Scale With Strive

Author: Iwan Robertson

  • Who should be the first Marketing hire at a Cybersecurity Vendor?

    Who should be the first Marketing hire at a Cybersecurity Vendor?

    Is your Founder still writing the website copy?

    Are your AEs building their own slide decks the night before a pitch?

    Does every sales call describe the product slightly differently?

    If any of that sounds familiar, you probably need a Marketer. The harder question is which one.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    Why the first marketing hire is so easy to get wrong in Cyber

    Most security vendors get to Series A on the strength of the founders and a handful of good AEs. The founders know the problem inside out. They have worked in a SOC, or built the detection engine, or sold into CISOs for a decade. The early customers bought them as much as the product.

    Then the company raises, the sales team grows, and suddenly the story has to work without the founder in the room.

    That is usually when the first marketing job spec gets written. And it is usually written as a wish list: someone who can do positioning, run paid, manage events, write content, rebuild the website and eventually hire a team. That person rarely exists. When a vendor hires the closest match on paper, it tends to get a generalist who is good at a bit of everything and not quite good enough at the one thing the business needs most.

     

    Start with what is actually broken

    Before you write the spec, ask your sales team two questions.

    First, when you lose a deal, why? If the honest answer is “they did not get what makes us different” or “they went with the vendor that explained it better”, your problem is positioning. You need product marketing.

    Second, how full is your pipeline? If the message lands when you get in front of people, but you are not in front of enough of them, your problem is volume. You need demand generation.

    Most Series A security vendors have a bit of both, but one is almost always louder. Hire for that one first.

     

    The case for Product Marketing first

    Security buyers are sceptical, and with good reason. Every vendor claims to stop everything, and CISOs have learned to ignore most of it. A vendor that can explain clearly and specifically what it does, who it is for and why it is different has a real advantage.

    A good first product marketer will spend their first ninety days talking to customers, sitting in on sales calls and working with your sales engineers. They will come out of it with a positioning the whole company can repeat, a competitive view sales can use in live deals, and materials that do not need rewriting by an AE at midnight.

    It is also far easier to run demand generation on top of a clear message than to fix the message once the campaigns are already running.

     

    The case for Demand Generation first

    Sometimes the positioning is already sharp. The founders have done the hard work, win rates are healthy once a deal is in play, and the real problem is simply that the pipeline is thin.

    In that case a product marketer can feel like a delay. What you need is someone who will take a pipeline target, build a programme across events, email, paid and partners, and be measured on it from the first month.

    The trap is hiring someone whose experience is running large budgets at an enterprise vendor. At Series A your demand generation hire has to build from scratch, often with a small budget and no marketing operations support.

     

    What to look for either way

    Whichever route you take, a few things matter more in cyber than in general SaaS.

    Credibility with a technical buyer. Ask candidates to explain your category back to you as if you were a CISO. If they reach for fear, buzzwords or vague claims about AI, that is what your buyers will hear too.

    A good relationship with sales engineers. In security the SEs often hold the most accurate version of the product story. Marketers who seek them out produce better work.

    Comfort with a long cycle. Proof-of-concepts, security reviews and procurement all slow deals down. Marketing has to support the whole cycle, not just the first meeting.

    Stage fit. Your first marketer has to do the work themselves. Someone who has only ever run a team of ten may struggle without one.

     

    When to hire a Head of Marketing instead

    Some founders want to start with a VP or head of marketing and let them build the team. That can work, particularly if you are about to expand into the US or are preparing for a bigger round and need someone senior to own the plan.

    But a senior leader with no team will often spend their first six months hiring rather than doing. If the business needs positioning or pipeline now, a strong hands-on hire first, with a leader added later, is usually the quicker route.

     

     

    Back to the Founder writing the website

    If that is still you, it is a sign the business has outgrown the founder doing everything. The first marketing hire is what lets the story travel without you in the room.

    We recruit marketing, sales and customer success teams for cybersecurity vendors, and we are always happy to talk through what your first or next marketing hire should look like. You can  book a call if you would like to talk it through.

     

  • When should a Cybersecurity Vendor hire its first RevOps person?

    When should a Cybersecurity Vendor hire its first RevOps person?

    Is your forecast a number or an opinion?

    Do your Reps each describe a qualified opportunity a little differently?

    Does a new Account Executive take a full quarter to explain the product to a sceptical buyer?

    If so, you may be missing someone. The harder question is who, and when.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    Why operations gets ignored until it hurts

    Most security vendors reach Series A on founder credibility and a small group of strong sellers. The CRM is a shared habit, not a system. Deals are remembered, not recorded. That works for a while, because the founder is in every important call.

    Then the team grows. A second segment appears, a partner starts bringing deals, and the board asks for a forecast it can rely on. Suddenly the person who knows where everything lives is also the person with no time to explain it.

    That is usually when a RevOps role gets written down. And, as with most first hires, it gets written as a wish list: CRM admin, analyst, forecaster, deal desk, enablement lead and process designer, all in one person. That person rarely exists.

     

    Start with the pain, not the title

    The most useful question is not “do we need RevOps?” It is “what is the most expensive thing we cannot see right now?” The answer usually points to one of three jobs.

    The numbers are not trusted. If leadership argues about the data in every pipeline review, you need someone who owns definitions, hygiene and reporting. That is classic sales operations, and it is often the right first hire.

    The process is not repeatable. If every deal is run differently, handoffs between SDR, AE, sales engineer and customer success are messy, and nobody can say why deals stall, you need process design more than reporting.

