All Case Studies
DeepTech Partner
Laying the foundations for the next round
0
key hires
£
0
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saved vs agency models
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%
offer acceptance rate
locations:
- UK
- Switzerland
- Germany
Overview
Helping buildings perform better
Optiml is a Zurich-based PropTech company helping building owners and asset managers get more from their portfolios. Their platform brings energy and asset data together in one place, so decisions about a building’s performance and profitability are made on evidence rather than instinct.
With 2.7M ARR and a product proving itself in market, Optiml’s next chapter was ambitious: stand up a London entity, enter the German market, and grow the team to match. Their pre-seed investors had set clear milestones tied to future funding. The infrastructure and the people had to be in place, and they had to be sustainable.
Planet A, who have referred several of their pre-seed companies to Bond, made the introduction in January 2026.
At a glance
- 11 hires from 11 offers, a 100% acceptance rate
- 20-day average time to hire against a 50-day market benchmark
- 10 of 11 hires through direct applications
- £152,819 saved vs agency fees in four months
- Team grown from 22 to 35 people
The brief: two hiring waves, three markets
Optiml’s TA function had good process but no one to run it. The three co-founders were involved in every hire, which worked at 22 people but was pulling them away from product and strategy.
Bond Global embedded one Talent Partner in January 2026 for a planned three-month sprint, structured as two hiring waves. We joined Optiml’s standups and Slack, travelled to Zurich twice and spent time in the London office as it took shape, truly embedded. The sprint was extended to June as the mandate grew.
Senior searches in shallow pools
These were not generalist briefs. Optiml needed people who had done the job for a decade, not people who could be trained into it, and that standard held across most of the commercial roles. Two searches show the level of difficulty:
Building Engineering Lead (UK): a hands-on subject matter expert in building systems and energy, a profile only a handful of people in the UK match.
Commercial leadership for Germany: native market fluency plus senior PropTech commercial experience, a combination that narrows the field to a very short list.
The hires
Eleven hires in four months, such as:
- Fractional CFO / Head of Finance (Switzerland)
- Head of Operations (Switzerland)
- Building Engineering Lead (UK)
- Product Manager, Finance (UK)
- Software Engineer, AI focus (Switzerland)
- Full Stack Software Engineer x2 (Switzerland)
- Junior Frontend Engineer (Switzerland)
Building the function, not just the team
Alongside delivery, we took on the project work Optiml needed to scale sustainably across three markets:
- ATS review and scorecards: structured interview scorecards giving hiring managers a consistent framework for decisions.
- Referral programme: a formal scheme turning the existing team into a talent channel.
- Onboarding packs: materials for new joiners and their managers, keeping the experience consistent as headcount grew.
- Relocation and London research: relocation package guidance and office market research to support the UK entity.
- Salary insights: benchmarking across the Swiss, German and UK markets so offers landed right first time.
- Process standardisation: one hiring workflow across all three markets, with Bond’s TP also acting as a People Partner where Optiml needed HR support.
The co-founders have their time back for product and the raise. The processes Bond built stay with Optiml as they grow, and the partnership continues into the German market buildout.
setting the scene
After raising our funding round, Optiml needed to scale quickly across commercial, product, engineering, and operations in Europe. We were still a lean team and needed embedded talent support that could help us execute our first major wave of hiring without slowing down the business.
Bond came recommended and joined us to support what became a Wave 1 of around 15 priority hires.
Evan Petkov
CO-founder & CEo @ optiml
The journey
Bond was outstanding from day one. They took initiative immediately, quickly understood our culture, hiring bar, and team dynamics, and genuinely became part of the Optiml team.
What worked especially well was the embedded model: Bond was not just filling roles, but helping us build a more structured and repeatable hiring process as we scaled.
Evan Petkov
CO-founder & CEo @ optiml
The impact & highlight
The result was 14 hires across four divisions over roughly 5 months, covering commercial, product, engineering, and operations. Beyond the hires themselves, Bond helped us improve our hiring infrastructure, from process and scorecards to reporting, candidate experience, relocation support, and onboarding foundations.
Importantly, 8 of the 14 hires came through direct applications, which shows the strength of the process and employer positioning built during the engagement.
The best thing about working with Bond was how genuinely they cared, about the team, the candidates, and the quality of his work. They consistently created a strong first impression with candidates and represented Optiml with warmth, professionalism, and real conviction. Any company would be fortunate to work with them.
Evan Petkov
CO-founder & CEo @ optiml
