The response has varied across the market. Some firms have hired operating partners, typically senior executives with specific sector experience who can sit alongside management teams at portfolio companies through a restructure, a strategic pivot, or an executive search process. Others have built platform functions covering talent acquisition, marketing, or finance support that portfolio companies can access on a shared basis. A smaller number are hiring portfolio directors, professionals who sit between the investment team and the portfolio and provide ongoing operational oversight.

These are not interchangeable roles and the hiring brief for each is quite different. An operating partner appointment is usually a senior, often part-time arrangement with someone who has built and run businesses at scale. A portfolio director role is typically a full-time hire, often from a consulting or operational finance background, who can manage relationships across a number of portfolio companies simultaneously. Getting that distinction wrong, usually by writing a brief that is too senior or too vague, is one of the most common reasons these searches stall.

Investor relations is another area where demand has shifted. LP relations was historically viewed as a large-firm function. The expectation in many smaller partnerships was that the Managing Partners would manage investor communication directly, at least until the firm reached a certain scale. That assumption is being revisited. LPs are asking more detailed questions about portfolio performance, value creation plans, and governance between funding rounds. The time required to manage those relationships well has increased, and many GPs are finding that it is crowding out the time they have for investment activity.

A dedicated IR hire at a smaller venture capital firm is not the same role as at a large buyout house. The best candidates tend to combine genuine interest in the investment strategy with the communication skills to represent it clearly to institutional and family office LPs. They also need to be comfortable working without a large infrastructure around them. Finding that combination requires a different search approach from a straightforward financial services hire.

Inside portfolio companies, the involvement of venture capital firms in senior leadership decisions has also increased. Finance directors, chief operating officers, and commercial leaders who can operate effectively inside a capital-efficient business, where the answers are not always obvious and the runway is not always comfortable, have become genuinely difficult to hire. The firms that have built a network for these appointments, rather than starting from scratch each time a portfolio company reaches a critical leadership moment, tend to move faster and make better hires.

At Fram Search, we work with UK venture capital firms and growth investors on partnership hiring, operating partner and portfolio director appointments, investor relations, and senior leadership search within portfolio companies. We also work on first fund hires, where the brief is often to build capability from a very small base. If your firm is reassessing its team structure in response to a changing market environment, we are glad to have that conversation before any formal process begins.