How Peekage Hired a Founding AE During a Cash Crunch
Every founder knows this version of the problem: your best salesperson leaves, the pipeline feels it within weeks, and the timing couldn't be worse. The traditional way of filling the seat wasn't something the budget could stretch to. Here's how we filled it anyway.
- Category: Success Stories
Replacing a Top Performer During a Critical Growth Phase
Peekage had just said goodbye to its top-performing Account Executive — a hire we’d placed ourselves roughly three years earlier. He didn’t leave because the fit was wrong. He’d grown into someone ready for a bigger opportunity, and a larger company came calling.
That’s the kind of departure that’s both hard to be upset about and hard to plan for. New sales slowed at exactly the wrong moment — the company was heading into a funding raise, and the numbers needed to keep moving.
3 Critical Hiring Challenges
Peekage needed to move fast, but the usual path wasn’t available to them.
Timing pressure
Cash crunch
High-stakes seat
Bottom line: They needed a real Account Executive, fast, on terms that matched where they actually were — not a rate card built for someone else’s runway.
A Partnership, Not a Transaction
This wasn’t a founder with plenty of runway shopping for the “best” agency experience. It was a founder trying to protect revenue while managing a cash crunch in real time.
We treated it as a partnership problem: how do we get Peekage a real Account Executive, fast, on terms that work for where they actually are — not where a rate card assumes every client is.
Structured for their reality
We built a fee that matched what Peekage could realistically commit to, not a one-size number.
Payroll came first
We split the payment so the invoice didn’t compete with payroll.
Stayed in it
We stayed in the search past the point where a purely transactional agency would have deprioritized a lower-fee account.
From a DIY Attempt to the Right Hire
The first attempt: Peekage tried it themselves first — sending over competitor names for us to call, no sourcing, a reduced fee.
The stall: It didn’t produce the hire. The search stretched for months, through a slow start and a slower middle.
The real search: We ran it the way it needed to be run — a real search, not a name-forwarding exercise.
The close: We found the right AE. To close on Peekage’s terms, we cut the fee and split the invoice in two, so the company didn’t have to choose between filling the seat and making payroll.
The Right AE, On Their Term
A critical hire back in place
The company filled the critical sales seat with a Founding AE, who stepped directly into the gap left by the departure that had stalled the company’s sales motion.
Momentum restored
The seat that had been quietly costing Peekage momentum for months was filled by someone who could hit the ground running, not someone who needed six months to ramp.
Hiring support doesn't have to be one-size-fits-all.
Sometimes the best recruiting partnership isn’t about following a standard process. It’s about understanding where the company is, what the business needs, and finding a way to solve the hiring problem within those constraints.
When you partner with someone who:
- Understands the realities of founder-led companies.
- Can adapt the search to the company’s circumstances.
- Stays focused on the outcome, not just the transaction.
You can fill critical seats without waiting for the “perfect” conditions to hire.
See What Other Clients Are Saying
Adam and his team helped us recruit some really great people during the formative years of Bear. Happy to recommend Linkus to anyone building a strong early- stage roster.
“You’d be happy to know that the Linkus hire is still with the company and doing very well. It’s the best results we’ve ever seen from a BDR in their first 6 months.”
