Blog Article
Every search we run tells us something about the market beyond the role itself. Combine that with what we track across funding, regulatory activity, and deal flow through GS Capital Connect, and a few patterns start to repeat often enough to be worth naming. Here are three we're watching closely right now.
1. The Order You Hire In Matters as Much as Who You Hire
Most companies build out a leadership team in whatever sequence a large corporation would use: commercial first, then regulatory, then engineering, because that's the playbook whoever is leading the search already knows. It's a reasonable default. It's also not always the right one. A company still a year out from a regulatory filing doesn't necessarily need a VP of Sales yet, but it may already need someone who has run a submission before, because the cost of getting that sequencing wrong compounds quietly for months before it becomes visible.
The instinct to reach for a familiar big-brand name follows the same logic, and it's just as mixed in practice. Sometimes the corporate hire is exactly right for the stage: the discipline and process rigor they bring is precisely what an early team lacks. Other times, they've never operated without the infrastructure a large company provides around them, the budget, the pre-built team, the existing relationships, and they struggle once that scaffolding is gone. The resume looks identical in both cases. What differs is whether the person has actually built something from a similar starting point before, not just managed something once it already existed.
The companies getting this right aren't asking "who's the best person available." They're asking "what does this specific stage actually require, and in what order should we bring people in." That's a harder question than it sounds, because it requires being honest about where the company really is, not where its ambitions say it should be. It's usually where a search partner earns their keep more than in the sourcing itself.
2. The Companies We're Talking To at Seed Are Building Leadership Teams Earlier
This one is closer to home than the other two. It's not a broad market claim, it's what we're seeing specifically in the deal flow and conversations that come through GS Capital Connect: more of the earliest-stage companies we talk to are already thinking about commercial and regulatory leadership before the round that would traditionally justify it. A conversation that used to start after a Series B is increasingly starting at seed instead.
We're not claiming this reflects the broader public funding market, which by most outside accounts is telling a more mixed story this year, some reports point to growth-stage capital pulling back sharply, others show early-stage deal count holding steady even as dollars concentrate later. What we can say with more confidence is narrower: within the specific set of companies and deals we track closely, the leadership conversation is starting earlier in the company's life than it used to, regardless of what the aggregate funding numbers are doing elsewhere.
For hiring, that shows up as timing more than budget. The companies getting ahead of it aren't necessarily raising bigger seed rounds, they're just not waiting for a later round to have the conversation about who needs to be in the room. Waiting for the funding to justify the hire is starting to run the sequence backward for a growing share of the founders we talk to.
3. Private Equity Is Compressing Search Timelines After Close
PE-backed MedTech companies aren't waiting the usual 90 to 120 days to install a CEO or commercial lead post-acquisition anymore. The firms getting the best outcomes from their acquisitions are starting the leadership search before the deal even closes, running it in parallel with diligence rather than treating it as a step-two problem once the paperwork is signed.
The logic is straightforward once you see it: the operating plan a firm underwrites during diligence assumes a certain pace of execution from day one, and every week spent searching for a CEO or commercial lead after close is a week that plan isn't being executed against. A 90-day search that starts at close was never really a 90-day delay, it was a 90-day gap in the thesis actually being run. Firms that have caught onto this are treating the leadership search as part of the deal itself, not a separate workstream that begins once ownership changes hands.
That shift changes what "ready" looks like for a search partner too. It's no longer enough to move quickly once asked. The conversation about who the business needs, and what that person needs to walk in and do immediately, has to start earlier than the transaction itself, which means being close enough to a deal to be useful before anyone has technically won the process yet.