    The new starters are slow. If ramp time is the problem, you may need enablement before you need operations. A good enablement lead shortens the distance between a start date and a confident first discovery call.

    Be honest about which one hurts most. A single hire can cover two of them at Series A. Rarely all three.

     

    Why security deals make this harder

    Security sales cycles are long and multi-threaded. There is a technical evaluation, a security review of the vendor itself, a champion who is not the budget holder, and often a reseller or MSSP in the middle. If none of that is captured consistently, the pipeline report is a work of fiction.

    Partner-sourced deals add another wrinkle. Who gets credit, how it is registered and how it affects compensation all need to be written down somewhere. An operations hire who has not seen a channel motion before will learn it on your time.

     

    What to look for in the first hire

    A few things matter more than the tooling on a CV:

    • Experience on long, multi-stakeholder software deals, not only high-volume transactional selling
    • The ability to explain the numbers in plain English to a rep and to a board
    • Credibility with sellers, which usually means they have sat close to a live deal
    • A preference for the simplest process that works over another system

    For enablement, add a quick learner. They do not need to be an engineer, but they do need to understand the product well enough to teach it to someone who has to sell it.

     

    Who they should report to

    This catches people out. A RevOps hire who reports into sales will be pulled towards sales priorities. One who reports into finance will be pulled towards control. Neither is wrong, but you should choose deliberately. At Series A and B, most security vendors we speak to put the role close to the VP Sales or CRO, with a clear line to marketing and customer success so the data is not owned by one team.

     

    What the first 90 days should look like

    A good first quarter is dull in the best way. Agree the definitions: what counts as a qualified opportunity, a commit and a closed deal. Clean the pipeline against those definitions. Build one weekly report that leadership actually uses. Then, and only then, look at tooling.

    The warning sign is a new hire who spends the first month buying software. Systems are easy to add and very hard to remove. Ask in the interview what they would fix with the tools you already have.

     

    Common mistakes

    • Hiring a senior systems architect when the real problem is that nobody agrees on definitions
    • Asking enablement to fix a positioning problem that belongs to marketing
    • Treating partner deals as an afterthought in the reporting
    • Writing a job spec that mixes analyst, admin and strategist, then wondering why nobody fits

     

    When it is too early

    If you have two or three reps, a clean CRM and a weekly pipeline review that everyone attends, you probably do not need a full-time hire yet. A founder or a sales leader with a clear process can carry it. The signal to move is usually a mix of team size, a second segment, a forecast the board wants to rely on and the founder’s own calendar.

     

     

    Where to go next

    Which of those three pains is costing you most right now? If it is not obvious, that is a good conversation to have before you write a job spec.

    We recruit RevOps, sales operations and enablement talent for cybersecurity vendors. We do not recruit technical security roles, and we will tell you early if a brief belongs elsewhere.

     

  • How do you build an SDR team at a Cybersecurity Vendor?

    How do you build an SDR team at a Cybersecurity Vendor?

    Has your first SDR booked a single meeting your AEs actually wanted?

    Are you handing the same list of accounts to a new hire and hoping they will know what to say?

    Does every outbound email sound like it could have come from any security vendor?

    If so, the problem is probably not the person. It is how the team was set up. Here is how to build an SDR function at a security vendor that earns replies.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    Why outbound into Security is different

    Security buyers are contacted constantly. Their inboxes and LinkedIn messages are full of vendors promising to stop threats faster, and most have learned to ignore all of it.

    That means volume is a blunt tool. A vendor has a limited number of realistic target accounts, and every careless message to one of them makes a later, better approach harder. The job is quality of targeting and quality of message, not just activity.

    Get the story right before you hire

    An SDR can only be as good as the pitch they are handed. If your founders and AEs describe the product four different ways, a new SDR will pick one at random and the buyer will hear it.

    Before you write a job spec, sit down with your AEs and agree three things: who the ideal customer is, what problem you open with, and what a qualified meeting looks like. Write it down. It does not need to be long, but the SDR needs something to hold onto in week one.

     

    When to hire the first SDR

    The right moment is usually when the founders or first AEs have a repeatable story and a clear target list, but not enough hours to open every conversation themselves.

    Too early, and the SDR is working from a pitch that is still changing. Too late, and your most expensive people spend their week prospecting.

     

    What to look for

    A few things matter more in cyber than in general SaaS.

    Research habits. Ask candidates how they would choose ten accounts and what they would say to the first one. You are looking for a method, not a script.

    Credibility with a technical buyer. Can they explain your category back in plain language, without fear tactics or vague claims about AI?

    Resilience and curiosity. Outbound into security means a lot of silence. The people who do well keep testing what works instead of sending the same message harder.

    A good relationship with AEs and sales engineers. They are the people who know the real objections. SDRs who seek them out improve quickly.

    You do not need a security background. You do need someone who is interested enough to learn the category properly.

     

    What the first month should look like

    Do not start a new SDR on live outreach on day one. Put them in on AE calls and sales engineer demos for the first couple of weeks, so they hear the real objections and the language buyers use.

    Then have them draft messages for a small set of accounts and review them with an AE before anything is sent. It feels slow, and it is much faster than repairing a burned account later.

    By the end of the first month they should be able to explain, in a couple of sentences, who you sell to, what problem you open with and why someone should give them twenty minutes. If they cannot, that is a coaching conversation, not a reason to send more emails.

     

    The mistakes we see most often

    Hiring an SDR to fix a pitch that has not been settled. Giving one person a huge, unfiltered list and calling it a territory. Copying an outbound playbook from a different kind of vendor, where buyers are far less guarded. Treating the SDR as the most junior person in the room rather than the person who shapes first impressions with your best-fit accounts.

