Bamboo Search

At Bamboo we believe the people you surround yourself with will have significant impact on success and growth, both professionally and personally. This is true across all levels but the stakes are never higher than when a startup is looking to hire executives and leadership. It is for this reason we will exclusively be focusing on executive search.

We have been approached by companies looking for executive leadership and have selectively taken on engagements with companies including Recombine, MongoDB and Latch, to name a few. We secured the first CTO for Recombine who helped lead them to a successful exit earlier this year and helped MongoDB fill a Director position which had been open for over half a year due to the rarity of candidates with the required technical and leadership expertise. As a result of our successes in retained search over the last two years and our experience prior to starting Bamboo, we have also established great relationships with some of the most successful VC firms worldwide that have relied on us to fill executive positions for their portfolio companies.

We are selectively and respectfully considering new engagements and we will continue to be make decisions with long-term, sustainable relationships in mind. We partner with NYC startups looking to secure technical leadership.

What are we seeing out there?

NYC Ecosystem

NYC is widely respected as one of the top tech hubs in the States, and the world, but as with any budding ecosystem there are challenges. One major challenge is finding proven exec leadership — there are few true tech companies in NYC with people leading teams of 30–50 people (often requested by clients).

Profitability

We spend our time meeting with top VC’s, executive leaders and engineers across the board so are lucky enough to get a good cross section of market sentiment. Startups are being asked to prove their respective business models and start moving towards profitability. In the past year it has been harder to raise money than it was even two years ago, which has led to some startups looking more closely at burn rate and deciding to cut costs where possible. Leadership at these companies has never been more important and it has resulted in an extremely competitive market.

The Importance of Being Retained

The search process is a chance to showcase the organization and decision-making ability of the company, and it can have a big impact on the candidate’s career choice. These positions can take anywhere from 3–6 months (in some cases longer) to complete and the longer it is open, the less appealing the role looks. Some obvious factors that influence a candidate’s interest level include; level of position, scope of role, stage of company, amount of funding the company has, and company brand. Less obvious is the fact that many candidates will put weight into whether the role is retained or not. Retaining a quality search firm for executive positions shows candidates the commitment to finding the right person, the readiness to hire the role, and the desire to surround themselves with the right people.