Meet the Founder
Christian Rados | Biotech Executive Headhunter Since 2011. Solo founder, full network, AI-enabled speed.
Biotech leadership, since 2011.
Christian Rados is a biotech headhunter. Has been since 2011. Long enough to know who delivers, who pretends, and who is one board meeting away from being available. In 2020 he founded Rados Recruiting GmbH in Munich. Boutique. Solo. On purpose.
The thesis is simple. Global search firms sell process - partner pitches the role, an associate runs the search, a researcher builds the longlist, three months later you get a shortlist. Christian Rados sells judgement. One person owns the mandate from briefing to placement. No account managers. No handoffs. No briefs being forwarded down a chain. You work with the headhunter, not with a sales team.
Christian Rados places CEOs, CFOs, CSOs, CBOs, CCOs, Chief Medical Officers and Chief Technical Officers for venture-backed and listed biotech - permanent, interim, fractional. Munich, Vienna, Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Ghent, Budapest, Helsinki, Boston, New York. Seed through commercial-stage.
What Christian Rados does differently.
Solo founder. Not a side effect - a design choice.
Rados Recruiting is not a thirty-person agency. Christian leads every mandate personally, from briefing to placement. Clients work directly with the person who owns the outcome - not with an account manager forwarding briefs to junior researchers. Sharper judgement. Faster decisions. Full accountability.
AI as operational leverage.
The boutique model only scales when technology compensates for headcount. Christian combines fifteen years of market knowledge with modern AI tooling for research, mapping and outreach. Shortlists in days, not weeks. Which frees him to spend his time on the part clients actually pay for: selection, judgement, chemistry.
Placement measured in days, not quarters.
Global search firms take four to six months to fill a C-level role. Christian closes interim mandates in 6 days and permanent searches in less than 60 days. Speed is not a side effect. It is the structural advantage of a model built without organisational drag, with focus on decision-making quality.
Different phase, different executive.
The CFO who got you through Seed will not get you through Series C. The CEO who built the science is rarely the CEO who runs a commercial launch. The CMO who designs a Phase 2 protocol is not the CMO who navigates a launch in seven markets. What worked in clinical-stage often breaks in late clinical - and the people who pretend otherwise cost their companies a year of progress.
The pattern repeats across every C-suite role. CSOs, CBOs, CCOs, Chief Technical Officers - each phase rewards a different profile. The leader who fits one stage rarely fits the next, and the leader who scales across three is a rare exception, not the rule.
Christian Rados has seen the pattern across fifteen years, four biotech cycles, and over a thousand executive conversations that ended in a placement. Knowing when a leader is the right hire for now is the easy part. Knowing when that same leader is the wrong hire for the next phase is what founders and investors actually need a search partner for.
Why the podcast exists.
For more than a decade, Christian had one kind of conversation with the biotech community - about roles, candidates, mandates. Important conversations, but narrow. The gap between what he was already doing for his community and what he could be doing grew over the years. The podcast is the answer to that gap.
"Willing to Win - Biotech Leaders Against All Odds" is a long-form podcast featuring the founders and executives who have built biotech companies through real adversity: failed trials, board fights, near-bankruptcy, regulatory setbacks, personal cost. Not the highlight reel. The willingness.
The title is deliberate. Willing to Win is not about winning. It is about deciding to accept the adversity, the fight, the struggle - uncertain of a win. The wins make the highlight reel. The willingness is what makes the story.
Who is Christian Rados, beyond the firm?
Christian lives in Munich with his wife Melanie, his daughter Maya, and Joker the Labradoodle. Outside the office, life is built around surfing, the gym, and the slow but steady work of personal development - three things that all reward patience and consistency, which is more or less what executive search rewards too.
Espresso is not optional. And neither is a very good meal. Christian believes both decide the quality of a day, and that anyone who rushes past those moments has misread the assignment.
He describes himself as headhunter, biotech personality, surfer, dad, gym rat, dog owner, and serious espresso person. The plural is not a problem to solve. It is the operating model. The boutique works because the founder is fully present in every part of it.
