Scaling Smart: What ClimateTech Founders Get Wrong About Their First Tech Leadership Hire

When Necture — a Dutch ClimateTech scale-up — decided it was time to bring in its first external technology leader, its founders did what most founders do: they assumed they knew what they were looking for. A strong engineering background, some startup experience, someone who could ship fast and build a team. Straightforward enough.

What followed was a six-month process that taught them something far more important than how to find a CTPO. It taught them what kind of company they actually were — and what kind of company they wanted to become.

I had the chance to work directly with Necture on that search, and we discussed the experience openly on the Leaders Lounge podcast. The conversation has stayed with me — not because it was unusual, but because it was so representative of what I see again and again with ClimateTech founders making their first senior technology hire.

ClimateTech is one of the most exciting sectors in the market right now. The capital is there. The mission is there. The urgency is undeniable. But when it comes to executive hiring, many ClimateTech companies face a specific and underappreciated challenge: the profile of leader they need doesn't fit neatly into any one category.

A great CTO for a consumer fintech looks very different from a great CTPO for a hardware-enabled sustainability platform. The technical complexity is different, the commercialisation path is different, the regulatory context is different — and the leadership skills required to navigate all three simultaneously are genuinely rare.

Add to that the fact that most ClimateTech companies are European-founded but increasingly US-focused — raising from American investors, selling to American enterprise customers, hiring against American salary benchmarks — and the search becomes even more nuanced.

I specialise in exactly this intersection: ClimateTech companies scaling transatlantically, needing leaders who can operate across both markets without losing the technical depth that makes them credible. It is a narrow band, and getting it right requires a very different approach than a standard executive search.

1. They hire for today's problems, not tomorrow's stage.

The most common brief I receive from ClimateTech founders goes something like this: "We need someone technical who can also talk to customers." What they usually mean is that they have an engineering bottleneck and a communication gap at the same time — and they hope one hire will solve both.

The danger is that this produces a hybrid profile that is almost impossible to hire well. The strongest technology leaders are either deeply technical or deeply commercial. The rare individuals who genuinely excel at both are extraordinary — and they know it. They are expensive, highly sought after, and usually already well-placed.

What founders actually need to define first is what problem will be most critical in eighteen months, not today. That determines the seniority, background, and style of leader they should be targeting.

2. They underestimate how much the search reveals about themselves.

In the Necture process, something fascinating happened in the early weeks. As we worked through the brief together — what kind of leader they needed, what decision-making authority this person would have, how the founders would relate to them — the founding team realised they had quite different assumptions about all three questions.

One founder imagined a strong individual contributor who would lead engineering but stay close to the tools. The other imagined a business-facing executive who would gradually take on commercial responsibilities. Those are two very different hires.

This kind of internal misalignment is incredibly common, and if it isn't surfaced before the search begins, it either prolongs the process enormously or results in a hire who satisfies neither founder's vision.

A good search process forces this clarity. It is one of the reasons I recommend spending significantly more time on the brief than founders expect to — not because it slows things down, but because it is the fastest path to the right outcome.

3. They treat the search process as separate from culture-building.

How you run an executive search communicates everything about how your company operates. The speed of your responses, the quality of your preparation, the care you show for candidates' time — all of it signals what it would be like to work with you.

This is especially pronounced at the C-suite level. Senior candidates are not just evaluating the role. They are evaluating the founders, the board, the decision-making culture, and the degree to which their future will actually be theirs to shape.

In ClimateTech specifically, where mission is a major factor in attracting talent, the process is also a demonstration of values. Founders who are disorganised, non-communicative, or unclear about scope will lose the candidates who care most about what the company is building — precisely the people they most want to hire.

In the Necture case, once we had aligned the brief internally, the search moved efficiently. We ran a structured process across both the European and US talent markets, which allowed us to benchmark candidates against a genuinely international peer group.

One insight that came out of the process: the strongest candidates for ClimateTech CTPO roles often come from adjacent sectors — hardware, deep tech, or industrial software — rather than from within ClimateTech itself. The sector is still relatively young, which means the deep domain expertise and senior leadership experience rarely exist in the same person yet.

What matters more than direct sector experience is a combination of: genuine curiosity about the sustainability mission (not just a talking point), proven ability to build technical organisations under resource constraints, and the commercial instinct to translate engineering decisions into business outcomes.

Necture found their CTPO. But more importantly, they came out of the process with sharper clarity about their own leadership culture, their decision-making framework, and what kind of executive team they were building for the next phase of growth.

The demand for senior technology leaders in ClimateTech is accelerating faster than the supply of people who can genuinely deliver at that level. As more capital flows into the sector and more companies reach the stage where they need experienced leadership rather than founding-team generalists, the competition for the same talent pool is intensifying.

For European ClimateTech companies in particular, this is compounded by the transatlantic pull. US-based candidates command higher compensation expectations. European candidates with US experience are rare. And the regulatory and go-to-market differences between the two markets mean that someone who has only operated in one is genuinely less prepared for a scaling role in both.

This is the specific gap I focus on. Through my work with ScaleNL and with ClimateTech-focused investors on both sides of the Atlantic, I have developed a close understanding of where the relevant talent sits — and what it takes to move them.

A few things I would encourage any founder to do before starting the process:

• Define the eighteen-month outcome, not the job description. What will have changed in your business if this hire is successful? Start there and work backwards to the profile.
• Align your founding team or board first. The search will surface any misalignment — better to find it in a working session than in a final-round interview.
• Think about your candidate experience as part of your employer brand. The way you treat candidates in the process will be talked about, positively or negatively, in the networks you most need to access.
• Do not hire only within the sector. The best ClimateTech leaders of the next decade are currently building adjacent technology companies. They need to be approached proactively, not found on job boards.

The full conversation with Necture's founders is available on the Leaders Lounge podcast — a candid account of what it actually felt like to go through an executive search for the first time, what they wish they had known, and what the process changed inside the company beyond the hire itself.

If you are a ClimateTech founder thinking about your first senior leadership hire — in technology, commercial, or general management — I am happy to have an initial conversation about what the process looks like and whether the timing is right for your stage. You can reach me directly via the link below.

Maren Marcelis is a Partner at Key Search based in San Francisco. She focuses on executive search for ClimateTech, TravelTech, and Marketplace companies scaling transatlantically, with particular expertise in US market entry for European founders.