VENTURE BACKED EXECUTIVE SEARCH
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Vertical SaaS looks like software and hires like the industry it serves.
The buyer is a shop owner, a water utility superintendent, a financial advisor, a plant manager. They are not evaluating your product against other software. They are evaluating whether you understand their day. An executive who cannot hold that conversation credibly will struggle no matter how good their playbook is, and candidates rarely screen themselves out for it.
The economics compound the problem. Vertical markets are finite, so growth comes from penetration and expansion rather than an ever-widening funnel.
ACVs are often modest and volume is high, which breaks leaders whose entire experience is six-figure enterprise deals and long cycles. And because the total market is knowable, a board can calculate exactly how much of it you have, which changes what a revenue leader is being measured on.
What we screen for is whether someone can earn credibility with a buyer who has heard every pitch. Sometimes that means hiring from the industry. More often it means hiring an operator who has done this in a comparable vertical and knows how to learn a trade quickly rather than assume it transfers.
50+
Searches completed
90%
Still in seat, since 2024
98
avg. days to close
20k+
executives evaluated
RELEVANT ENGAGEMENTS
REPRESENTATIVE PLACEMENTS
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SALES
HOLISTIPLAN
Built a commercial engine on top of a product-led motion where half the customers had never spoken to a salesperson.
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ENGINEERING
ROSNET
Brought a 27-year-old restaurant platform to growth-equity cadence without disrupting what customers relied on.
VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING
SWIFTCOMPLY
Category credibility with municipal water authorities, where the buyer is a public authority with a procurement process and a regulator.
HEAD OF PRODUCT
TEKMETRIC
Product leadership for a platform whose users are shop owners and technicians, not software buyers.
DIRECTOR OF SALES
Itineris
Selling a customer information system to municipalities that replace one roughly once a generation.
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33eleven Partners places VP through C-suite leaders at Private Equity and Venture-backed vertical SaaS companies.