Three Hires: How a Founder-Led Platform Got PE-Ready in Under a Year

The Challenge

The company runs a cloud-based commerce platform that connects online retailers and brands to more than 150 marketplaces, automating listings, pricing, and fulfillment across channels. It had grown for close to two decades as a founder-led business before a growth private equity investor took a strategic stake in late 2024. The product worked. The leadership layer built to run a founder-led company did not match what a PE-backed SaaS platform needed next.

Three gaps needed closing at once:

• Financial discipline built for a PE board: someone who had reported into institutional capital before, not just managed a P&L.
• Operational execution at scale: a leader who could run cross-functional delivery without the founder in the room.
• Demand generation and brand: marketing built for compounding pipeline, not campaigns.

Each seat was hard to fill for the same underlying reason. The investor was running similar searches across its wider portfolio at the same time, competing for the same thin pool of PE-fluent, SaaS-native operators, in a market where the strongest candidates were already fielding calls from three other portfolio companies.

They turned to The Big Search.

Overview of the three executive searches

PE-backed e-commerce ERP SaaS platform, Germany | Three C-suite hires | January 2025 → March 2026 | PE Value Creation: Post-Investment Leadership Foundation Phase

Between January 2025 and March 2026, The Big Search partnered with the platform to build three pillars of its post-investment leadership: a Chief Financial Officer to bring board-grade financial reporting, a Chief Operating Officer to run execution at scale, and a Chief Marketing Officer to build a durable demand engine. The CFO and COO searches ran in close succession through the first half of 2025; the CMO search ran longest, evolving from a lighter-touch relationship-building exercise across the investor's wider portfolio into a full active search once the brief sharpened. All three searches closed. Client NPS was not formally captured on any of the three searches.

Phase 1 — Building the Financial Foundation: Chief Financial Officer

‍January 2025 → July 2025 | PE Value Creation: Post-Investment Leadership Foundation Phase

Days after the investment closed, the business needed a CFO who understood both institutional reporting and scale-up pragmatism. The role required someone who had already sat across the table from a private equity board, not someone learning it for the first time on the job.

Executive Search Across the Investor's Portfolio Bench and Wider DACH SaaS Finance Leadership

Rather than starting a cold search, we drew first on a bench of SaaS finance leaders already mapped and vetted across the investor's broader portfolio, then widened into the general DACH SaaS finance market. We targeted:

• CFOs with direct PE or growth-equity board reporting experience
• A track record of moving a company from cash-burning to break-even
• Prior involvement in an M&A exit process, not just a funding round
• DACH-based or DACH-fluent, comfortable operating bilingually
• Comfort holding both CFO and COO-style scope in a lean leadership team

We undertook an exhaustive mapping exercise across the DACH SaaS market, identifying 212 candidates.

Days to first shortlist delivery: 2 days from kick-off

⏱ Days to first shortlist delivery: 2 days from kick-off

The funnel here is almost a straight line, and that shape tells its own story. Only one candidate ever reached Tier 1, because that candidate had already been vetted for a comparable CFO mandate inside the same investor's portfolio months earlier. Depth came from the 21 candidates held at Tier 2 as a insurance layer, not from breadth of live competition for the seat.

The Placed Candidate: A PhD Economist Who Took a SaaS Company From Cash-Burning to a Nasdaq-Listed Buyer

The CFO spent over a decade at a major German media group, running finance and operations for a digital advertising unit responsible for close to €2 billion in annual revenue, following an earlier career stint at a top-tier strategy consultancy. They then took on a combined CFO & COO role at a SaaS company, where he took the business from cash-burning to break-even in under a year, ran funding rounds with tier-1 VCs, and led the exit process through to acquisition by a Nasdaq-listed martech platform.

Why they fit:

🎓 Academic rigor: PhD in Economics from a top German technical university, plus a strategy-consulting background in pricing and tech/media work.

🏢 Institutional-scale finance: 12+ years at a major media group with financial responsibility across a ~€2bn revenue business.

🚀 Proven turnaround: took his prior company from cash-burning to break-even in under 12 months.

💼 Exit precedent: led the M&A process through to acquisition by a listed martech buyer.

🤝 Pre-vetted fit: already assessed against a comparable CFO brief inside the investor's wider portfolio, which is what made the fast shortlist possible.

Phase 2 — Building Operational Execution: Chief Operating Officer

‍February 2025 → August 2025 | PE Value Creation: Post-Investment Leadership Foundation Phase

With the CFO search underway, the business opened a parallel search for a COO who could run cross-functional execution without leaning on the founder. The role sat at the intersection of customer success, operations, and delivery, a narrower profile than a generic COO brief.