    And, perhaps most often, hiring without a manager. A first SDR with nobody experienced to coach them will usually struggle, however capable they are. If you cannot yet afford a lead, make sure an AE or sales leader has real time set aside for it.

     

    Structure and targets

    Decide early who owns the outbound motion. Some vendors put SDRs under a sales development lead who reports into sales. Others have marketing supply account lists and content. Either can work, as long as one person is accountable and sales and marketing agree on what counts as a good meeting.

    Be careful with activity targets. Counting emails sent rewards exactly the behaviour that burns your target list. Measure meetings that progress into real opportunities, and talk to your AEs about which ones they would book again.

     

    Give them a route forward

    The best SDRs want to become AEs or team leads. If there is no visible path, they will go and find one elsewhere, and your candidates will notice that too. Even a simple, honest description of how people move up will improve the quality of your applicants.

     

     

    Back to that first SDR

    If the meetings are not landing, look at the story, the list and the targets before you look at the person. A hire set up well will outperform one who is left to work it out alone.

    We recruit sales development, sales, marketing and customer success teams for cybersecurity vendors, and we are always happy to talk through what your next outbound hire should look like. You can book a call if you would like to talk it through.

     

  • What should you ask a Cybersecurity Recruitment Agency before you sign?

    What should you ask a Cybersecurity Recruitment Agency before you sign?

    How many agencies got in touch the week your last role went live?

    Three? Six? More, if the role was posted publicly and the job title had the word “security” anywhere near it.

    They will all have said roughly the same thing. Specialists in cyber. Strong network. Some placements you have never heard of at companies you have. And you will have had about twenty minutes to work out which of them is actually going to help.

    The problem is not that agencies lie. Most of them do not. The problem is that “cybersecurity recruitment” describes at least three completely separate markets, and almost nobody is genuinely good at all of them. Sorting that out is on you, and it happens in a conversation before anything is signed.

    So here are the questions worth asking. They are not clever, and that is deliberate. The useful ones rarely are.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    “Which part of the Security market do you actually work in?”

    Ask this first and listen to the shape of the answer, not the content.

    Security splits into practitioners (Security Engineers, SOC Analysts, Pen Testers, Cloud Security), Leadership (CISOs, Heads of Security, GRC), and Commercial (the people who sell, market and retain the software). Different networks, different candidate motivations, different interview processes. An Agency that has genuinely built a network in one of those has usually done it at the expense of the others.

    An honest answer names one, maybe two. “All of it” is a marketing answer.

    This one question does most of the work, because it tells you whether you are talking to someone who understands their own business.

     

    “What have you placed in the last six months?”

    Not what they can place. What they did place.

    You are listening for specificity. Role, Stage of Company, roughly how long it took, what made it hard. Someone who has done the work tells you about the awkward bit – the candidate who nearly took the counter-offer, the brief that had to change halfway through. Someone who has not will talk in categories.

    You do not need a reference list at this stage. You need to hear that they have actually been in the room.

     

    “Explain what makes selling security different.”

    This is the one that separates people fastest, and you can ask it without sounding like you are setting a test.

    Anyone who has genuinely worked commercial roles at Security Vendors will go somewhere concrete quickly. The proof of concept that sits in the middle of the sales cycle. The security questionnaire that arrives at exactly the wrong moment. The fact that your buyer has been trained, professionally, to be suspicious of the thing you are saying. The way a CISO and a CTO care about different risks and need different conversations.

    If the answer stays at “security buyers are more technical”, the network probably is not there.

     

    “Who is actually going to work on this?”

    The person pitching is often not the person sourcing. That is not sinister, it is just how Agencies are structured, but you should know it before you sign rather than three weeks in when the emails start coming from a name you have not met.

    Ask who runs the search day to day, how much of their week it gets, and how many other roles they are carrying. The last one is the question people forget.

     

    “What does your process look like, in writing?”

    How they screen.

    What a first shortlist looks like and roughly when it lands.

    How often you will hear from them when nothing is happening, which is when communication usually goes quiet.

    What they do if the first slate misses.

    That last point matters more than it sounds. Every search has a version where the first shortlist is wrong. The difference between a good Agency and a bad one is entirely in what happens next.

     

    “What are your Terms if this goes wrong?”

    Fee model, Rebate or Replacement terms, Exclusivity, and what happens if you end up hiring someone they only lightly touched.

    None of this is awkward before you start. All of it is awkward later, when there is a candidate on the table and a start date being discussed. Get it done early and it stops being a conversation you have to have.

     

    “What would you tell me that I do not want to hear?”

    The best answer we ever get to this from the other side of the table is a client saying it back to us.

    An Agency that has never talked a client out of a role, or out of a sequence, or out of a salary band, is not advising you. They are taking the brief. Those are different jobs and only one of them is worth a fee.

     

    One more, quietly

    Ask whether they would refer you elsewhere if this is not their market.

    We say no to technical security roles fairly often. Security Engineers, SOC, Offensive Security, GRC, Cloud Security, CISO Search – all of that belongs with a Technical Security Specialist, and there are good ones. We recruit the Commercial team that sells the software, which is a different network built for a different reason.

    An Agency that can tell you where they stop is usually telling you the truth about where they start.

    None of this takes long. Twenty minutes on a call, most of it. The alternative is finding out in month two, having spent a quarter and a fair bit of your own credibility internally.

