Tech-Enabled Platform Executive Search
Software is Only HAlf the Business
These companies are not software businesses, and hiring them as though they are is the most common mistake made about them.
A tech-enabled platform has software at the centre and something physical or human around it: robots in a warehouse, technicians on site, buses in a depot, underwriters pricing risk, consultants delivering work. The software is necessary and it is not sufficient. Margins come from operational execution, and the failure modes are operational too.
That shapes the leadership team in a way pure software does not. A product leader here has to understand a two-sided market where one side is people with vans. An operations leader is not overhead, they are the business. A CFO is modelling deployments and utilisation rather than recurring revenue.
The mistake is hiring pure SaaS pedigree because the pitch deck looks like SaaS. Those executives arrive expecting leverage that does not exist, and spend a year discovering the constraint is physical.
We look for operating instinct and software fluency. Both matter.
SELECTED ENGAGEMENTS
REPRESENTATIVE PLACEMENTS
Chief Financial Officer
Symbotic
A CFO hired ahead of the public markets, at a company whose revenue depends on multi-year automation deployments rather than recurring software.
Head of Data
Coalition
At a company that both underwrites cyber risk and sells the tools to reduce it, data decides what gets covered and at what price.
Board MeMber
Icreon
A director for a sponsor's digital services thesis, hired before any operating role.
Vice President of Commercial Operations
Highland Fleets
Contracting, deployment economics, and the district relationship over a multi-year term, for a company that sells a service rather than a vehicle.
Executive Vice President of Product
Field Nation
Two products pulling against each other: buyers want coverage, technicians want good work and fast payment.
Related practices
33eleven Partners places VP through C-suite leaders at tech-enabled platforms and marketplaces.