CEO-in-Residence (CIR)

Definition

A salaried seat at a firm, searching for a company you will then run.

Why It Matters

It is the third path onto the ownership ladder and the one that does not ask you to fund your own search. A firm pays you while you hunt inside its thesis, brings its own capital and its own diligence bench, and installs you as chief executive of whatever you find. What you give up is the equity a self-funded buyer keeps and most of the say in what gets bought: the firm sets the box, and a seat that ends without a deal ends with a salary and no company. Read any program page for the two things that decide whether it is worth taking, which are how much equity vests on close and whether the firm has actually closed one.

In numbers: Eighteen months at $150k is $225k of salary a self-funded searcher would have had to raise or go without, and the price of it is the equity: one published seat vests up to 20%, against the whole of a company you bought yourself.