01 / Founder-equivalent
Chief Product Officer
First product hire at a Series B/C building their exec team. Owns strategy, org design, and the founder's transition out of the product seat.
Series B–CRetainedExec
TalentLayer runs senior product searches for founders who still own the roadmap. We write the hiring thesis first, then score candidates against it.
Retained fees are 10–12% of CTC. Project work starts at 5–7%. Full pricing
What TalentLayer is
A specialist product-leadership search firm for Series A–C startups. We work retained on one role at a time, write the hiring thesis with you, and score every serious candidate against it before anyone speaks.
The deliverable isn't a longlist. It's a Fit Card, a Reference Dossier, and an Interview Kit — scored artifacts you keep regardless of outcome. We charge a percentage of CTC, not a quarter of it.
The cost of a miss
Fully loaded, a bad senior product hire often costs £180k+ once you count base, equity, recruiting, onboarding, and a year of product bets pointed the wrong way.
Roadmap velocity drops while you unwind it. Your best engineers wait for direction. Most founders take another 6–9 months before they re-open the search — pride and board optics delay the call.
Every serious candidate takes hours you do not have. The role stays open because you cannot run search and run the company at once.
Without a clear Spec you hire for polish and pedigree. The scorecard becomes a list of nice-to-haves no single person can satisfy.
Someone left. Engineering is covering product. The board is asking. Offers go out before the evaluation criteria do.
Two polite calls with people the candidate chose. You learn almost nothing about how they handle ambiguity, founders, or a stalled roadmap.
Fit Lab
Every credible candidate gets a Fit Card against your Spec. You see stage match, shipping record, founder chemistry, and compensation realism — with evidence attached.
A 0→1 operator dropped into a 40-engineer org will drown. A process builder in a 12-person startup will suffocate. We score the match between their pattern and your actual constraints — team size, funding stage, and the decisions this hire will own.
Built product from 4→28 people in a regulated environment. Two prior companies in adjacent verticals. References describe clarity under ambiguity and a habit of owning scope rather than waiting for it.
Have they shipped the right things at this stage — or only shipped at scale? We look for prioritisation under constraint, kill decisions, and activation or retention movement, not feature volume or brand-name logos.
Led the pivot from SMB to mid-market. Cut the roadmap by roughly 40% and improved activation over two quarters. Prior team: “ruthless about what does not ship.”
Will they work with you under pressure? We test for how they handle founder involvement, board noise, and disagreement — without politics or disappearing into process.
Three references described “protects the team from noise.” Previous founder: “best product hire I made.” Flag: prefers high autonomy; needs an explicit operating cadence with a hands-on CEO.
Do expectations match your band and equity story? We surface mismatches before you burn interview cycles — and before offer stage becomes a surprise.
Targeting £150–170k base + 0.8–1.5% depending on stage. Candidate band sits inside range if process moves in weeks. Also exploring one later-stage role above band.
How we work
Retained mandates usually run 6–12 weeks from signed brief to accepted offer. Partners own the hard calls; you get artifacts your team can use, not a CV dump.
Structured intake with founders and stakeholders. We name the decisions this hire will own, the constraints they operate inside, and 12–18 month success criteria.
We map the market and score every credible candidate on the four Fit Lab dimensions. You receive Fit Cards you can debate in ten minutes.
Deep references become a Reference Dossier. We design the interview process and hand you the Interview Kit with rubrics. Partners debrief every round.
Offer framing and negotiation support. After start, structured check-ins at 30 / 60 / 90 days catch misalignment while it is still cheap to fix.
Scope, decision rights, constraints, and success criteria for the first 12–18 months.
One page per candidate: four scores, evidence, risks, recommendation.
Structured, attributable references from people who have seen the work.
Exercises, questions, and scoring rubrics tied to your Spec.
Offer design, compensation realism, negotiation through signed acceptance.
Check-ins with the new leader and stakeholders. Included on retained.
Roles we recruit for
We only build out product leadership teams. That narrowness is the reason the Fit Cards work: we know what "good" looks like at each rung because we've written the thesis a hundred times.
01 / Founder-equivalent
First product hire at a Series B/C building their exec team. Owns strategy, org design, and the founder's transition out of the product seat.
02 / Head of function
Leads a team of 3–8 PMs at a scaling Series A/B. Translates founder vision into roadmap, hiring plan, and shipping cadence.
03 / Builder
Player-coach for a 2–5 person product org at a post-Series-A company. Keeps hands on the roadmap while levelling the team.
04 / Senior IC
Owns a product line or multiple squads. The first rung where "individual contributor" stops meaning doing the work yourself.
05 / Senior IC
Cross-cutting IC. Sets standards across squads, mentors PMs, owns the hardest ambiguous problem the founder has.
06 / Specialist
For the rare roles where the wrong hire is expensive enough to warrant the full Fit Card process — not every PM seat.
We don't run a generalist recruitment desk. If your role is engineering, design, growth, or GTM, we'll point you at someone we trust rather than take it on.
Talk to us about a role →Where we sit
Traditional retained search often runs 25–35% of CTC. We specialise in one function, charge less, and leave you with scored artifacts.
What you receive
Every engagement produces scored, attributable work product — not a PDF of bullet-point impressions.
Four scored dimensions before the first interview. Stage-fit, shipping DNA, founder chemistry, comp realism — each backed by evidence, not gut feel.
Attributable references with explicit risk language. Every claim has a named source, role, and context — so you know exactly what you're getting.
Structured scoring rubrics so every interviewer asks the same questions against the same criteria. No more "I got a good vibe."
These are working samples. Real artifacts use attributable references, company-specific context, and explicit risk language.
Pricing
Fee scales with the role. A Head of Product at Series A is a different hire than a CPO at Series C.
End-to-end: Spec, Fit Cards, dossiers, interview design, partner involvement through close and the 90-day loop.
Same evidence layer — Spec, Fit Cards, Dossier — without full retained close support. Useful when you have internal capacity.
Fit check
FAQ
A short brief is enough. We reply within two business days, including when we are the wrong firm for the work.
Advance to final round. Strong stage match and shipping record. Chemistry is workable if decision rights and operating cadence are agreed before offer.