     

     

    If you want the longer version, we have written up the whole selection process – the three markets, what a bad choice costs, and how to run the comparison properly – here: how to choose a cybersecurity recruitment agency.

    And if you are weighing up a commercial hire at a security vendor right now, book a call. We will tell you fairly quickly whether it is one for us.

     

  • Selling Security Is a Different Sport: How Cyber Vendors Should Build Their Go-to-Market Team

    Selling Security Is a Different Sport: How Cyber Vendors Should Build Their Go-to-Market Team

    Most Cybersecurity Vendors build a brilliant product and then hire the commercial team as if they were selling any other piece of software.

    They bring in a polished Enterprise seller with a great logo on the CV, expect the pipeline to follow, and are surprised when deals stall in the first technical call.

    Selling security is a different sport. The buyer is paid to be sceptical, the evaluation is run by Engineers, and a single weak reference travels fast through a small, well-connected Community.

     If you are a Cyber-SaaS Founder or Revenue Leader about to hire, or rebuild, your go-to-market team, it pays to treat that team as a distinct problem rather than a generic sales hire.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

     

    The Cyber Buyer is paid to be Sceptical

    A CISO, a security architect or a SOC lead does not respond to urgency and charm the way a generalist buyer might. They are trained to look for what a product cannot do, to poke holes in a claim, and to distrust anyone who oversells. The reps who win in security are the ones who can hold a credible technical conversation, admit the limits of the product, and respect a rigorous proof-of-value rather than trying to shortcut it. That is why the strongest cyber sellers tend to come from another security vendor, or from years of selling deeply technical infrastructure to engineering buyers. Charisma without technical credibility does not survive the first meeting.

     

    Your Sales Engineer is a Revenue role, not a support function

    In most security categories the deal is won or lost in the technical evaluation, and that evaluation is run by your sales engineer rather than your account executive. Yet vendors routinely over-hire AEs and under-hire SEs, then wonder why healthy-looking pipeline converts poorly. A realistic AE-to-SE ratio in complex cyber sales is closer to two or three to one than the five to one a generalist SaaS playbook assumes. If you treat the sales engineer as a nice-to-have rather than a revenue-critical hire, you are quietly capping your win rate before the first quarter even starts.

     

    The Channel is a growth lever, not an afterthought

    Across large parts of cybersecurity, from MSSPs and VARs through to distributors, cloud marketplaces and GSI alliances, the channel carries a major share of revenue. Vendors who leave channel and alliances until it becomes a crisis, or fold it into a direct seller’s spare time, leave their fastest growth lever unbuilt. Partner-sourced pipeline compounds, but it takes time to build, which means the first dedicated channel hire is often higher-leverage than the third direct AE. Sequencing the channel deliberately alongside the direct team is one of the clearest markers of a revenue org that understands its own market.

     

    “Cyber experience” is not one thing

    It is tempting to filter for the word “cybersecurity” on a CV and assume the rest will follow. It will not. Selling SIEM to a SOC is a different motion from selling GRC tooling to a compliance team, identity to IT, cloud security to platform engineering, or offensive tooling to a red team. The buyer changes, the cycle changes, and the technical conversation changes. A rep who smashed quota selling endpoint protection may struggle selling data security to a different buyer with a different rhythm. The right calibration is on buyer and motion, not on the category label. Get that wrong and you can hire someone with an impeccable security background who is still the wrong fit for your specific sale.

     

    Hire for the Stage you are actually at

    The org chart a generalist recruiter reaches for, with a VP Sales, directors, a row of AEs and SDRs, is usually more leadership layer than an early security vendor needs. Below roughly three to five million in ARR, the better move is a calibration pod: one or two senior enterprise AEs with genuine security credibility, paired with an excellent sales engineer, reporting into the founder. Their job is to close, build a referenceable base, and become the profile you calibrate every future hire against. Between five and fifteen million, the highest-leverage hire is a player-coach VP Sales who has carried a cyber quota and will still run strategic deals personally while building the team, and this is the moment for your first dedicated channel hire. Only past fifteen million does a full revenue operator, a VP or CRO with forecasting rigour across multiple segments, become the right call. Hiring a level too senior, too early, is one of the most expensive mistakes a cyber vendor can make. There is a fuller breakdown of the stages, the roles and the comp bands on our cyber sales recruitment page.

     

    Move at the speed of a Small, Connected Market

    The senior cyber-sales talent pool is small, well-networked and, crucially, already employed. A six-week interview loop with three unstructured rounds loses the best candidates to a competitor who moved in two. Worse, a sloppy or slow process becomes a story that circulates, because in a market this connected your hiring process is part of your employer brand whether you manage it or not. Decide within about three weeks of the first interview, give a comp range in the screen, build a real technical stage into the loop, and keep the whole thing tight. A clean, credible process is not just good manners. In security it is a genuine recruiting advantage.

     

    The Commercial side of Security is its own discipline

    None of this is the same problem as hiring the technical side of a security company. Placing CISOs, security engineers, SOC analysts and penetration testers is specialist work, and there are excellent recruiters who do exactly that. Building the team that sells the product, meaning the AEs, sales engineers, channel leaders and revenue executives who can win over a sceptical buyer, is a different discipline again. It sits at the crossroads of GTM sales hiring and the security market. Treat it as its own search, run by people who understand both sides, and the team you build will actually convert the product you have worked so hard to create.

     

     

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about The Commercial side of Security is its own discipline, see the full cyber sales recruitment playbook, or see more about how we can support your growth here about The Commercial side of Security is its own discipline.

