I’m Matthew Goddard – Founder of Goddard Talent & Coaching, and I help high-growth startups hire and develop exceptional leaders, through a combination of strategic leadership search and transformational coaching.

I specialise in helping high-growth startups build and develop exceptional executive and senior leadership teams through a hybrid model that combines executive search with coaching.

Over 15+ years across agency, in-house, and embedded roles, I’ve supported companies like
Zalando, Personio, and Einride through critical growth stages – hiring and ramping leaders
across Tech, Product, and Commercial functions.

I began in UK agency recruitment, placing senior leadership across retail before moving
in-house at Zalando in Berlin. As one of their first internal Executive Recruiters,
I partnered with the Management Board to hire Directors, VPs, and SVPs across multiple
functions.

Later, at Talentful, I embedded directly into founding teams – scaling headcount
from 600 to 1,200 in a year at Personio, building VP+ leadership benches, and advising on org design, process, and retention at multiple startups.

Over time, I saw the same pattern:
Hiring great leaders wasn’t the hardest part – integrating them was.

So I trained as an accredited Master Intuitive Psychology Coach and built the Hire.Integrate.Thrive (HIT) Method™ – a search + coaching framework designed to ensure leaders not only get hired, but land fast, align deeply, and stay longer.

Today, I partner with early-stage and scaling startups to hire and develop their next key
leaders – whether that’s the first Head of Product, a fractional CTO, or a
commercial GM to open a new market.

My style is people-first and insight-led. I blend recruiting rigour with deep coaching so that founders and leaders operate with clarity, confidence, and
long-term cohesion.