The Full-Time Hire You Think You Need. The Fractional Operator You Actually Do.

When full-time is clearly the right call

Full-time leadership makes sense when the role requires sustained presence over a multi-year horizon – when you're building a team that needs a permanent leader, when the function is central enough to the company's identity that you need someone whose full professional identity is invested in it, or when you're at a stage where the role is 40+ hours per week of active work rather than judgment and guidance. The signals that point to full-time: you need someone managing 3+ direct reports, the function is a core competitive differentiator, you're post-Series B with the revenue base to support the full-time cost, and the decision-making cadence of the role requires daily presence. Getting the full-time hire right takes time – 4–6 months for a VP-level search, sometimes longer for C-suite. The cost of a bad full-time executive hire (severance, recruiting fees, organizational disruption, lost time) typically runs 2–3x annual salary. That's the actual risk you're managing.

When fractional is the better fit

Fractional operators are right when the gap is real but the full-time cost or commitment isn't yet justified. The clearest signals: you've lost your VP of Marketing with a product launch six weeks away, you're a technical founder who's been running sales yourself and need someone to build the function before you hire a permanent leader, or you're at $3M ARR and need a CFO-level function for fundraising prep but can't yet justify a $300K full-time CFO. Fractional operators provide senior judgment and operating capacity at a fraction of full-time cost – typically 2–3 days per week at market rates that run 30–50% of full-time equivalents on an annualized basis. The underappreciated advantage of fractional operators is that they've done this transition at multiple companies. A fractional CMO who's built three marketing functions knows what mistakes are avoidable. A full-time hire who's only run one marketing team is learning on your clock.

The parallel approach: fractional + search running simultaneously

The most effective approach for most companies facing a leadership gap is to run these tracks simultaneously rather than sequentially. Start the fractional engagement immediately to address the functional gap. Start the full-time search at the same time, using the fractional operator to help define what the full-time role actually needs to look like – because the person doing the job understands better than anyone what the role requires. This approach eliminates the 4–6 month gap where the function runs without senior leadership. It also gives you a real-world evaluation of what kind of expertise matters most in the role, which makes the full-time hire better. When you find the right full-time candidate, the fractional operator transitions out and stays available for questions. The total cost of this approach is higher in the short term but substantially lower than the cost of a function running without senior leadership for a half-year.

How FSV structures fractional engagements

Expert operators in the FSV network engage as fractional operators through defined Sprint engagements (30-day scoped) or ongoing advisory through Forward Achieve. Every operator has been vetted through STAR Portfolio review – documented operating decisions and outcomes from real roles. When a founder is running a full-time search and needs coverage in the interim, FSV matches against the specific functional gap and the stage of the company, not against generic "marketing" or "sales" categories. The 214 vetted operators span functions including GTM, product, operations, finance, and people.