     

  • AI SIEM Is Where the Capital Is Going: What It Means for Cyber GTM Hiring

    AI SIEM Is Where the Capital Is Going: What It Means for Cyber GTM Hiring

    SIEM has been the most expensive, most complained-about line item in the security budget for the better part of a decade, which is precisely why it has become one of the most heavily funded battlegrounds in Cyber.

    A wave of AI-native SIEM and security data platform companies has raised significant capital on a simple proposition: That log ingestion should not cost more than the breaches it detects, and that detection engineering should not require an army of analysts writing rules by hand.

    For go-to-market leaders in this space, that capital creates a specific and unusual hiring problem. You are not selling a new capability into an empty budget line – you are selling a replacement for a system the buyer already owns, has spent years configuring, and cannot switch off.

    That changes what a good salesperson looks like, and it changes how you build the revenue team behind the raise.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    Why the funding is flowing into AI SIEM

    The investment thesis is easy to state. Legacy SIEM pricing is coupled to data volume at exactly the moment data volume is exploding, security teams are under-resourced relative to alert load, and large language models are genuinely good at the pattern-summarisation and triage work that consumes analyst hours. Add the consolidation activity of the last few years – incumbent platforms acquiring their way into the category and cloud providers bundling detection into existing agreements – and you have a market where investors believe an architectural reset is possible.

    What that means practically is that a cohort of companies is now funded to go from early traction to serious enterprise revenue in a compressed window. Capital removes the constraint on headcount but not the constraint on quality, and it introduces a harder one: the expectation of pace. A team that raises to accelerate is expected to show coverage and pipeline within two quarters, which is roughly the ramp time of a single enterprise seller in this category.

     

    Displacement selling is a distinct skill

    The defining characteristic of AI SIEM go-to-market is that almost every deal is a rip-and-replace or a coexistence play. The buyer has a SIEM. They probably dislike it. They also have years of detection content, compliance evidence, integrations and institutional muscle memory built on top of it, and a migration is a project with a genuine risk of failure attached to someone’s name.

    Selling into that requires a rep who is comfortable with a long, technical, multi-stakeholder motion and who can build a migration narrative as much as a product argument. They need to be credible on data architecture, on what happens to historical logs, on how detections port across, and on what the first ninety days after signature actually look like. Candidates whose experience is in net-new category creation – selling a tool that adds a capability nobody had – often struggle here, because the objection they are trained to handle is “why do I need this?” rather than “why is this worth the disruption?”

     

    Who is actually in the buying committee

    SIEM replacement pulls in more stakeholders than most security purchases. There is the CISO, who owns the risk and the budget narrative; the SOC lead or detection engineering manager, who owns whether the thing works day to day and is usually the hardest sceptic; a data or platform engineering function, because ingestion and retention decisions touch infrastructure cost; compliance, because audit evidence must survive the migration; and increasingly procurement and finance, given the size of the contracts involved.

    Reps who have only sold to the CISO will single-thread and stall. The hiring implication is direct: prioritise candidates who can demonstrate they have navigated a technical evaluation with a practitioner audience, not just an executive relationship. In interviews, ask them to name every person in the buying group of their largest closed deal and describe what each one needed. The answer separates the credible from the well-rehearsed quickly.

     

    Sales engineering is not a support function here

    In AI SIEM, the technical evaluation is the sale. Proofs of value involve real customer data, real detections and a comparison against an incumbent the buyer knows intimately. That makes the sales engineer or solutions architect the most leveraged hire on the team, and one of the hardest to find – the profile requires genuine detection engineering credibility alongside commercial instinct.

    Companies that under-invest here typically discover the problem as a POV conversion rate that never gets above a third. A useful planning ratio in this category is closer to one SE per one or two AEs, rather than the one-to-three or one-to-four common in general B2B SaaS. Budget for that in the plan you build post-raise, because the SE market is thinner than the AE market and the search takes longer.

     

    Hire for scepticism about AI claims, not enthusiasm for them

    Security buyers have been marketed at with AI language for years and have developed a strong immune response to it. A rep who leads with autonomous triage and agentic investigation and cannot immediately explain what the model does, what it does not do, how false positives are handled and where a human stays in the loop will lose credibility in the first meeting.

    The best salespeople in this category are noticeably restrained. They are precise about capability, comfortable saying what the product does not yet do, and able to hold a technical conversation about data pipelines and detection logic without retreating to slideware. When hiring, treat over-polished AI enthusiasm as a warning sign rather than a strength.

     

    Building the revenue team after the raise

    A few practical principles for cyber SaaS founders scaling GTM on fresh capital. Hire in pairs where possible – two AEs rather than one – because a single hire gives you no signal about whether a miss is the person or the motion. Resist hiring a senior sales leader before the motion is repeatable; in this category, founder and early-AE selling is what produces the migration playbook a leader will later scale. Get RevOps in earlier than feels comfortable, because usage-based and ingestion-linked pricing models make reporting genuinely complex. And plan for a longer ramp than your model wants: eight to twelve months to full productivity is realistic for enterprise security sellers displacing an incumbent.

    Most importantly, be honest in the market about the stage you are at. The strongest candidates in cyber GTM have seen several funded companies fail to convert capital into revenue, and they diligence founders carefully. Evidence — named reference customers, real win rates, a clear account of why deals are lost – converts better than a valuation number.

     

     

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about Building the revenue team after the raise, or see more about how we can support your growth here about Solutions.

     

     

  • Selling Security Is a Different Sport: How Cyber Vendors Should Build Their Go-to-Market Team

    Selling Security Is a Different Sport: How Cyber Vendors Should Build Their Go-to-Market Team

    Most Cybersecurity vendors build a brilliant product and then hire the commercial team as if they were selling any other piece of software. 

