From Bread Loaves to Boardrooms: How My Unconventional Path Led to Building Bearhug Recruiting — and What It Means for Founders Hiring GTM, Product, and Finance Execs on the Road to $100M+

Hi there — I’m Kraig Ward, founder and managing director of Bearhug Recruiting.

I recorded a short video to help accelerate our getting to know each other before we hop on a call. But if you prefer reading, here’s the backstory of how I got here — and how we built Bearhug to make your hiring process a whole lot easier.

Where I Come From

I was born the tenth of eleven kids (yep, all from the same two parents) in Salt Lake City, Utah. My childhood revolved around the Mormon church — and if you know anything about that culture, you know there's a heavy emphasis on service, discipline, and selling the faith.

We lived close to the earth. No sugar. Goat milk from a local dairy. My mom baked a dozen loaves of bread every week from scratch. We didn’t watch much TV, but we sure knew how to work.

Even as a kid, though, I was wired differently. I asked a lot of questions — and eventually chose a different path. I left the church, moved away from Salt Lake, and started building businesses instead of preaching doctrine.

My First Business: Funnels, Not Faith

At 19, I launched what would become a 7-figure online publishing and training business. Over 13 years, we reached more than 100,000 students in 38 countries — mostly startup founders learning how to build better marketing and sales funnels.

Eventually, I craved more variety and wanted to get closer to the action — especially in frontier tech and venture capital.

So, I automated that business and moved my family from Isle of Palms, SC to the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where I started consulting on GTM strategy with VC-backed startups — and accidentally stumbled into executive search.

The Accidental Recruiter

One of my clients had built a search operations platform for executive recruiting firms. My job? Help launch a business unit focused on selling software-and-services bundles to Heads of Talent at VC and PE firms.

That role evolved into an interim CRO position. I built out their GTM functions and optimized their internal recruiting systems — and in doing so, got a front-row seat to how hundreds of top boutique search firms actually operated.

That experience became the foundation for Bearhug Recruiting.

Why I Started Bearhug

I saw a massive gap — most search firms were still running like it was the early 2000’s: slow, expensive, and built for large enterprises.

Meanwhile, early- and growth-stage founders didn’t have time to waste or room to get it wrong. They needed something better.

So we reengineered executive search from the ground up using modern tools, smart automation, and battle-tested GTM logic to create a model that actually matches startup speed and budget. We call it the Easy Button.

Who We Serve

We primarily work with founders and investors at companies between Seed and Series C — usually post-$1M revenue, often between 25–250 employees.

These are high-growth teams applying frontier technologies to massive, real-world problems — from sustainability to AI-enabled automation.

Our job? Help them hire the right GTM, Product, or Finance leaders who can unlock $100M in revenue scale. That means targeting execs who’ve recently scaled a similar business to $75M–$100M — and are hungry to do it again.

What We Do Best

We focus on three critical leadership gaps:

• GTM Executives who can drive repeatable sales motions and align Product, Sales, and CS

• Strategic Finance Leaders who bring forecasting, systems, and board-level rigor to the table

• Cross-Functional Product Execs fluent in AI, able to drive delivery, customer dev, and scalable org design

We’ve also worked with public companies, but our DNA is in growth-stage recruiting — where the stakes are high and the margin for error is razor-thin.

The Hardest Hires Deserve a Smarter System

That’s why we rebuilt executive search from the ground up — eliminating the friction, guesswork, and slow timelines that stall your growth.

We call it The Easy Button — a new model that flips traditional executive search on its head:

• Purpose-built for GTM, Finance, and Product executive searches

• Designed for founders who can’t afford mis-hires or delays

• Built to deliver top 10% passive candidates — fast, pre-sold, and ready to go

Here’s how it works:

• We do the heavy lifting before you say go — mapping 500–1,000 source companies and 5,000–10,000 potential candidates

• We proactively distill that into a hyper-curated, triple-vetted slate of 50–100 top targets

• We pre-build your custom outreach and campaign infrastructure

• You hit the Easy Button — and within 7 days, you have an interview-ready candidate slate

• We guarantee at least 2 candidates will advance to stage 3 of your interview loop within 30 days — or you don’t pay us a penny

With 90% less lift on your side, 2.7x faster timelines, and real-time transparency built into every step — this is how executive search should work for startups.

Try It Risk-Free

For select new clients, we’ll even front load the work and defer the engagement fee until interviews begin with your top picks.

Every invoice is tied to agreed-upon milestones. No surprises. No fluff.

Final Thought

Working with Bearhug won’t feel like a sales pitch.

We focus on strategy-driven conversations with founders and their investors who know early leadership hires make or break the trajectory. We help you stay focused on scaling — while we do the work of finding the right people to help you get there.

If you're prepping for a key hire, or already deep in the trenches — let’s talk. We’ll trade notes on what we’re seeing in the market, walk you through how the Easy Button works, and share some of the tools we use to make it frictionless.

Whether we work together or not, I promise you’ll get value from the conversation.

Looking forward to it.

—Kraig