Honestly, partially by chance. During the dot-com bust I called every recruiter I could talk to in order to line up my next gig. He was actually an executive recruiter, but because of the boom in tech, he started taking on tech clients. So my advice is to find an executive search recruiter who is looking for bad-ass tech clients. The second part of this equation, which is not chance, is that I was looking for someone I could trust and build a long term relationship with, not just someone to get me a job. I did not expect to find it, but that's how it went down.

Thanks!