What is the typical practice for tech recruiters who place board members & advisors at early stage startups?

For early stage companies (let’s say less than $10M in revenue for argument’s sake), we provide our clients with fee options in cash, equity or a cash/equity combination.  Equity is fully vested at time of issuance.  All of our agreements are Flat Fee pricing for Board searches.  We do not charge a fee for Advisory Board introductions and we do not charge companies if we introduce them to someone who selects a consulting engagement.  It is important to agree upon the value of the service you are providing your clients up-front.  If you do this well, if you price your proposal fairly and if your clients perceive high value for your services, they typically are happy to compensate you.  Asking to get paid on services performed after the fact is much harder to do and can come across in a bad light to the client.  Providing the option of cash, equity or a combination allows the company to manage their cash flow appropriately.  Also, your fee agreements should clearly state that you will be paid for all candidates you introduce who get hired by the Client, and the pricing per placement should be clearly outlined. As “Anon User” commented in their post, building strong relationships with the company is the most important thing you can do to build deep, long term relationships.  That is the best (and most valuable) business development  you can do.

If I understand you correctly, what you're asking is how you structure a fee when someone you have recruited takes on an advisory role or board position rather than get hired the traditional way? If I am right, just add to your fee agreement that whether a person is hired, is asked to be an advisor or a board member the fee agreement stands. Where I would imagine it gets sticky is when an individual becomes a non-FT consultant or agrees to work with the startup for no fee. I would say in those cases to go on a case-by-case basis depending on the level of funding or profitability of the startup and your past history with them. Another way to go would be to ask for some sort of equity split that would be fair in these situations...Hope that helps!

We hired Heidrick for a search and ended up bringing one of the candidates on board as a board member.  We then closed the CEO search and used Heidrick two more times at the same company for two more executives.  So they did a great job building the relationship and their business because they didn't charge us for the board member; they ended up getting two more big fees.  If you feel like you want to charge something anyway, maybe you could request some equity, since most board members and advisors of early stage startups get equity not cash fees.