What we'd build
Five things we'd build for Paddle's talent team.
Ordered by how fast Ferzana and Owen could run them. Play 01 is the search from the demo. We show companies and titles here; names and profiles come back in the pull.
01
A live market map for every senior search, by hub.
Run it this weekMarket mapping skill
Ask for a seat, an employer type and a hub, and get the whole pool back, not the handful a web search surfaces. The UK alone has 72 CPTOs, 787 CTOs and 305 CPOs at fintech, SaaS and internet companies of Paddle's size. The map breaks the pool down by city, tenure, years of experience, past employers and company stage, so you can see where the talent sits before anyone picks up the phone.
How it runs
- Your Dust agent turns the brief into filters on seat, employer industry, company size and country, and runs
person_search for a full count.
- The market mapping skill groups the pool by hub, employer, tenure in seat and years of experience, and flags who's been in seat long enough to move.
- The pool comes out as a sheet with names, profile links and a reason per person, ready for Owen to work.
Availability of talent, by hub, in one ask. Portugal has 6 sitting CPTOs and 55 CTOs at companies like this; the UK has more than ten times that. That changes where you'd open a senior role.
→ Dust · sheetPer searchA new senior req or a board ask
Where Europe's CPTOs sit · a sample of the 99Oct 19, 2026
A sample of the companies in the pool. Profiles is the company's size in our index.
02
Warm paths through your ExCo, your team and your investors.
The ask that started thisInferred, then scored
We can't see who's connected to whom, and nobody can from public data alone. What we can see is every career history: who sat at the same company, in the same years, at a size where people actually meet. Across the 99 European CPTOs, 32 overlapped with someone at Paddle today. Paddle's VC investors (FTV, Notion, Kindred, 83North) have also backed 220 companies with 50+ people, with 3,134 VP and C-level leaders in your hub countries, including the CTOs of GoCardless and Currencycloud. Those are doors your board can open.
How it runs
- Pull the career history of everyone at Paddle with
person_search on Paddle's company id, plus the companies your investors backed. Add your ExCo's own connection exports for exact first degree.
- For each target, find overlaps: same employer and overlapping dates, same school and years. Score each path on months together, how small the company was, same function, and ExCo weight.
- Return a ranked list: target, path, the reason in one line, and who at Paddle to ask. Connection exports stay yours and never go into our index.
The intro request writes itself. "You and our CPTO target were at Dojo together for four years" is a message an analytics manager can send today. A big-company overlap (both at IBM) scores light, on purpose.
→ Dust · ranked path listPer target listA shortlist is ready
Top paths to European CPTOs · of the 32Oct 19, 2026
Inferred from career history: a likely acquaintance, not a confirmed one. Lattice scores light because Shopify is large. Paddle titles shown, names withheld.
03
Company-led search: the leaders who were there through the IPO.
Company-ledRun it this week
Pick the company and the moment, then find who was in the room. We searched for people who held a Director, VP or C-level seat at Wise, Adyen or Klarna for the full year before listing day, have since left, and live in the UK, Netherlands, Portugal or Ireland: 83 people (Wise 34, Adyen 41, Klarna 8). The same query works for any event with a date: a hiring spurt in the headcount history, a funding round, an acquisition, a carve-out.
How it runs
- Get the event date: IPO and funding dates, or the months a company's headcount grew fastest, from
company_enrich.
person_search on employment entries at that company that start before the window and end after it, at the seniority you want.- Keep the ones who've moved on and sit in your hubs, then rank them on the brief with a reason each.
Proven at the stage Paddle is heading into. These are people who've already scaled a payments business through public-market scrutiny, found by the company, not by a keyword on their profile.
→ Dust · sheetPer searchAn event you choose
There through the IPO, since moved on · a sample of the 83Oct 19, 2026
Seniority is the title they held at the time. Some current employers may be Paddle customers or partners.
04
A shortlist on Paddle's logic, for any senior role.
Exec and senior sourcingSourcing skill
Take a subscriptions engineering leader as the example. We found 321 engineering managers and heads of engineering in the UK and Ireland who've built at Monzo, Checkout.com, Stripe, GoCardless, Wise or Revolut, and 102 of them have since moved on to companies like MoonPay, Tide and Definely. The sourcing skill takes it from there: your intake notes become criteria, you calibrate on five profiles, and every name comes back scored with a reason.
How it runs
- Drop in the kickoff notes or the brief. The skill drafts must-haves and nice-to-haves and asks you to confirm.
person_search on title, past employers and location, then a full profile for the ones that pass.- Claude scores each person against your rubric with a one-line reason. Contact details only for the shortlist, through
person_contact_enrich.
The first 15 profiles are easy in any tool. The value is profiles 16 to 200, ranked on your criteria with the reasoning shown, so Owen doesn't have to read the haystack.
→ Dust · ranked sheetPer reqA role opens
Where the 321 built payments softwareOct 19, 2026
Monzo128
Checkout.com62
Stripe41
GoCardless39
Wise35
Revolut19
Some people built at more than one of these companies.
05
The people who already speak merchant of record.
Only Paddle can run this one
Merchant of record is a small world, and Paddle sits at the center of it. 185 senior people in your hub countries describe merchant-of-record work in their own profiles, and 176 of them are outside Paddle, with the biggest groups at FastSpring, Breeze and Cleverbridge. Then there's your own bench: 662 Paddle alumni in our index, 132 now Director, VP or C-level. They're the warmest referrers you have, and the first place to look for a boomerang hire.
How it runs
person_search on role descriptions and headlines for the exact phrase "merchant of record", by seniority and country.- A second search on past employer = Paddle, grouped by where alumni are now and how senior they've become.
- Put both lists on a watch, so a job change on either one shows up in Slack or email the week it happens.
No one else can use your alumni as a talent network. And no generic sourcing filter knows to look for merchant of record.
→ Slack or email digestWeeklyJob change on either list
185
senior profiles mention merchant of record, across your hub countries
132
Paddle alumni now Director, VP or C-level, of 662 in our index
Where merchant-of-record talent works nowOct 19, 2026
FastSpring8
Breeze6
Cleverbridge4
Reach3
Stripe2
Verifone2
The rest are spread one or two per company. Eight of the 185 are Paddle alumni.
