Finding a CTO/Founder Replacement for Agiloft
Replacing a founder represents a major milestone for any organization. When the founder in question is retiring after 20+ years of leading an award-winning company as CEO/CTO and successfully bootstrapped the company with no outside investment, finding a replacement becomes particularly daunting.
Westwood & Wilshire accepted this challenge on behalf of Agiloft, the global leader in contract lifecycle management (CLM) software.
“Westwood & Wilshire essentially had to please two clients for this search—me and Colin Earl, our retiring founder and CTO—and we each had some different criteria for hiring the new CTO,” said Eric Laughlin, current CEO of Agiloft. “I was impressed with how they navigated the intricacies of this search and came up with a candidate that both Colin and I could agree on.”
Agiloft Enters a Transition Stage
Agiloft was founded in 1991 by Colin Earl and Bridget Conrad, with a dedication to engineering excellence and world-class customer service. The company worked on major development projects for Cisco, Compaq, 3Com, and others before launching its breakthrough technology at that time called SupportWizard, in 1996.
A leader in no-code platform development, Agiloft accepted its first outside investment in August 2020—$45 million in growth equity from FTV Capital—which coincided with exploding demand for Agiloft’s products. The investment enabled the company to expand its small management team. It also enabled Colin and Bridget to plan their retirements.
“Everyone on the management team was doing three or four jobs,” said Laughlin, who had been hired as CEO by Colin Earl in July 2020. “And both Bridget and Colin were ready to step down.”
The first executive search that Westwood & Wilshire was engaged to perform for Agiloft was for a Vice President of Professional Services, a role that Bridget Conrad originally held.
“Kristin Speer had previous experience doing executive searches for Agiloft, so she understood the company culture well,” Laughlin said. “She and Jeremy Turpen, a recruiter with Westwood & Wilshire’s Advanced Technology Practice, did a great job of finding Gordon Loudon—a highly experienced professional services leader—to join the Agiloft team.”
Finding Just the Right Person for the CTO Position
With one founder replacement completed, the more challenging task remained to hire a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to take over from Colin Earl.
John Pechacek
“We again drew on Kris’ familiarity with Agiloft and with Colin to find the right person for this key position,” Laughlin said. “We were looking for someone special—someone who respected the founders and their legacy while also having the skills to make the changes necessary to propel Agiloft to our next level of achievement.”
After screening multiple candidates, the Westwood & Wilshire team, with Andrea Tegstam leading the search, presented a highly qualified list of candidates, hitting most, but not all, of desired qualities. Tegstam kept looking, even after the candidates had been narrowed to a possible match and found John Pechacek.
“Both Colin and I wholeheartedly approved of John as the new CTO,” Laughlin said. “Beyond having all the right technical qualifications and CTO experience, John has the builder’s mentality that Agiloft needs to build on the foundation Colin and Bridget established while also addressing the company’s changing needs as it continues to grow.”
Laughlin cited a few reasons why Westwood & Wilshire were successful in this search:
Flexibility with the process at Agiloft, able to adjust their search based on the company’s response to particular candidates.
Excellent communication throughout the search, in both quality and cadence.
Tenacity, and never settling for “almost” right.
No pride of authorship, meaning no attempt to push anyone through the process for their own reasons.
Grace in handling the inherently sensitive challenge of replacing long-time founders.
“We are really happy with the results of both the searches that Westwood & Wilshire completed for us,” Laughlin said. “They are really good at what they do.”
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