This. And situation is even worse when as a [foreign] startup(ish) company you enter a new territory / region / country. At least once you realise that your cha

This. And situation is even worse when as a [foreign] startup(ish) company you enter a new territory / region / country. At least once you realise that your chances of getting deadbeat execs that can't get hired by any reasonable company are disproportionally high, you can start approaching the hiring more realistically. And post hiring, implement appropriate monitoring regime to avoid irreversible damage these new execs can cause. Why I am asserting above? Because when you're a new business (at least for locale X) with little or no name recognition and often unable to pay very, very handsomely, why would any reasonable person risk their career and jump into some odd ball company whose name alone makes your pals at the golf club grin. My personal experience has been that the only way this has worked consistently (for B2B businesses) has been to send some of the core team member or a founder to a new location; then grow your customer base there, generate name recognition, and then ideally get a hint from your customer that someone might be considering change of jobs at their other supplier (potentially in similar vertical), and then approach that person. And once things observably run 'normally' and there is accountability, rinse and repeat at a next locale. As a side note, this is where I feel VCs with their networks of 'vetted' execs could potentially help. But haven't really seen it happening in practise either (because the VCs have always been from old locale, not from the new).