted.
Product leadership for a company whose users are accountants, a group with exacting workflow expectations and no tolerance for change during busy season.
91 days. 242 executives evaluated.
Engineering leadership for a platform handling sensitive financial documents at seasonal peak load.
106 days. 331 executives evaluated, 9 submitted.
The most senior of the five, hired to take SafeSend from a product accountants recommended to each other into a category leader with a market position.
103 days. 303 executives evaluated, 7 submitted.

PARTNERSHIP INSIGHTS

Five searches, one sponsor, and a leadership team built for an outcome.

SafeSend was the second company Lead Edge Capital brought us into, and the pattern that emerged here is the one that repeated at Holistiplan, Cove, Artera, Gooten, and IGM Technology. Fifteen searches across six portfolio companies.

What a sponsor relationship gives you is not shortcuts. It is a shared definition of what good looks like. By the fourth search at SafeSend we knew which candidate profiles would clear a Lead Edge board and which would stall, and we stopped presenting the second kind.