I need to tell you how this happened. Not the polished version. The real one.

The short version is that my partner Mike Martin and I just launched the Bearhug Network, a two-sided marketplace that connects the people who hire executives with the executives who are either actively looking or are open if the right opportunity were to come knocking.

Anonymized profiles. Vetted by the Bearhug team. Browse, filter, request an introduction, and we handle everything from there.

If you've ever been asked "who do you know" for a critical hire and wished you had a better answer, or if you've ever wanted to quietly explore what's out there without broadcasting it to the world, this is what we built and why.

The longer version is that this thing has been living in my head for a decade. I tried to build it twice before and stopped short due to the enormous effort and expense, and then it accidentally came into existence over 21 sleepless days in May 2026 as a side effect of a completely different project. Roughly 350 hours managing 7 coding agents in tandem (a very different experience than managing humans, I must say), about $5,000 in total investment, and somewhere north of 75,000 lines of production code later, here we are. I've never written a line of code in my life, and do NOT consider myself technical (at all).

But I need to start at the beginning.

Why This World Captivated Me

From the very first time I learned about executive search, I was hooked. A small niche cottage industry built on trust and relationships, where a service provider like me could be handsomely compensated for the value of helping make an executive placement. Obviously intriguing. But the thing that was far more important was the actual work itself.

My entire career as an entrepreneur since the age of 19 had been in marketing, business development, and sales. Not executive search. But the work hit the bullseye for me in a way that checked nearly every box for my personal interests and genetic wiring.

I've always been fascinated by why businesses succeed or fail, how teams are built, how products find product-market fit, how capital is raised and managed, and how ultimately business can be a positive force for good.

In executive search, I saw a chance to insert myself into the most interesting conversations at the board level and play a key role at a pivotal moment where the right hire could determine whether the business reached its next stage of growth.

This is why "Topgrading" by Brad Smart sat at the top of my favorite books list long before I knew executive search was even a thing, and why "Who" by Geoff Smart (Brad's son) dethroned it once I got into the business. It was validating to find the subject matter and see my place in the world through that lens. That validation gave me the tenacity to jump in without any formal training or prior search experience.

Every top performer I interviewed before starting Bearhug told me there was zero chance anyone could succeed without first joining one of the top five firms for at least five years. Yet despite everyone saying I'd fail, here I am still standing a decade later, and the lessons from that decade are baked into every feature of the network you're about to see.

10 Years, 18 Unique Experiments, and the Lessons That Led Here

Having come in with a fresh perspective rather than inheriting the established playbook, I questioned everything. The way searches are conducted. The way models are commercially structured. The way candidates are screened and managed through the process. And how to make use of all the incredible people I'd meet during a search who wouldn't make it to the presentation stage, people often discarded with nothing to offer them.

Not to mention the thousands who come inbound every year hoping we can help them land a job, despite our job being to find people for jobs, not jobs for people, as we headhunters say behind the scenes. That reality pains every one of us. If you're one of those people, this story is especially for you, because the network we built is designed to finally give you a seat at a table that's been invisible until now.

Over the past decade, I've attempted no fewer than 18 distinct models to shape and evolve how executive search is conducted. I'll name three.

CEO Flow was a subscription recruiting model for early-stage venture-backed CEOs. Instead of a one-time placement fee, CEOs would pay monthly and get multiple fully-managed candidate pipelines with no placement fees attached. Reduce their risk, increase their capacity, create a continuity-based partnership rather than a reactive one-off engagement. We sold it. But the convention of how search is bought and sold was too ingrained for broad adoption.

Top of Funnel Talent let CEOs share responsibility for managing the search lifecycle to dramatically reduce their fee. We'd handle the first half (strategy, sourcing, screening, shortlist), then hand off to the client to run interviews and close. The big idea was that 80% of the expertise lives in the first 20% of the search lifecycle, so by handing off at the halfway point with a vetted shortlist, we could cut fees by more than half.

It was a mess. The candidate experience suffered because clients didn't pick up the handoff with the same white-glove treatment. Leaving them to close without us brokering in the middle left too much to chance. It only reestablished why the full end-to-end process matters. The concept eventually evolved into a fully automated version for mid-level recruiting that works well, but for executive search, the lesson was clear: the full process is worth the full fee.

The Fund-Level Human Capital System was built for venture and PE firms. Instead of solving leadership gaps one portfolio company at a time after problems surface, we proposed a proactive system with a two-way sync between a fund's upcoming needs and our ability to pre-recruit on behalf of the entire portfolio. Each month, portfolio CEOs would receive a talent digest of 100 to 1,000 pre-recruited executives who'd already raised their hands to take exploratory calls, complete with contact info, work history, and an automated booking system.

The system is still live. But it requires funds to buy into a paradigm they haven't seen before, and that takes time. For those where it fits, imagine being a portfolio CEO who can submit upcoming needs and have pre-vetted talent delivered on a silver platter the next month.

