About IPO Strategy

Today, IPO Strategy is a boutique Executive Search company, successfully recruiting for Software Companies for Sales and Management positions throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

IPO Strategy grew out of humble beginnings:

In June 1996, I was working as an Executive Search Consultant in London, specializing in recruiting sales, technical and management for pre-IPO software companies. With great mentors and great clients, I was successful, challenged and fulfilled. Then the one company I most wanted to work with said "If you want to recruit for us, recruit a German Country Manager for us. We have nothing after six months". I had never recruited outside of the UK and there were plenty of people saying it could not be done. I agreed to do the search without a retainer (they had already paid three!).

I successfully completed the search within 21 days.

The client was delighted and has remained a loyal client since then. I gave them a choice of three excellent candidates. The candidate they hired sold the two largest deals ever worldwide for the company in his first six months (actually the first two $1m+ deals anywhere in the world, which was remarkable at at the time for a $30m software company).

During that first German search, I stayed true to the fundamental principles of executive search that I had been taught, but through necessity began to innovate and experiment with the search process to solve the challenges of distance, culture and language. I rapidly learned how to best approach and initially assess candidates on the other side of the world, where and how to interview them and how to best manage recruitment processes from far away.

Successful searches followed in many countries including Japan, Italy, Holland, USA, Sweden, France, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and many others. I found myself traveling and working from different locations, which resulted in strange combinations - whilst in the USA I was recruiting in Italy and Holland, whilst in Australia I was recruiting in Singapore and Sweden, and whilst in the UK I was recruiting in Australia and Norway. As the geographies expanded, the challenges of time zones and distance became greater, requiring further improvements to the methodology and systems.

I learned quickly that if I treated candidates in other countries with lots of respect, was very well prepared, was very honest and really knew my clients inside out, then candidates were prepared to listen and that made all the difference. 

But here is the real key (hidden away in the middle of this page). If I genuinely cared more about the candidate's careers and happiness (if I put myself in their situation and answered the question honestly - is this a good move for them?), then the placements I made were much more successful and long-term. This is the key to recruiting in any country.

A similiar story occurred in 2002. Plumtree Software had been looking for a Japan Country Manager for many months. They weren't a client at that stage. I met the VP Asia Pacific at Sydney Airport and we talked candidly. He was an excellent guy and quickly accepted that the initial specification was wrong and the feedback he'd been getting from the Japanese search companies was false (or as the English would say "bollocks"). We agreed to do the search on a non-retained basis (once again, they had already paid too many retainers for no result). Warren McIntosh, who had immersed himself into the language, culture and marketplace, performed an excellent search. The candidate he recruited for them produced 18% of global revenue in the final quarter of that year.

Since 1996, I have continually innovated, experimented and developed the methodology for truly global executive search.

Many search firms hire junior or inexperienced staff to perform tasks such as Research (the process of identifying candidates) and Reference-Checking. My experience is that this does not work well at all. The quality of the recruitment work becomes diluted. Therefore the service to the clients is reduced. I decided that IPO Strategy should remain small, boutique-style and highly focused. Warren and I are do much of our own own research. Our one researcher is a young lawyer who decided she didn't want to be a lawyer any more. She's tenacious, detailed and incredibly good at identifying brilliant people who are usually not even thinking about leaving Oracle, IBM, Google or whatever their present company is. Warren and I do our own recruitment, interviewing and reference checking. We develop our own headhunt scripts unique for each position, we practice these and then we make sure we know our clients well enough to honestly answer questions from candidates.

Anthony LaFrenais
anthony@ipostrategy.com