Building the Founding Team Behind an AI Search Rocketship
Searchable founder and long-term client Chris Donnelly came to us with an exciting challenge: help him make three crucial, commercially vital founding hires that would help shape the next stage of the business.
He needed the business’s first senior SEO to lead its SEO/AEO consultancy offering, a commercially driven CRM & GTM Manager to flip its already rapid traction into scalable growth, and a Head of Digital PR to build Searchable’s authority and visibility as quickly as they were building the product.
All three needed to be exceptional practitioners without question. But because of the stage Searchable was at, they also needed to be commercially sharp, thrive in a fast-moving founder-led business and capable of helping shape their respective functions from the ground up.
No small feat, but this is what we do!
- SaaS
The Client
- SaaS
Searchable is an AI Search SaaS platform founded by one of the biggest names in the industry, Chris Donnelly. This is a long-term client who has achieved phenomenal things in the digital space. He built Searchable to help brands understand and improve how they appear across the rapidly evolving AI Search landscape.
The Challenge
The business had taken off quickly. And we mean really quickly. Within its first 90 days, Searchable had reached around $100k MRR and was on the verge of some serious funding.
But rapid growth creates its own recruitment challenges. Chris wasn’t looking to gradually form established departments. As a seasoned founder he had no doubt that he wanted to hire people who would help create those departments, influence the product and ultimately play a part in deciding what Searchable became.
The Hires
Head of SEO/AEO
This was a huge hire for Chris. As Searchable’s first senior SEO in the business, this specialist would in essence lead the change for the consultancy side of the business.
It goes without saying that they needed to be an elite technical SEO to impress Chris and be able to work with some of the biggest enterprise-level brands in the world. That alone wasn’t going to cut it though. They also needed breadth across Search, serious commercial ability and the chops to hold their own with C-suite clients.
And because this was Searchable, there was even more riding on this role. They’d be working directly with an elite engineering team, feeding their Search expertise back into the technology and helping drive the continued development of the product.
Chris is a respected industry leader. He needed somebody capable of matching him.
CRM & GTM Manager
The business had proven that the appetite for the product was there, but they needed to turn that phenomenal early growth into something predictable and scalable.
He didn’t need an email marketer or a paid media pro to simply build traffic.
He needed somebody with the experience to look at the entire customer journey: from the acquisition strategy to CRM, conversion, retention and the holy grail: revenue. This person needed to sniff out where growth was being lost and build the engine to capture it.
Head of Digital PR
As Searchable grew at a rapid pace, the brand itself needed to build authority and visibility at the same rate as the product.
And as a former Digital PR practitioner myself, this was a brief I knew particularly well. I knew precisely who would fit the bill and it wasn’t an extensive list of people.
They didn’t just need someone who could build great links. The role required someone who could get to grips with Searchable’s data, expertise and position at the forefront of AI Search and turn them into stories, coverage and genuine industry authority.
How We Got to Work
We got to work by mapping out the strongest possible candidates for each role.
For the Senior SEO/AEO role, we knew the pool would be small. Having spent 12.5 years as an SEO myself, and years building relationships with specialists across the industry, I had a very clear idea of who would work best.
We knew that this wasn’t about finding dozens of people who looked right on paper. It was about identifying five people who we felt had the technical chops, commercial nous and right personality to genuinely thrive at Searchable.
We approached all five directly, positioned the opportunity and the potential, and ultimately brought only four into the process, with two progressing through to the final stage.
The Result
The final two candidates were both extremely strong, but one stood out.
JP Garbaccio was an elite technical SEO specialist with a strong understanding of the wider Search landscape, but crucially, he also had the commercial knowledge and innate ability to cultivate relationships, manage senior stakeholders and immediately put clients at ease.
He also felt right for Searchable’s DNA: the culture, the mission and what Chris was trying to build.
We filled the role in just 18 days, having focused on only five people in the market who we genuinely believed could do it.
Facing a similar hiring challenge?
We specialise in recruitment across SEO & AEO, Paid Media, Digital PR, Growth Marketing, eCommerce and SaaS Marketing.
Results That Speak For Themselves
A selection of successful hires and long-term partnerships across the digital marketing industry.
- Agencies
From the UK to the Gold Coast
Edge Marketing is an Australian marketing agency on the Gold Coast.
Co-founder Rohan Dwyer was looking for a Head of SEO who could take ownership of the agency’s SEO department, shape its SEO proposition and drive the service line forward.
- Agencies
Seven Years. 17 Hires. One Future MD.
Reboot is an independent digital marketing agency specialising in Search, Digital PR and Paid Media.
Our relationship with the agency developed over seven years, meaning we were able to support the business as its hiring requirements evolved.
That included finding specialist practitioners across SEO and Paid Media, commercial Growth hires and, eventually, senior leaders capable of taking significant responsibility for the direction and operation of the agency.
As the business grew, the hires became increasingly strategic.
Two searches in particular would ultimately help shape Reboot’s senior leadership team: Director of Growth and Director of Operations.
- Agencies
Putting a Leader Behind Mediavision’s Growth
Mediavision is an established independent digital agency, working with ambitious brands across Search and digital performance.
Having built a successful agency and strong client base over more than a decade, the business was ready to put greater senior ownership around growth.
Until this point, responsibility for winning new business and growing the agency had been shared across the senior team. The next stage required someone who could take proper ownership of it.
This wasn’t simply about hiring a salesperson.
Mediavision wanted someone who could work across the entire agency, bringing together sales, new business, marketing, positioning and brand visibility into a coherent growth strategy.
- eCommerce
Finding an SEO Who Speaks Sneaker
The Sole Supplier is one of the UK’s leading footwear and streetwear platforms, helping sneaker fans discover the latest releases, news and trends from some of the biggest brands in the world.
The business has grown significantly, building a highly engaged audience alongside a team with a genuine passion for the space.
That culture was particularly important to them.
This isn’t a business where people simply happen to work in footwear and streetwear. The team genuinely lives and breathes the product outside of work, and preserving that as the company grows is a major priority.
SEO was already an important acquisition channel and The Sole Supplier had an external agency supporting its activity. The next step was to bring somebody senior enough in-house to take proper ownership of the channel.
- eCommerce
Five Years. One Trusted Partner.
Founded in 1810, Heal’s is one of Britain’s most iconic furniture and interior design brands. For the past five years, we’ve partnered with Head of eCommerce Mark Hammond, supporting the growth of his digital team through specialist hires across eCommerce, performance marketing and design.
- Agencies
Taking the Weight Off the Founder
Tacomi is a specialist Search agency with deep expertise across SEO, technical SEO and the evolving AEO landscape.
We had already been working with founder Chad Conlon and the team when they approached us about one of the most important hires they were about to make to date.
The agency was already operating at a very high technical level, but Chad remained heavily involved in the day-to-day. The next stage of growth required someone senior enough to take genuine ownership from him, without compromising the quality of work that had helped Tacomi build its reputation.
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