Executive Search Across European Enterprise Software Operations Leadership

We targeted operators who had run customer-facing operations at scale inside enterprise software companies that had themselves been through PE-driven consolidation:

• Senior operations or customer success leadership inside enterprise SaaS
• Direct experience operating through an M&A integration, not just witnessing one
• Global team leadership across multiple regions
• Comfort reporting into a PE-backed board
• Technical enough to hold credibility with product and engineering functions

We undertook an exhaustive mapping exercise across European enterprise software operations leadership, identifying 102 candidates.

Days to first shortlist delivery: 6 days from kick-off

⏱ Days to first shortlist delivery: 6 days from kick-off

This was the tightest funnel of the three searches, with only 2 of 102 mapped candidates ever reaching Tier 1. The combination of enterprise operations depth and lived M&A-integration experience is rare enough that once the right profile surfaced, the process moved straight to a decision without a separately logged recruiter-interview stage.

The Placed Candidate: An Operations Leader Forged Inside Two Major Enterprise Software Mergers

The COO, an engineer by training, spent 15 years at a global industrial software company, building its Middle East and Africa operations from the ground up before taking on Asia-Pacific, then carried that team through the company's acquisition by a larger listed industrial software group. They most recently served as SVP Customer Success at a PE-backed group of 1,900+ employees serving 70,000+ customers globally, formed via the merger of two design-software companies.

Why they fit:

🌍 Built from zero: stood up a region's operations from scratch, then took on a second region, delivering roughly 5x revenue growth over five years.

🔀 Lived through two integrations: two separate acquisitions/mergers, giving him direct experience operating through PE-driven consolidation.

👥 Scale of team leadership: led global teams of 50+ across presales, services, and customer success functions.

📈 Comparable platform experience: operated inside another PE-backed, multi-brand SaaS platform of similar scale and complexity.

🎯 Technical credibility: engineering background that lets him operate fluently with product and engineering leadership.

Phase 3 — Building Demand and Brand: Chief Marketing Officer

‍March 2025 → March 2026 | PE Value Creation: Post-Investment Leadership Foundation Phase

The CMO search opened alongside the CFO and COO mandates but ran on a different track. It began as a lighter-touch relationship-building exercise across the investor's wider portfolio bench, then converted into a full active search once the CFO and COO seats were filled and the brief for a growth-focused CMO sharpened. This was the longest and deepest search of the three.

Executive Search Across DACH and UK SaaS Growth Marketing Leadership

Once the search went active, we targeted growth marketers who had already proven they could build a demand engine without over-hiring:

• SaaS growth marketing leadership with direct inbound and demand generation ownership
• Experience scaling a brand and repositioning it for a new buyer segment
• Prior involvement in an M&A or exit process from the marketing seat
• Team leadership at 25+ headcount across performance marketing, content, CRM, and brand
• DACH-based with UK or broader international GTM exposure

We undertook an exhaustive mapping exercise across DACH and UK SaaS growth marketing leadership, identifying 237 candidates.

Days to first shortlist delivery: 92 days from the search going fully active

⏱ Days to first shortlist delivery: 92 days from the search going fully active

This was by far the deepest and most conventional funnel of the three: 26 candidates reached Tier 1, 27 reached Tier 2, and 8 went through recruiter interviews before a hire emerged. The extended timeline reflects patience for a specific and rare combination, real demand-generation ownership plus real exit experience from the marketing seat, not process delay.

The Placed Candidate: A Growth Marketer Who Already Helped One SaaS Company Exit to a Tier-1 Buyer

The CMO built her career scaling SaaS go-to-market functions, most notably as VP Marketing at a fleet-management SaaS company, where they scaled the inbound B2B funnel to €6M ARR and a self-service product line to €15M ARR through a fully automated, no-touch model, while sitting on the exit team when a US growth equity firm acquired the company. They most recently served as VP Growth & Operations at a B2B trade platform, owning growth and operations strategy company-wide.

Why they fit:

📈 Proven demand engine builder: scaled a prior company's inbound funnel to €6M ARR and its self-service line to €15M ARR without ballooning headcount.

🤝 Exit-side experience: sat on the exit team during a growth equity acquisition, direct exposure to preparing a company's commercial story for a PE-grade transaction.

👥 Team leadership at scale: managed teams of 25 to 35+ across performance marketing, CRM, content, brand, and product marketing on seven-figure budgets.

🌍 Cross-market GTM: owned go-to-market and product positioning across both DACH and the UK.

🔧 Cross-functional range: her most recent role combined growth and operations, the same breadth the platform needed post-investment.

A PE investment does not build a leadership team. It funds one, and someone still has to go find it.

Across three searches over 14 months, The Big Search delivered a CFO, a COO, and a CMO to a platform rebuilding its leadership layer for institutional ownership. The fastest hire was also the most familiar: a CFO drawn from a bench already vetted inside the investor's wider portfolio closed in 119 days. The slowest was the most differentiated: a growth marketer with real exit experience took 236 days to find, because operators who have actually sat inside an M&A process from the marketing seat are rare.

If your portfolio company just took investment and the leadership layer hasn't caught up, let's talk.