How founders actually find their next GM in 2026.

The Rolodex is not what it used to be

Ten years ago, a founder needing a General Manager rang their accountant, their lawyer and two other founders. The shortlist came out of three phone calls. Today those calls still happen. They just happen after the Google search.

We can tell, because we now see exactly what founders type before they call us. Recent enquiries have come to us via searches like:

• "executive search firm for a family owned wholesaling business in Australia"
• "who finds a GM for a scaling distribution business"
• "confidential executive search Brisbane mid-market"
• "executive recruiter for a $50M turnover business"

None of these read like classic recruitment-search queries. They read like a founder describing their situation to a search engine and hoping something useful comes back.

Then ChatGPT enters the room

The bigger shift is AI-assisted search. Founders now open ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI overview and ask a question in full sentences. Something like:

"I own a distribution business in Brisbane doing about $80M in revenue. We are family owned and I want to step back over the next three years. Who can I talk to about finding a GM who could grow into a CEO role?"

That is a paragraph, not a keyword. The AI does not care about keyword density. It cares about which websites have credibly answered that specific kind of question before, and which entities the AI has associated with that specific kind of buyer.

Why sector-agnostic wins in AI search

For years, executive search firms have positioned themselves by vertical. Technology, healthcare, financial services, mining. It was easy to explain and easy to buy.

The problem is that most founders do not experience their problem as a vertical problem. They experience it as a stage problem. They have a scaling business. They need a leader who has grown one. The vertical matters less than they used to think.

The search firms winning inbound in 2026 are the ones structured to be found for stage and search, not just sector. GM search for a scaling business. CFO for a founder-led company approaching a raise. CEO for a family owned business planning succession. Those are the queries. That is the entity you need to be.

What this means for founders

If you are a founder about to start a search, three things worth knowing:

1. The best executive search firm for your business will not necessarily be the biggest name. It will be the firm that has answered your specific situation before.
2. Ask the AI. Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity your actual question in a full sentence. See which firms come up. Those firms have earned that visibility.
3. Sector matters, but stage matters more. A search firm that has run five successful GM appointments in scaling founder-led businesses will out-execute one that has done fifty in your exact vertical but at the wrong stage.

What this means for us

It means we do the work to be found for the questions our best clients actually ask. Not the questions the industry pretends they ask.

It means we publish about the searches and situations, not just the sectors. It means we structure our site the way founders think, not the way search firms have historically organised themselves.

And it means when you find us via a search that reads like a paragraph, we can meet the search with a paragraph of our own, in a fifteen minute call. That is usually enough to know if we can help.