What these three and the other 15 experiments I ran had in common was that they were too unconventional for wider adoption. Not because they were wrong. Because they didn't meet the market where it was. After a decade of trying, I realized the better path is to meet the market where they are, misconceptions and all, while still delivering the most incredible experience possible for the most value. That realization is what led to the Bearhug Network, and why the network is designed around how you already think about hiring and career moves rather than asking you to learn a new paradigm.

What Buyers of Search Actually Want (and What They Get Wrong)

Talking with thousands of board members, investors, and CEOs evaluating talent partners, I've learned three things. If you've ever hired a search firm or considered it, you'll probably recognize yourself in at least one of these.

But search is search, at least the way we do it. We start from scratch every time with a beginner's mind, build the candidate list from the ground up, and in 45 to 60 days we've got a signed offer letter. Firms that specialize in one function are more incentivized to recycle people they already know. We always start from scratch. It takes an extra week, but the coverage, depth, and audit trail give us a much higher probability of finding the best right person. And due to the other efficiencies we bake in, we're 2.5x faster than the industry average.

No disrespect to headhunters who already know the eight people they're going to call by the time they arrive back home after an intake. That's powerful. But is that really the best way to serve your client? That's a debate I'll never stand down from.

Boutique firms like Bearhug get a lot of work cleaning up the aftermath. By going boutique, clients also get the benefit of our lower overhead equating to them getting a better deal, a higher-quality experience, and searches that close in about half the time.

That last one happens constantly and stings a bit every time. Why? Because that's simply not how this industry works. The chances of randomly stumbling upon the right person (or the right job for a person who's looking) with the hundreds of little things that magically have to line up is sub-1%.

We're always happy to try and help, but there's only so much matchmaking you can justify doing for free, aside from the fact that without doing at least an hour-long intake with the hiring authority, it would be worse than trying to throw spaghetti at the wall hoping something might stick. And that's not the business we're in.

This was actually the primary impetus for the Bearhug Network. If you've ever made either of those asks (and most of us have), the network is the answer you were looking for. Browse anonymized profiles of vetted executives, filtered by function and expertise, and request an introduction when someone catches your eye. No search engagement required. No fee unless a placement is made.

The Accidental 21-Day Sprint

Building a two-sided marketplace for executive search had stalled out on me twice before. A few hundred grand to build, a team of engineers, 6 to 12 months of work. Too enormous. But I couldn't let it go.

Then May 2026 changed everything. We all remember the moment around the turn of the year when the headlines hit that developers at the biggest tech companies were no longer writing their own code. It was being written by the model itself. I knew my time would come, but I stayed on the sidelines waiting for the right moment.

In early March, I'd built a personalized email campaign using Claude AI and started doing technical things I'd never tried. By late April, I had an ah-ha moment. For 18 months I'd thought we were "AI native" because we were using AI tools across our workflows. But I hadn't grasped what truly AI native means.

For us, it meant operating all our workflows through prompts run by Claude. So I began creating what became known as "the brain," with Claude as the intelligence layer orchestrating everything through the apps it connected to. We fast-tracked getting 100% of our data out of disconnected silos, dumped it into the brain, and killed off any tool that didn't have a deep integration. That realization unexpectedly kicked off a 21-day sprint that consumed my entire life. Eighteen-hour days straight.

What I wasn't aware of was what Marc Andreessen has called the "AI Vampire" phenomenon. People having the time of their lives building things that were never before possible, but unable to walk away from their computers, babysitting agents 24/7. I didn't realize my wife and two kids wouldn't see me for 21 days.

I came out beaming (but exhausted), having built the MVP of the Bearhug Network. About $5,000 in total investment. Over 75,000 lines of production code. More than 20,000 executive profiles from the search work Mike and I had done over our combined 30 years, all loaded into the brain, fully researched, enriched, and staged. All without any prior experience doing anything technical. And all of it built for you to use starting right now.

What Actually Got Built (and What It Means for You)

The marketplace was the headline, but building the brain was 95% of the real work.

What ended up being built was not only the network but an almost complete replacement for the firm's entire sales, marketing, and search project management stack. Six SaaS tools retired. Cheaper and more automated data enrichment saving several thousand annually. Overseas admin labor, fully replaced with an AI-native system.

I was even unexpectedly able to automate more and more of the administrative drudgery Mike and I used to do manually, to the tune of freeing up what I anticipate will be about 80% of our time we'll get back thanks to these automated tools, freeing both of us to spend more time doing what we're truly best at: talking with people and delivering our services at a speed I believe will allow for us to at least 2x our productive output.

Here's what that means for you. Whether you're a CEO trying to calibrate a hire, an investor who wants a bench of operators to point your portfolio companies toward, or an executive who wants to be positioned for the right opportunities, the system behind the Bearhug Network isn't a static directory.

