Executive search firm Riviera Partners acquired Arete Partners, a San Francisco-based executive search firm focused on seed-to-B stage venture capital-backed startups. Arete Partners’ co-founder and CEO Eóin O’Toole will take on the leadership of Riviera Partners. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Riviera Partners started 20 years ago with a vision to connect technology talent with emerging businesses. The company now specializes in placing technology leaders in start-ups and enterprises in the U.S. As part of its evolution, the company leveraged its specialization in executive technology recruiting by building the industry’s most comprehensive proprietary platform that uses machine learning to score, predict and match the best candidate for a company’s specific needs and stage. The next phase of Riviera’s growth comes with the acquisition of Arete Partners, which, over the course of the past six years, has become a leader in placing emerging executive talent for Seed-to-B stage companies.
“The focus and specialization our companies share makes us highly compatible and will help us meet the existing and increasing demand for tech leadership recruiting,” said Will Hunsinger, CEO of Riviera Partners. “With this acquisition and Arete’s expertise, we significantly enhance our market coverage of earlier-stage companies while bringing our proprietary service-meets-tech offering to our combined clientele.” Riviera Partners is “synonymous with startup recruiting, a position earned through a relentless focus on quality and specialization,” said Mr. O’Toole. “The Arete team has become the leader in identifying emerging executive talent at a startup’s earliest stages,” he said. “I am both excited and confident that the combined entity – leveraging Riviera Partners’ proprietary ML-enabled platform – will deliver even greater value creation for our VC partners, clients, and candidates.”