We share executive moves, placement insights, and Software and SaaS PE leadership trends weekly — feel free to follow us on LinkedIn here:
Leadership Economics: Decisions That Define the Next Cycle
by Eric Walczykowski, Adam Boone
As 2026 begins, the conversation around leadership in private equity has shifted.
The question is no longer whether talent matters. The data from 2025 made that unmistakable. The real question now is how leadership decisions shape outcomes as the market enters its next phase.
In Part 1 of this series, we focused on what the leadership market revealed before it was obvious. Timing, alignment, and readiness separated firms that moved early from those that waited. In this follow-up, the results allow us to be more explicit. Leadership decisions are economic decisions, and the cost of getting them wrong has never been clearer.
What the 2025 Results Made Clear
As we closed the books on 2025, the performance indicators at Bespoke Partners reflected both scale and execution. Profit increased by roughly 85% year over year. Revenue grew more to 40%. Bookings rose to 43%. Top-of-funnel opportunity growth reached 61%.
Those results were driven by outcomes, not activity. In 2025, more than 307 executive placements were completed, a record year and approximately a 36% increase over 2024. While Bespoke is well known for C-suite work, one of the most telling shifts was below that level. Engagement at the Vice President and Senior Vice President level doubled year over year.
Sponsors increasingly treated these roles not as supporting hires, but as central to execution. The pattern was consistent.
When performance needed to move, leadership decisions followed.
Turnover Fell, but the Market Tightened
One of the most underappreciated dynamics of 2025 was timing. While the exit environment remained sluggish for much of the year, demand for proven executives began to rise earlier than broader market confidence suggested.
In a typical market, lower turnover suggests loosening conditions. In this cycle, the opposite occurred. Executives stayed in seat to see companies through exit. Fewer leaders were naturally turning, while demand for proven operators remained strong.
The result was a tighter market driven by supply constraints, not demand contraction.
Sponsors still wanted executives who were already successful, already in seat, and capable of delivering outcomes under pressure. The pool simply narrowed.
Why Unicorn Thinking Breaks Down
As markets tighten, the instinct to search for exact matches intensifies. Everyone wants the “unicorn,” the executive who has done the same job, at the same scale, in the same market, with the same outcome.
The problem is arithmetic. When every variable is held constant, the viable candidate pool often shrinks to a handful of people. Fixation on unicorn matches delays decisions and increases risk.
A more durable strategy widens the aperture. It starts with a full view of the market, then flexes selectively on scorecard criteria that do not materially affect value creation. That approach preserves momentum and reduces exposure without compromising quality.
Leadership Decisions Carry Enterprise-Level Weight
Internal modeling conducted in 2025 reframed how we think about executive impact. For a scaled middle-market software company on a typical four-year hold, value attribution at exit often averages roughly one billion dollars per senior C-suite role.
That impact is not evenly distributed. Two roles carry a disproportionate share of the value creation burden.
The Chief Executive Officer typically drives approximately $750 million in value. The Chief Revenue Officer often approaches or exceeds one billion dollars, reflecting the central role revenue growth plays in the investment thesis. A strong CEO paired with an underperforming CRO still falls short of the outcome sponsors expect.
Seen through this lens, leadership selection functions as capital allocation rather than a simple hiring exercise.
The Cost of Delay Shows Up in EBITDA
The economic impact of leadership gaps becomes unavoidable when timing is introduced.
Industry-average days to close for executive search often exceed 150 days. Conservative modeling shows that if a sponsor has four portfolio companies with three senior executive openings each, and those roles remain unfilled for a typical search cycle, the result is approximately $12 million in EBITDA leakage.
Carried through to exit, that equates to roughly $135 million in lost enterprise value.
Shortening days to close changes the math materially. With average completion times well under 90 days, and often significantly lower, the recovered value can exceed $70 million at exit. That delta exists before accounting for the reality that half of industry searches never close at all.
Completion and Durability Matter as Much as Speed
Speed alone is not the objective. It is worse to place the wrong executive than no executive.
One of the defining characteristics of 2025 was not just completion rate, but durability. More than 99% of searches we initiated were completed, and approximately 95% of placed executives remained in seat twelve months later.
That combination reflects disciplined evaluation, full-market visibility, and alignment between leadership capability and the value creation plan. Solving the search is only the first step. Sustaining performance is the goal.
30% Faster path to the right leadership
30%
faster candidate placements than traditional workflows
40%
faster delivery of first qualified slates
44%
faster identification of placed candidates
90%
match accuracy to scorecard parameters
80%
faster candidate-pool build times
<75
days-to-close new C-suite leadership
How This Sets the Tone for the Next Cycle
As exits begin to re-emerge and deal activity accelerates, leadership decisions will carry amplified weight. Portfolio bloat remains real. Talent markets are tight. At the same time, cost of capital is stabilizing, dry powder remains significant, and sponsors are preparing to put capital to work.
This is where optimism enters the conversation, not as sentiment, but as readiness.
Specialization was about seeing the market sooner and acting with conviction.
Technology, including AI, is already reshaping how leadership decisions are made, not by replacing people, but by clarifying markets and enabling better judgment.
The role of leaders is becoming more focused on purpose, decision-making, and execution, rather than process alone.
Private equity firms do not acquire companies to shrink them. They acquire companies to grow them. As the next cycle takes shape, leadership economics will define who moves first, who captures value, and who waits.
In this Bloomberg Tech segment, Eric Walczykowski, CEO of Bespoke Partners, discusses the intersection of AI, executive hiring, and market dynamics shaping the software and SaaS labor market.
The data from 2025 leaves little ambiguity.
Leadership strategy is no longer adjacent to value creation. It is inseparable from it, and it will define the outcomes of the cycle ahead.
Winning Results
Authors:
Share this article: