The future of executive talent
The leaders behind
your next chapter.
Three Steps is a global talent management platform — retained executive search, fractional & interim placement, and AI-era leadership intelligence — for the companies redrawing the map.
92%
Repeat customers
68d
Median time to close
1,200+
Searches completed
$140B
Portfolio valuation
- AI
- Security
- Hyperscaler
- Fintech
- SaaS
- Data
- Cloud
- DevTools
- Consumer
- HealthTech
- BioTech
- EdTech
- Cybersecurity
- IoT
- Robotics
- Blockchain
- Quantum
- GreenTech
The platform
One platform.
Four leverage points.
Executive search, fractional deployment, leadership advisory, and AI-era assessment — under a single partner-led relationship.
Introducing
The AI Capability
Index℠
Our proprietary framework predicting how executives will perform in the AI-transformation age. Grounded in 1,200+ mandates, built with our data-science team, and calibrated against real outcomes — not personality quizzes.
Fluency
How the operator uses AI in their own workflow.
Foresight
Reading how AI reshapes their function over 24 months.
Deployment
Track record of shipping AI into production.
Judgment
Where to spend, where to wait, where to walk away.
Industries
Sector depth,
not sector coverage.
We staff every mandate with a partner who has lived inside the industry — as an operator, investor, or founder. No generalist "vertical leads."
Functional expertise
Every seat
at the table.
- Board of Directors
- Chief Executive Officer
- Chief Financial Officer
- Chief Technology Officer
- Chief Product Officer
- Chief Revenue Officer
- Chief Information Security Officer
- Chief People Officer
- Go-to-Market Leadership
- Investment Management
- Risk & Compliance
- Supply Chain & Operations
Global reach
Three regions.
One standard of care.
AMER
Americas
San Francisco · New York · Toronto · São Paulo
EMEA
EMEA
London · Berlin · Paris · Tel Aviv
APAC
APAC
Singapore · Tokyo · Sydney · Bangalore
In their words
01
Three Steps didn't run a search — they ran a strategy. Their read on the leadership market is unmatched, and the finalist slate rewrote our expectations of what a CRO could be.
Founder — CEO & Co-Founder
02
We came in with lofty expectations. Three Steps exceeded them at every gate. Rockstar experience, rockstar outcome.
HR Head — CEO & Founder
03
I've worked with a bevy of exec recruiters. Three Steps is in a different tier — smart, consultative, high-integrity. They find matches, not sales.
— CEO & Co-Founder, Startup
Convictions
We'd rather
be right
than liked.
Four beliefs that decide which mandates we take, which candidates we send, and which advice we give when it costs us the retainer.
- I
Bet on outliers.
The best operators look wrong on paper — until they don't. We optimize for a rare pattern, not a safe median.
- II
Thesis before slate.
We refuse to run a search until we can write the point of view. If we can't defend the archetype, we won't send names.
- III
Signal over sourcing.
The market rewards taste, not throughput. A short slate of correct people beats a long slate of familiar ones.
- IV
Stay in the room.
Placement is the midpoint, not the finish. We coach through day 100, and re-underwrite our own work at day 365.
The process
A search should feel like an act of design.
01
Calibrate
Deep immersion in your business, stage, and the archetype that unlocks the next chapter.
02
Map
A living, private map of every credible operator in the market — not a database, a point of view.
03
Slate
A finalist slate you'd hire from three-over. We optimize for signal, not volume.
04
Land
References, offer construction, close. We stay embedded until day 100.
Perspectives
Field notes from
inside the mandate.
The end of the résumé, and what replaces it.
Why AI-native leaders will be assessed on artifacts and judgment, not job titles — and how boards should adapt hiring loops before their next mandate.
The CFO is now a systems engineer.
Twenty CFO searches later, a pattern: the winners are treating the finance stack as a product surface, not a reporting function.
Physical AI needs a different operator.
Robotics, energy, and defense founders are hiring from the wrong bench. A field guide to the operator archetype we keep placing — and why.
Hiring for the second act.
The Databricks CEO on why the executives who take you to $1B rarely take you to $10B — and how to spot the ones who can.
Leadership Advisory
Search is a moment.
Leadership is the compound.
Beyond the placement: a full advisory practice for the founders, chairs, and CHROs building the operating systems those leaders inherit.
CEO & Board Advisory
Succession planning, board composition, and chair-level counsel through inflection moments — IPO, spin-out, founder transition.
Leadership Assessment
Structured evaluation of individuals and teams against role-, stage-, and thesis-specific rubrics. Every finding written, every claim referenced.
Culture Shaping
Diagnose the operating culture, then re-engineer the rituals — hiring loops, ops cadences, decision rights — that compound it.
Organization Acceleration
Rewire org design, spans & layers, and top-team effectiveness so growth doesn't stall at the org chart.
Boardroom Intelligence
The board
is a graph.
We map the relationships, tenures, and second-degree paths that decide which leaders actually get considered. Then we use that map to build slates other firms can't see.
Explore the intelligence layerRelationship graph
38,000+
Mapped executive & director relationships across venture-backed and public boards.
Board coverage
6,200
Company boards tracked continuously — composition, tenure, committee assignments.
Succession radar
180d
Median lead time we flag a CEO or CFO transition before it becomes public.
Diversity lens
47%
Share of finalists from underrepresented backgrounds across the last 100 mandates.
For your organization
Have a search worth taking on?
Tell us about the role. We respond within 48 hours with a written point of view — whether or not we're the right fit.
Start a mandateFor your career
Looking for your next move?
Confidentially share your ambition. We'll only reach out about mandates that genuinely fit — never a spray of listings.
Join the network