    They bring in a polished Enterprise seller with a great logo on the CV, expect the pipeline to follow, and are surprised when deals stall in the first technical call.

    Selling security is a different sport. The buyer is paid to be sceptical, the evaluation is run by engineers, and a single weak reference travels fast through a small, well-connected community.

    If you are a Cyber-SaaS Founder or revenue leader about to hire (or rebuild), your Go-To-Market team, it pays to treat that team as a distinct problem, not a generic sales hire.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

     

    The Cyber Buyer is paid to be sceptical

    A CISO, a security architect or a SOC lead does not respond to urgency and charm the way a generalist buyer might. They are trained to look for what a product cannot do, to poke holes in a claim, and to distrust anyone who oversells.

    The Reps who win in Security are the ones who can hold a credible technical conversation, admit the limits of the product, and respect a rigorous proof-of-value rather than trying to shortcut it. That is why the strongest Cyber sellers tend to come from another Security vendor, or from years of selling deeply technical infrastructure to engineering buyers. Charisma without technical credibility does not survive the first meeting.

     

    Your Sales Engineer is a revenue role, not a support function

    In most Security categories the deal is won or lost in the technical evaluation, and that evaluation is run by your sales engineer rather than your account executive. Yet vendors routinely over-hire AEs and under-hire SEs, then wonder why healthy-looking pipeline converts poorly.

    A realistic AE-to-SE ratio in complex cyber sales is closer to two or three to one than the five to one a generalist SaaS playbook assumes. If you treat the Sales Engineer as a nice-to-have rather than a revenue-critical hire, you are quietly capping your win rate before the first quarter even starts.

     

    The Channel is a growth lever, not an afterthought

    Across large parts of Cybersecurity – MSSPs, VARs, distributors, cloud marketplaces and GSI alliances – the Channel carries a major share of revenue.

    Vendors who leave Channel and Alliances until it becomes a crisis, or fold it into a direct seller’s spare time, leave their fastest growth lever unbuilt. Partner-sourced pipeline compounds, but it takes time to build, which means the first dedicated Channel hire is often higher-leverage than the third direct AE.

    Sequencing the Channel deliberately alongside the direct team is one of the clearest markers of a revenue org that understands its own market.

     

    “Cyber experience” is not one thing

    It is tempting to filter for the word “Cybersecurity” on a CV and assume the rest will follow. It will not. Selling SIEM to a SOC is a different motion from selling GRC tooling to a compliance team, identity to IT, cloud security to platform engineering, or offensive tooling to a red team.

    The buyer changes, the cycle changes, and the technical conversation changes. A rep who smashed quota selling endpoint protection may struggle selling data security to a different buyer with a different rhythm. The right calibration is on buyer and motion, not on the category label. Get that wrong and you can hire someone with an impeccable security background who is still the wrong fit for your specific sale.

     

    Hire for the Stage you are actually at

    The org chart a generalist recruiter reaches for – VP Sales, directors, a row of AEs and SDRs – is usually more Leadership layer than an early Security vendor needs.

    Below roughly three to five million in ARR, the better move is a calibration pod: one or two Senior Enterprise AEs with genuine Security credibility, paired with an excellent Sales Engineer, reporting into the Founder. Their job is to close, build a referenceable base, and become the profile you calibrate every future hire against.

    Between five and fifteen million, the highest-leverage hire is a player-coach VP Sales who has carried a Cyber quota and will still run strategic deals personally while building the team – and this is the moment for your first dedicated channel hire.

    Only past fifteen million does a full revenue operator, a VP or CRO with forecasting rigour across multiple segments, become the right call. Hiring a level too senior, too early, is one of the most expensive mistakes a Cyber vendor can make.

     

    Move at the Speed of a small, connected Market

    The senior Cyber-sales talent pool is small, well-networked and, crucially, already employed.

    A six-week interview loop with three unstructured rounds loses the best Candidates to a Competitor who moved in two. Worse, a sloppy or slow process becomes a story that circulates, because in a market this connected your hiring process is part of your employer brand whether you manage it or not.

    Decide within about three weeks of the first interview, give a comp range in the screen, build a real technical stage into the loop, and keep the whole thing tight. A clean, credible process is not just good manners – in Security it is a genuine recruiting advantage.

     

    The Commercial side of Security is its own Discipline

    None of this is the same problem as hiring the technical side of a Security company.

    Placing CISOs, Security Engineers, SOC analysts and penetration testers is specialist work, and there are excellent Recruiters who do exactly that. Building the team that sells the product – the AEs, Sales Engineers, Channel Leaders and Revenue Executives who can win over a sceptical buyer is a different discipline again, sitting at the crossroads of GTM Sales hiring and the Security Market.

    Treat it as its own search, run by people who understand both sides, and the team you build will actually convert the product you have worked so hard to create.

     

     

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about The Commercial side of Security is its own Discipline, or see more about how we can support your growth here about The Commercial side of Security is its own Discipline.

  • Hiring Your First US Sales Team: A Playbook for European SaaS Founders

    Hiring Your First US Sales Team: A Playbook for European SaaS Founders

    For most European SaaS companies, the United States is the biggest prize and the biggest risk.

    It is the largest software market in the world, but it is also expensive, fast-moving and unforgiving of a poorly planned entry.

    Your first US sales hires will shape whether the market becomes a growth engine or an expensive lesson – and the decisions you make about who to hire, where to base them and how to support them matter enormously.

