Artico Search Founders Reflect on Five Years of Growth and Lessons Learned

October 27, 2026 – Five years after its founding, Artico Search has grown from a two-person venture into a boutique executive search firm serving venture capital, private equity-backed, and publicly traded companies. Founded in 2021 by Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, CEO and co-founder, and Matt Comyns, president and co-founder, the firm has built its business around emerging technology, with particular depth in AI, cybersecurity, and other areas where leadership demands are evolving quickly. Artico says its approach combines specialized market knowledge, direct investor relationships, and a hands-on search model designed to help clients build, scale, and protect their businesses.

Over that period, Artico has also continued to broaden its reach while remaining focused on the markets where its partners believe they can bring the greatest expertise. The firm has worked with venture-backed and growth companies, investors, and larger enterprises, and Ms. Chatfield-Taylor has remained closely involved in searches across the technology ecosystem, with assignments deeply tied to global AI-focused investors and companies.

“When we started Artico, we were betting that AI and security leadership would become inseparable,” Ms. Chatfield-Taylor said. “Five years in, that is a given. What we underestimated was how important being AI native ourselves would become to staying ahead of unpredictable change.”

But building an executive search firm through rapidly changing market cycles has also brought lessons that go well beyond placements. The past five years have included a technology boom, a sharp slowdown in 2023 and 2024, the accelerating adoption of AI across recruiting, and growing pressure on search firms to demonstrate value beyond simply identifying candidates. Those shifts have forced firms to think more carefully about specialization, internal hiring, client selection, technology, candidate relationships, and how to build an organization that can perform consistently through both strong and weak markets.

For Artico, those experiences have reinforced the importance of staying disciplined about where the firm competes and how it delivers talent intel across the connected stack. They have also shaped how the firm thinks about proprietary data, AI, investor relationships, recruiter development, and the intersection of its AI and cybersecurity practices.

“When Mercedes and I started Artico, we set two goals: build a real firm beyond the two of us, and ground it in high-quality work and excellent execution,” Mr. Comyns said. “Making clients and candidates happy is at our core. That’s easy to say and hard to do, especially in a boom market, when it’s tempting to chase the money. We’ve lived through the financial crisis, COVID and the high-rate bust of 2023-24, so we know what comes next. That’s why we don’t compromise on hiring. We take great care in rounding out the team, not just with recruiters but with researchers and assistants, because the client experience is everything. The best clients choose you when you deliver that.”

Staying Disciplined

“Discipline also applies to the work we take,” Mr. Comyns explained. “We stay in the areas where we’re true experts and work with companies leading the way in AI. Sometimes the answer is no. This year, we’ve turned away searches because we didn’t have the right people or coverage to take them on with confidence. That stings when you’re growing a firm, but we’re self-funded, which helps us stay disciplined. If you do everything right in the boom, you survive the bust.”

 Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor has completed over 75 CEO searches as well as partner, principal, and other CXO level assignments for the world’s most successful global investors. Her team focuses on executive-level search for scale-up venture capital and private equity-firms and their portfolios. The team has deep expertise in AI, software, data and emerging technology businesses.

Artico tries to help clients with the bigger business problems, not just the scoped search. “We make introductions to channel partners, investors, consultants and talent, even when there’s no search attached,” Mr. Comyns said. “That works because we specialize and know the market’s pain points. The differentiator is that you’re hiring a search firm that helps you think more broadly.”

“It also goes back to how you build the firm,” Mr. Comyns added. “Many firms have a handful of strong recruiters who carry the business, but that doesn’t scale in a consistent way. You need a system for how you hire and train, and a strong support team on every search, including researchers and project managers. You also need to be using the best AI tools available.”

Securing Top Talent

Artico starts by understanding a candidate’s motivations and builds a reputation as a career advisor. “Don’t shoehorn people into a move that could hurt them,” Mr. Comyns explained. “Sometimes the right advice is to stay. In a boom market, you have to go deeper than a standard screen and soft references. You need to understand how committed someone is to leaving and what it will take to get a yes. That also means guiding clients on how competitive the market is, usually around process and pay.”

Related: Artico Recruits Partner for Radical Ventures

“Tools can be taught, but judgment can’t,” Ms. Chatfield-Taylor said. “Even after finding the right candidate and getting an acceptance, counteroffers can disrupt a placement. You need both backup plans and deep trust from candidates to help them navigate high-stakes counteroffer pressure against their career trajectory and reputation.”

A pioneer in the development of the cybersecurity recruiting industry, Matt Comyns built the original cybersecurity search practices at two global firms completing more than 300 executive-level searches in a hyper-competitive market by serving as a trusted advisor for chief information security officers. He developed his vast network as founding CEO and sales executive at tech and media companies in New York, San Francisco, and Beijing.

Recently, Artico worked with a highly sought-after AI chief technology officer who was excited about a company but held back by a big mortgage. When the firm asked what it would take, the answer was a $2 million loan on preferable terms to pay it off. “It wasn’t more salary,” Mr. Comyns said. “It was the thing that was gnawing at him. Move quickly and listen closely.”

During its launched, Artico has invested heavily in building direct relationships with venture capital and growth equity investors. “Venture investors can see around the corner, and being on the ground with them creates a flywheel,” Mr. Comyns said. “Most of our work is in venture because we’re an emerging tech boutique. If we’re credible with emerging-AI-native companies, private equity firms and large enterprises want that too.”

“We also bring investors, portfolio companies and the largest technology buyers together through dinners, events and knowledge sharing,” he added. “That’s deliberate. Buyers decide which companies succeed, and investors and their companies want to know what those buyers are thinking.”

Artico was also built around supporting venture and growth equity firms with complementary AI and cybersecurity practices. So why is important is it for search firms to identify where their practice areas intersect, and what can they do to create more value for clients at those intersections? “It’s critical, because the two fields are converging,” said Mr. Comyns. “Every big company is deploying AI, and security leaders are the ones who approve and govern it. The intersection is where the hardest searches live, because the candidates have to understand both how AI is built and how it’s attacked. Search firms create value at that intersection by being in both rooms.”

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Looking ahead, Artico looks to preserve the culture, standards, and values that has defined the firm without allowing scale to dilute them. “It starts with hiring, of course,” Mr. Comyns said. “But hiring well is only half of it. Most search firms don’t lack talent, but far fewer invest systematically in developing recruiters. That’s the gap we’re trying to close. We’re launching Artico Academy to build a culture of excellence and innovation, so that what makes someone great here is taught and passed on, not left to chance.”

“Scaling the culture also has to be a deliberate part of growth,” Mr. Comyns continued. “The fire horse we’re named for is still our guide, and the traits that go with it, trust, resilience, grit and quiet leadership, are what we hire for and work by. It would have been easy to let that slip as the team grew and search volume climbed. As we grow faster, that discipline matters more, not less.”

Related: Artico Search Recruits Chief Sales Officer for Versapay

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor  – Hunt Scanlon Media