Run by the ex-Founding AE of PassFort — integral to the £0–£5m ARR journey, the Series A and the exit to Moody’s. Flint has lived this journey, so you get first-hand insight into the good and the bad of early-stage sales hiring before you commit to a hire.
None of them are the candidate's fault. All three are decided before anyone is approached.
No repeatable sale to hand over, so the hire is asked to find product-market fit on the founder's behalf. Six months of building infrastructure, then they leave.
Big logos and framework vocabulary read well and predict nothing at seed. The seller who thrived inside a machine rarely builds one.
No playbook, no onboarding, no founder time. The hire guesses at pricing and pitch, and the cost lands back on the founder's desk anyway.
Every search runs the same way, in the same order. You always know which step you are on.
Twelve questions, answered before we meet. It scores what you have proven against what you can carry, and tells us which seat we should be talking about.
3 minutes · freeWe sit down together and run deep discovery on your go-to-market as it stands today: the motion, the buyers, the pipeline, the enablement and the gaps.
The Flint GTM FrameworkWe design the scorecard and the hiring plan. Competencies weighted to your stage, must-haves agreed, and the bar set in numbers before anyone is approached.
Signed off before sourcingHeadhunted against the Blueprint. Every candidate you see has already been pressure-tested against your stage, your buyer and your motion.
600+ AE poolA live exercise against your buyer, structured references, and support through offer and negotiation to signed.
Evidence over CVsCheck-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days, coaching for the hire and a written debrief. My fee stays tied to them clearing probation.
40% unbilled until probationA generalist covers two of these six steps: find people, send CVs. The four they skip are the ones that decide whether the hire survives the year.
Diagnoses whether you are ready to hire at all, and for which seat.
The Flint GTM FrameworkTurns the Audit into a weighted scorecard, a comp band and a hiring plan.
Scorecard signed offHeadhunted from the pools that produce operators who sell in regulated markets.
600+ AE poolEvery candidate tested with a live exercise against your buyer, and referenced.
Evidence, not CVsCoaching for the hire, not just the placement. Check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days.
Fee tied to probationYou keep the playbook, the scorecard and the calibration for the next hire.
Every search is easierThe salary is the line founders count. It is rarely half of it. Averages for a UK seed-stage company, hire terminated at month six.
Employer costs: National Insurance at 15% above the £5,000 threshold, plus 3% auto-enrolment pension. Recruitment fee: 20% contingent, the market average, treated as sunk because most contingent guarantees are rebate-only and expire at 12 weeks. Onboarding: laptop, CRM and data seats, enablement and travel. Founder time: 120 hours for an Associate and 100 for an AE across 26 weeks — onboarding, deal reviews, call shadowing and the performance conversations — costed at £75 an hour fully loaded. Replacement: a second fee at the same rate. Revenue delayed assumes a nine-month gap between the first start date and a productive seller, valued at the pipeline or quota contribution that seat was hired to produce, net of what the departing hire achieved. Runway is shown against a £60,000 monthly burn. Commission is excluded: a failing hire rarely earns it.
Twelve questions, three minutes. You get a scored read on whether your sale is repeatable enough to hand over, whether you can carry the hire, the job title you should actually be recruiting, and the characteristics that person needs. Some founders get told to keep selling themselves. That answer is free too.
The early commercial team, in the order most companies build it. Which seat comes first is the conversation, and it is what the Audit settles.
Top of funnel. Builds the outbound motion and books the meetings the founder or AE closes.
Founder-supported. Qualification, account research and follow-up, so the founder's time goes on closing.
Full-cycle on a motion that already works, with the founder setting strategy and pricing.
Owns the number and builds the playbook underneath it. The first true commercial hire.
Player-coach. Still carries a number while hiring and ramping the first sellers.
Builds and runs the team, the forecast and the process once the motion is proven.
The fee is a percentage of a set salary benchmark for the role, agreed in writing before the search begins. It is calculated on the benchmark rather than the final offer, so improving the package to land the right candidate never increases what you pay Flint.
GTM Audit, Candidate Blueprint, Managed Search and Embed check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days.
Everything in Standard, plus GTM set-up and a playbook draft, Flint on the interview panel, a custom ramp plan for the hire and on-call support through their first 90 days.
Five to eight weeks from Blueprint sign-off to offer, provided interview slots are held in the diary from the start. Notice periods then add four weeks to three months depending on the pool. Compressing the search below that means fewer candidates and a weaker comparison set, which is how gut-feel hiring creeps back in.
Yes. It is a standalone engagement, and the fee is credited against a search if one follows. Some audits end with a recommendation not to hire yet — that outcome is worth more than a placement you regret.
Then you keep selling and we re-test when the motion is repeatable. The most expensive hire is the one made three months before the sale was ready to hand over.
That is where the pool is deepest — 600+ UK RegTech, fintech and AI-native AEs — and where fifteen years of selling means the buyer language is already understood. AI-native companies selling into any considered, multi-stakeholder purchase are a fit.
The core is the first two or three commercial hires: Commercial Associate through to Senior Founding AE. Leadership searches are taken selectively, usually for founders already worked with.
Start with the readiness check, or send me the shape of the deals you're closing and we'll work out the seat together.