About | The operator behind Northbound
About / The operator behind Northbound

An operator on the recruiter's side of the table.

Northbound is not run by a desk recruiter. It is run by someone who has carried the quota, built the teams, and been the revenue leader companies were trying to hire. That experience is the entire product.

4×
Inc. 5000 companies built
3
Exits, to private equity and strategics
F2000
Quota carried before founding
Why Northbound exists

I built this because I watched good searches place the wrong people.

For most of my career, I was the hire. I carried a number at a Fortune 2000, then I built companies, grew them onto the Inc. 5000 four times, and sold three of them. Along the way I sat on the hiring side of dozens of revenue roles, and I sat on the candidate side of a few.

What I saw from both seats was the same failure, over and over. The search was not broken. The diagnosis was. A company would feel a pain in the number, decide the answer was a VP of Sales, and run a clean, competent search for exactly the wrong role. Twelve months and a painful exit later, the number still had not moved.

The recruiters were not the problem either. Most of them had simply never run a revenue team, so they were screening resumes for words rather than evaluating people for outcomes. They could not tell the operator who built a number from the one who inherited it, because they had never done either.

Northbound is the firm I wished existed when I was hiring. It starts with a diagnosis instead of a job description. It vets candidates with an operator's read instead of a keyword filter. And it stands behind every placement for six months, because a hire that does not stick was never really a placement.

That is the whole idea. Find the right heading first. Then place the person who can run it.

Zach Strauss
Founder, Northbound
Who Northbound is for

Built for a specific moment.

Northbound works best when the next revenue hire genuinely matters and there is no internal bench to lean on.

A fit when

This describes you

  • You are a B2B company in the 5 million to 50 million revenue range.
  • The next revenue leader is a make-or-break decision for the business.
  • You want the role diagnosed, not just the seat filled.
  • You value a placement that holds over one that closes fast.
Not a fit when

Look elsewhere if

  • You want a high volume of resumes by Friday with no diagnosis.
  • You are filling junior or non-revenue roles at scale.
  • You have already decided the role and do not want it questioned.
  • Lowest fee matters more than whether the hire works.
Set the heading

Let us find your true north.

Start with the diagnostic. We will tell you the role to hire, and bring you the person to fill it.

Start a search
Northbound
GTM talent placement  /  True north for revenue hires
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