We embed inside VC firms to build world-class teams.

Your firm runs on the quality of your team. But most funds don't have the infrastructure or the time to recruit the way they invest: with rigor, conviction, and a long-term view. That's what we do.

OFFERINGS

We help venture firms scale and thrive by delivering end-to-end talent solutions tailored to their needs.

Executive-caliber search for investor, operations, and platform roles. We run the full, end-to-end process—sourcing, vetting, negotiating, and closing—so you get a hire with conviction.

Calibrated Search

Embedded, ongoing talent support. We sit alongside your team to think through current and future talent needs as you grow — pipeline building, market mapping, and long-term planning so you're always building ahead.

Fractional Talent Partner

We help you build the essential infrastructure around your team, not just the team itself  — recruiting processes and systems, performance frameworks, compensation benchmarking, and team planning, tailored to the unique dynamics and lifecycle of venture firms.

Talent Advisory

WHY US

  • We're not an outside agency, but an embedded teammate. We stay small to go deep, learning your culture and team dynamics to find the exact person—not just the profile—who fits your firm. From sourcing through close, we manage everything. No candidate dumps, no handoffs, no gaps.

  • We grew up in this ecosystem, from Benchmark to Gusto to the funds we partner with today. We speak your language because we've lived it. We're part of this ecosystem and read the same signals you do: career trajectory, approach to sourcing, and where someone chooses to build.

  • Lea scaled Gusto from Series A to IPO — $5M to $250M+ ARR, 1K to 300K+ customers — as right hand to the CEO and later defining People strategy. Kate ran talent acquisition at Salesforce through the Tableau, MuleSoft, and Slack acquisitions. We've seen firsthand what it takes to build the teams behind outcomes like these — and we bring that lens to every hire we make for your firm.

  • Lea has been in the venture ecosystem since Benchmark and built deep relationships through Gusto's fundraising rounds and rapid scale. Kate has spent over a decade recruiting and advising across the talent world. Our network isn't assembled when a search kicks off — it's been built over years of showing up and earning trust.

OUR TEAM

Operators who understand venture from the inside.

Lea Engelhardt

Founder of Paine Talent with over a decade across venture capital and operator roles, including foundational years at Benchmark and Gusto. At Gusto, she scaled the company from 25 to 2,000+ employees and $5M to $250M+ ARR — first as the right-hand to the CEO and later focused on People strategy. She brings a venture‑native network and an operator’s lens to every hire she makes.

Now, she collaborates with firms like Base10, Riot Ventures, and PLUS Capital on talent acquisition and development.

Founder

Talent executive and trusted advisor with 15+ years building and scaling recruiting organizations across high-growth companies, including leadership roles at Salesforce. She's partnered with executives and founders on critical talent decisions—spanning org design, hiring strategy, and M&A integration—bringing a pattern-recognition lens from operating at scale.

She now serves as a Talent Partner at Paine Talent where she acts as a strategic talent arm for top-tier venture capital firms, specializing in operational hiring, talent advisory, and organizational design.

Talent Partner

Kate Hallick

OUR VALUES

Integrity

It’s not just what we do, it’s how we do it.

Empathy

We balance human connections with directness to make tough decisions.

Impact

We prioritize meaningful, lasting results over sheer outputs.

Commitment

We’re x-athletes. We get shit done.