Hire senior leaders who can carry the weight, not just the tasks

A leader at SaaStr, a software business community, says the most important hiring job for 2027 is bringing on one or two senior executives who can carry the weight of the company, not just the tasks. The advice came after a talk with the CEO of a fast-growing B2B company with more than $100M in yearly recurring revenue.

Work versus load

The argument rests on a simple split. Work is tasks: pipeline reviews, product launches, board decks and hiring. A strong vice president can own all of that. Load is what stays with the boss afterward. If the sales number misses, it is on the boss. If two executives disagree, the boss makes the final call. The boss worries about cash running out at 2am.

Most executives, even very good ones, take the work and leave the load. If no one shares it, it lands on the same person every week, for years.

Why ex-founders

The author is a strong supporter of hiring former founders. He says every B2B company at scale should have one to three ex-founder CEOs on the team. He argues they bring strengths that cannot be trained into an operator who was never a founder. His ideal candidate ran a company that reached at least a few million in annual recurring revenue, sold it, or fought hard for years and did not make it.

A warning about energy

There is a catch. Some ex-founders come out of five, seven or ten years of running a startup and look fine. They interview well and their judgment is real. But some no longer have the energy to carry a big, messy, high-stakes job for three or four years straight. They can still be excellent advisers. They are a poor fit for a role meant to take a big chunk of load off the boss.

The author used himself as an example. More than a decade after Adobe Sign / EchoSign, he says he has not fully recovered from being a founder, even with a great team. His advice is to ask ex-founders directly whether they can still do it. The honest ones will say so.

What to do

With 2027 plans and budgets being built, the author says this hire should come first, ahead of the next launch, sales hire or new region.

• Bring on one or two executives who are great at their jobs and can take on some of the load.
• Consider an ex-founder who still has the energy, or a long-time operator who ran a business unit end to end.
• Look for people who have carried real load before and want to do it again.
• Hand over real decisions, accountability and worry, not just tasks.

The author warns that many founders make the hire and then never let go. In that case, he says, they have simply hired another good vice president and still carry everything themselves. At SaaStr, which runs with 3 humans and more than 20 AI agents, the load still sits with very few people.