    This playbook sets out how to approach building your first US Go-To-Market team.

     

    Decide what ‘first hire’ actually means

    The most consequential early decision is whether your first US hire is a senior sales leader or an individual-contributor Account Executive.

    A leader can build the plan, hire the team and represent the brand – but is expensive, and a bad senior hire is very costly to unwind.

    A strong ‘player-coach’ AE who can close deals themselves while laying the foundations is often the pragmatic first move for an early-stage company, with a leadership hire following once there is proven traction.

    There is no universally right answer; the key is to match the profile to your stage, budget and how well-defined your US motion already is.

     

    Choose your Hub deliberately

    The US is not one market, and where you plant your flag matters.

    New York offers deep, diverse commercial talent and strong fintech and enterprise networks.

    Boston is a mature enterprise-software and cybersecurity hub.

    San Francisco and the Bay Area lead for infrastructure, developer tools and AI, at the highest compensation levels.

    Others choose emerging, more cost-effective hubs such as Austin or Denver.

    Base your decision on where your buyers and the right talent sit, your budget, and time-zone coverage for your existing team – not simply on brand prestige.

     

    Budget for US Compensation reality

    US sales compensation typically runs well above European levels, and the structure differs too – expect higher on-target earnings, a stronger emphasis on commission and equity, and candidates comparing multiple offers at once.

    Notice periods are short (often two weeks), which cuts both ways: you can hire quickly, but your competitors can too.

    Benchmark carefully against the specific city you are hiring in, and make sure your board and financial model reflect genuine US market rates before you go out to hire.

     

    Get the Operational Foundations right

    Hiring in the US brings practical considerations that catch out first-time entrants: how you employ people (setting up an entity versus using an Employer of Record to start), health insurance and benefits expectations, state-by-state employment rules, and equity administration.

    You do not need to solve everything before your first hire – an Employer of Record can get a first seller onboarded quickly while you decide on a longer-term structure – but you do need a plan so that a strong candidate does not stall on a slow or uncertain offer.

     

    Support your first Hires – don’t strand them

    A common failure mode is hiring a US seller and leaving them isolated, thousands of miles and several time zones from the rest of the company.

    First hires need genuine support: clear expectations, accessible leadership despite the time difference, marketing and pipeline support, and realistic ramp milestones. Set leading-indicator goals – pipeline created, discovery quality, activity – for the first quarter rather than expecting immediate closed revenue, and invest in onboarding as if this were a market you are entering, because it is.

     

    Hire for the Pioneer Profile

    Your first US sellers are not the same as the reps you will hire once the market is established.

    Early hires need to be comfortable with ambiguity, able to sell an unproven-in-market brand, and willing to build process rather than inherit it. Look for evidence of thriving in early-stage or new-territory environments, genuine resilience, and the judgement to represent your company well without day-to-day supervision.

    The polished operator who only performs inside a mature machine is often the wrong first hire.

     

    Why a Specialist Partner de-risks US entry

    Entering the US is one of the highest-stakes moves a European SaaS company makes, and it is easy to get wrong from a distance – misjudging compensation, choosing the wrong hub, or making a costly senior mis-hire.

    A partner with a genuine US presence and a track record of building go-to-market teams for European companies expanding across the Atlantic can benchmark the market accurately, position your brand to unfamiliar candidates, and help you land the right first hires quickly.

    It is the difference between a US launch that compounds and one that quietly stalls.

    Want to learn more? Read our full guide here!

     

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about Why a Specialist Partner de-risks US entry, or see more about how we can support your growth here about Why a Specialist Partner de-risks US entry.

  • Hiring Solutions Engineers in Boston: A SaaS Employer’s Guide

    Hiring Solutions Engineers in Boston: A SaaS Employer’s Guide

    Boston’s deep roots in Enterprise Software, Cloud and Cybersecurity make it one of the strongest markets in the US for technical pre-sales talent – and one of the most competitive.

    Solutions Engineers who combine real technical depth with polished customer-facing skills are scarce everywhere, and in a mature, well-funded hub like Boston they are relentlessly targeted.

    For SaaS employers, hiring a great SE here means competing hard on opportunity, moving quickly and running a technical assessment that is rigorous without dragging.

    Here is what to know.

     

    A deep but fiercely contested Talent Pool

    Boston has produced technical pre-sales talent for decades, thanks to its concentration of enterprise software and infrastructure companies. That depth is an advantage – but it also means every strong SE is known to multiple employers and recruiters.

    When you open a role, assume your shortlist is being courted elsewhere. A compelling, clearly-articulated opportunity is essential just to hold a candidate’s attention through your process.

     

    Technical depth and Communication both matter

    The defining challenge of SE hiring applies fully in Boston: you need people who can run credible demos, handle technical objections and translate business problems into technical solutions, while communicating clearly with customers and internal teams.

    Candidates strong in only one dimension will struggle in the role. Finding those who are genuinely strong in both is what extends timelines – so design a technical assessment that tests the real job, not trivia, and align your interviewers on the bar in advance.

     

    Enterprise and Infrastructure Experience is in demand

    Many Boston employers want SEs who understand Enterprise Sales, complex implementations, Cybersecurity, Cloud or Developer-focused products.

    Candidates with that background are heavily sought after and hard to secure. Be clear about which domain knowledge is essential versus learnable; a technically excellent engineer with adjacent experience can often ramp faster than a narrow search assumes, and widening the lens sensibly opens up a stronger, more available pool.

