Flex came to us through a warm intro in early 2026. The urgency was real. Flex was scaling its revenue org from roughly 50 to 90 people, targeting 35 hires by end of Q1 - 12 to 15 of them at Director level or above. The sharpest gap was a utilities-vertical sales executive, a profile Flex had already tried, and missed on, from three competitors.

We won the engagement on three things: real specialization in Director-through-VP GTM leadership at growth-stage fintech, capacity Flex's internal team didn't have, and a quality bar on candidate handling that matched the company they were building.

Our first job wasn’t sourcing. It was clarifying what Flex actually needed. The revenue org was scaling fast enough that the definition of "the right hire" was different at every level — and different again from month to month. Some seats called for true VP leaders: people to own a function, build the org beneath them, and represent Flex externally. Others called for something rarer: operator-leaders willing to still be engineers of the plane while flying it — senior enough to set strategy, hands-on enough to run the play themselves in the first six months.

That distinction became the screen we ran every candidate through. Which of these two jobs is this hire, really? And is this person genuinely wired for it — or telling us what they think we want to hear?

From there, profiles moved as real market feedback came in. The Business Development search broadened from a utilities-leaning seller to a sales-minded strategic-partnerships leader. The Utilities search filled twice at Director level after live pricing data reshaped expectations. The VP of Business Development search was reset entirely in July as a pure hunter profile.

We’ve made six leadership hires to date.

“Formative doesn’t just find candidates, they find the right ones. We’ve hired everything from foundational sellers to VPs through them, and every time, they’ve done the hard part before we ever got involved — understanding exactly what we needed, screening rigorously, and selling candidates on the opportunity all the way through close. Their network is excellent, and the talent we’ve hired through them has been outstanding.”

— David Sullivan, VP of Sales — New Verticals, Flex