There is a version of the first senior hire story that most founders tell. They needed someone. They ran a process. They made an offer. It worked, or it did not.
Julie Waddell's version is different, and I think it is worth examining closely, because it points to a model that more founders and more senior leaders would benefit from considering.
The fog in the corner
By the time Moorish had secured its Waitrose listing and was building towards Sainsbury's, Julie knew what she did not know. The retail world, as she describes it, was always like a big fog in one corner of her knowledge. How do buyers actually make decisions? What are the commercial levers that matter? What does a category director need to see before they will take a brand seriously?
She had product. She had instinct. She had drive. What she did not have was the inside view of how the businesses she was selling into actually worked.
She had been trying to get a Sainsbury's listing through the standard buyer route and was getting nowhere. Then she found Andy Atherton on LinkedIn. He was, at the time, Category Director for hummus and dips at Sainsbury's. She sent him samples. He responded warmly but mentioned he was leaving in a matter of weeks.
A lesser operator would have thanked him and moved on. Julie suggested they have coffee.
"The biggest mystifying part of the whole business jigsaw was always the retail world. He had the inside understanding I was looking for."
The architecture of the approach
What followed was not a formal recruitment process. It was a relationship, built slowly and deliberately, that eventually became the most consequential hire in the history of Moorish.
After coffee, Julie offered Andy a non-executive role with a small amount of sweat equity and a modest stipend. He was working full time at Greencore in a demanding senior position. The NED role was manageable alongside that, and it gave both parties something that a standard recruitment process almost never provides: time.
Over the years that followed, Andy advised on commercial strategy, made introductions, and helped Moorish get the Sainsbury's listing that had previously eluded them. Julie could see what he delivered. Andy could see what the business was and what it needed. By the time he offered to come in full time, there were no surprises on either side.
That runway of trust is not a luxury. It is, in our experience at bpe search, one of the most reliable predictors of whether a founder-hire relationship will actually work.
What the equity conversation really means
Andy came in full time with 15 per cent equity and a remuneration package that matched his corporate salary. Julie's lawyer flagged that this was a generous arrangement, high pay and a meaningful equity stake simultaneously. Julie's response was direct: she wanted him, they could afford it, and she wanted him motivated.
This is a more sophisticated calculation than it might appear. Julie had spent eight years building a business she cared about deeply. She was not handing equity out for the sake of it. She had worked through the questions that matter.
Was the equity level genuinely motivating, or was it just a formality?
Would she resent this person's stake if the exit came?
Would his share still feel like life-changing money, while hers remained so too?
The classic founder formula, 100 per cent of nothing is nothing, is true but incomplete. The more useful question is whether the equity structure creates real alignment between what the hire needs to do and what the founder is trying to achieve. In this case, it did.
Enter the chairman
There is a coda to the Andy story that matters. He and Julie are, by her own description, two strong characters with different approaches and frequent friction. Both knew the friction was generating value. Neither found it easy.
The solution was a third party, not as a tiebreaker or a mediator in any formal sense, but as a calm, authoritative presence who could hold the room when the other two could not.
Keith had built and exited Ultra Vision contact lenses for a substantial sum and had subsequent experience of IPOs and exits. He came in as chairman after a period of mentoring, following a kind of accidental speed-dating session for founders and potential advisers. He was not Julie's first choice on the day. He was the one who had done his research, asked the right questions, and made it clear he was genuinely interested.
He attended monthly board meetings. He introduced governance infrastructure, management information packs, strategy tracking, performance reporting. None of it was revolutionary. All of it mattered, partly because it made the business legible to acquirers, and partly because it gave Julie and Andy a shared framework to operate within rather than colliding over everything.
"Keith just kept us on the straight and narrow. He always said, right to the very last day: I just want you to be successful."
That absence of personal agenda, that genuine investment in the outcome without needing to own it, is rarer than it should be, and Julie knows it.
What this means for senior leaders
For senior professionals, the journey into a founder-led business does not have to begin with a full-time operational commitment. As bpe search partner Annabel Weeden notes, Non-Executive Director (NED) roles can serve as a strategic bridge toward a "portfolio career." While every NED role is unique, each provides a "new lens" through which a leader can add value to both the business and their own career trajectory.
Whether an individual uses the role to transition into a portfolio career or as a pathway to a future executive opportunity, the NED step provides breadth, intellectual challenge, and a distinct perspective on the founder-investor relationship.
This aligns with the model previously exemplified by the Andy Atherton case: a non-executive role acts as a "runway of trust." It allows both parties to assess the business environment before making a permanent, full-time commitment. This approach mitigates the risk of a mismatched hire while providing the space necessary to understand the unique demands of a founder’s vision. Whether acting as an advisor or a precursor to an executive appointment, the NED role provides a strategic vantage point that is increasingly essential in the founder-led landscape.
At bpe search, some of the most successful appointments we have seen in founder-led businesses have followed exactly this pattern. The formal hire was almost a formality by the time it happened, because the work of building trust had already been done.
This is the second in a series of posts from bpe search drawing on a recent event featuring Julie Waddell, founder of Moorish Foods. The next post looks at what nobody tells you before you join a founder.