     

    AI and Infrastructure Companies are raising the stakes

    Boston’s growing cohort of AI and infrastructure companies is competing aggressively for technical pre-sales talent, often with strong compensation, equity and cutting-edge technology to work on.

    To compete, SaaS vendors must clearly communicate their technical vision, product differentiation and the genuinely interesting problems an SE will own.

    Benchmark compensation against current Boston conditions, because candidates here are comparing multiple strong offers.

     

    Speed and Candidate experience decide outcomes

    Top Boston SEs rarely stay available long and typically run several processes at once.

    Lengthy cycles, slow feedback or an unclear technical assessment are the fastest ways to lose them. The companies that win align internally early, keep the process tight and communicative, and move decisively once they find the right person – while still demonstrating career growth and product innovation along the way.

     

    What Good looks like in Boston

    The strongest Boston SEs pair genuine technical credibility with the commercial instinct to advance a deal and the communication skills to build trust with sophisticated buyers.

    Look for evidence of owning technical wins in complex, enterprise-grade sales cycles, comfort with demanding implementations, and the curiosity to learn a new product deeply and fast.

    In a market this mature, the ability to earn credibility with experienced technical buyers is often the differentiator.

     

    Learn more about how to hire SEs in Boston here. 

     

     

    How Strive helps

    Hiring Solutions Engineers in a market as competitive as Boston rewards speed, accurate benchmarking and a strong candidate experience.

    With a US team and deep networks across SaaS, cybersecurity and infrastructure, we help companies define the right technical-plus-commercial profile, position their opportunity to stand out, and secure strong SEs before the competition does.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about How Strive helps, or see more about how we can support your growth here about How Strive helps.

     

  • How to Hire Account Executives in Germany: A Guide for SaaS Companies

    How to Hire Account Executives in Germany: A Guide for SaaS Companies

    Germany is one of the largest and most valuable software markets in Europe and one of the hardest places to hire a strong Account Executive.

    For SaaS companies expanding into the DACH region for the first time, the instincts that work in the US or UK often backfire.

    Longer notice periods, a more risk-averse candidate mindset, a genuinely de-centralised talent market and distinct cultural expectations all combine to make German AE hiring slower and more nuanced than most first-time entrants expect.

    This guide sets out what makes the market difficult and how to build a hiring approach that actually works.

     

    Germany is a de-centralised market, not a single City

    Unlike the UK, where sales talent gravitates to London, Germany’s technology talent is spread across several hubs – Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg – each with its own character, sector strengths and salary expectations.

    Munich skews enterprise and deep-tech; Berlin is startup-heavy; Frankfurt leans financial services; Hamburg has its own media and commerce niche. Compensation can vary materially from one city to the next, as can the domain expertise available.

    Trying to run a single, uniform search across the whole country is a common mistake. Decide early where your buyers and your talent actually sit, and calibrate expectations city by city.

     

    Plan for Three-Month Notice Periods

    This is the single biggest scheduling shock for US and UK employers.

    Where a US AE might give two weeks and a UK candidate a month, German professionals routinely work three-month notice periods. A candidate you offer in January may not start until April.

    If your model assumes new-hire productivity in the current quarter, German hires will not fit that timeline. Build the notice period into your forecasting, start searches earlier than feels comfortable, and keep engaged candidates warm through a long gap between offer and start date.

     

    Expect a more risk-averse Candidate

    German candidates tend to do more due diligence before moving, and they expect you to earn the switch. A fast pitch and a persuasive founder rarely secure buy-in on their own.

    Strong candidates will want time to understand the product, the funding position and the realistic trajectory of the business and many will want to speak to existing customers to sense-check that your solution genuinely works.

    Treat this as a positive signal rather than hesitation: the same rigour that makes them slow to move makes them loyal once they do. Come prepared with references, customer proof points and a clear, credible growth story.

     

    Respect the Cultural Nuances

    Germany has its own professional norms that can catch out non-European hiring managers – around directness, process, contracts and how trust is built.

    Candidates value clarity, structure and honesty over hype. Overselling or vague answers erode credibility quickly.

    If you are entering the market for the first time, take real local guidance before you start interviewing, and adapt your process to local expectations rather than exporting your home-market playbook wholesale.

     

    Engagement is slower – Adjust your Outreach

    Response rates in Germany are typically lower and time-to-hire longer than in other geographies.

    Standard outbound sequences that perform elsewhere often underperform here, and candidates are generally less responsive to cold approaches.

    Interestingly, English is usually the preferred language for outreach, even with German-native candidates in international SaaS roles.

    The practical implication is patience and persistence: budget for a longer engagement cycle, invest in genuinely personalised outreach, and lean on warm introductions and specialist networks rather than volume.

     

    What Good looks like

    The AEs who succeed in Germany usually combine consultative, methodical selling with real domain credibility.

    Buyers here reward sellers who understand their business and can navigate a considered, multi-stakeholder decision rather than push for a fast close.

    When you build your scorecard, weight for patience, structure, technical fluency and the ability to build trust over time – not just raw pipeline velocity.

     

    Learn more about hiring AEs in Germany here. 

     

     

    Why a Specialist Partner matters here

    Germany is a market where local knowledge pays for itself. Knowing which city to target for a given profile, how to position an unknown foreign brand, what compensation is genuinely competitive, and how to keep a candidate engaged through a three-month notice period is the difference between a hire that lands and a search that stalls.

    If you are expanding into the DACH region, this is a market we strongly recommend having specialist support in rather than learning the hard way.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about Why a Specialist Partner matters here, or see more about how we can support your growth here about Why a Specialist Partner matters here.