It's a living, AI-powered brain that's continuously enriching profiles, surfacing matches, and getting smarter about what great looks like in every function and every industry we touch. New profiles are added daily. A weekly highlights reel goes to subscribers. And every introduction request gets personally screened by the Bearhug team so we can evaluate and present a strong business case we'll ensure matches the interests of our executive and emerging leaders network.

From the perspective of being a search firm owner, this new setup feels like going from a horse and buggy to flying a spaceship. It's not perfect yet. The learning curve was insane and is ongoing. I created thousands of unexpected messes inside the system as I tried to build the spaceship while flying it. But new data flowing in works properly, and it's genuinely magical to have seen for myself the ability to leverage technology to do what it's always promised, and leave the humans to do the parts they're truly best at.

The Biggest Unlock Of All? Solving the "Who Do You Know" Problem

Every successful business person will at some point be asked "Who do you know..." when someone in their network is trying to make an important hire. And the person being asked often finds themselves in an awkward position.

They may know people who could be referred. But whether those people would want the job or leave their current role is a big unknown. And depending on the situation, it may not even be comfortable or appropriate for them to ask as it could be seen as a conflict of interest. And not everyone has the time to dig up names, craft outreach, and facilitate warm introductions.

"Hey, can you just flip me a couple of great CRO candidates that can help us 10x our revenue in the next 18 months who'll be a good culture fit, match our budget, and who lives within a 20 minute drive to the office? That'd be great, thanks!"

Joking aside, this is often how it comes across. It's a massive lift to dig through your network, surface the right names, pitch them on something compelling, and put two people together. That's exactly why specialty exec search firms like Bearhug exist.

This is especially true for investors and senior executives.

The people with the most connections and influence are the ones with the least time to do the matchmaking. They default to recommending search firms they've worked with, not because it's the better option, but because they lack the bandwidth. With the Bearhug Network, there's now a faster way that saves time, saves money, and avoids the awkward moment of hesitation.

Next time someone asks you "who do you know," you have a new answer. Send them the link to the Bearhug Network. Let them browse. If they see someone worth meeting, they click one button and we handle everything from there. You just went from "let me think about it and get back to you" to being the person with the answer in 30 seconds. No digging, no awkward favors, no risk to your reputation.

And that brings us to the other side of the same coin, the friend or colleague who asks you to help them find their next opportunity.

The Invisible Talent Problem

On the other side, the misconception among executives looking for their next gig is that applying for posted jobs will get them access to the best opportunities. An estimated 70 to 80% of all jobs are never publicly posted.

At the executive level, it’s closer to 90%+, with senior roles filled almost entirely through search firms like Bearhug, referrals, and closed networks (like the Bearhug Network) before a job board ever sees them.

If you're a senior leader who's passively open or actively exploring, the math is working against you. The best opportunities are being filled through channels you can't see.

The Bearhug Network changes that equation.

When you register to join the network, our intake is designed to pull all the right aspects of your career history out of your brain and put them into our brain in a way that allows us to position you in the most compelling way possible. The goal is to help your profile get seen by the people looking to hire someone who can provide the exact value you can offer. Upon our team completing the screening and approval process, your profile can go live within a day or two, anonymized and up on the network, getting seen by people who'd have otherwise not even known you existed.

CEOs, investors, and board members browse the network when they have a need. When someone wants to meet you, we screen the request before it ever reaches you. Nothing hits your inbox that isn't worth your time. You're not applying to a job posting. You're being discovered by the people who make hiring decisions, on your terms.

Both sides win. Matches can be made as a one-off through browsing and requesting an introduction. Or by requesting access to browse our entire database beyond the public slice we refresh weekly. Or by benchmarking off a few intros and then engaging with us to run a comprehensive retained search.

The Time Is Now

Mike and I couldn't be more excited to bring this to market.

If you hire executives (or advise, invest in, or sit on the board of companies that do), the Bearhug Network is live at bearhugrecruiting.com/network. Browse the profiles. Request introductions. Subscribe for the weekly highlights reel so the best new profiles come directly to you. Next time someone asks you "who do you know," send them this link and be the person who had the answer.

If you're an executive who's passively open, actively exploring, or interested in board, advisory, or fractional engagements, register at bearhugrecruiting.com/join-network. Your profile goes in anonymized. Nothing identifies you. We screen every request before it reaches you. The best time to position yourself is when you're not desperately looking, and this is designed to work on your timeline, not ours.

If you know people who belong in here, refer them. You become the person who brought them access they wouldn't have found on their own. And if you send a hiring authority to the network who engages with us and we make a placement, you'll love getting unexpected (and sizable) checks in the mail as our way of saying thanks.

Let's make this whole executive matchmaking process a lot more fun, efficient, and rewarding for everyone involved.