Success Stories

A MarTech (Marketing Technology) company, Advertising Network with different formats of ads. It monetizes websites with ad units and sells generated traffic to advertisers. Today, it’s a global leader in its niche.

📍 Starting point: the startup had successfully found product-market fit, attracted investments and was ready to scale. It had already altogether 23 employees, including 7 sales-related team members — 3 focused on selling the company’s solution to advertisers and 4 who were responsible for attracting publishers (websites to place ads on). The startup was internationally oriented from the very beginning and worked globally.

When we first got acquainted with the company, they already had a brilliant business model, a solid product, and initial Sales and Publishers teams, led by a Head of Sales and a Head of Publishers. But at that time the company didn’t have an internal HR / Talent Acquisition department and needed expert external support to help find and hire talent for both the Sales and Publishers teams.

The market was growing rapidly, but competition was fierce. The company wanted to scale quickly, capture market share, and outperform its competitors. To do that, they needed the right sales talent. And that was the sphere of our competence.

At the beginning we worked hand-in-hand with the company’s management and its Founder figuring out the portrait of an ideal candidate. We found out that there were very few professionals in the market who had very similar experience, were good with languages and had the right sales skills at the same time.

Our strategic decision that worked out was: not try find candidates with a perfect resume and experience in a similar company, but focus on candidates that:

• Young and full of energy;
• Have right sales skills;
• Are good at languages, may be previously lived/studied abroad;
• Have some successful experience in proactive B2B sales;
• Have either knowledge and experience in Digital Marketing sphere or exited by Tech and startups.

And this focus not on well-polished resumes, but on people, their personalities, soft skills and energy – paid off well.

We also developed a high-performing job pitch, including a visual component that explained the company’s business model to candidates who had never worked in a similar industry. It helped them understand both how the business worked and where they could fit within it.

When hiring for tech startups that have new and unfamiliar products, it’s crucial to clearly and simply explain the business model. This helps candidates fully understand the opportunity – and sparks genuine interest in the role.

After that, the real work began. We actively sourced candidates and managed incoming applications. We conducted hundreds of interviews to identify brilliant talent that matched the company’s needs and unique setup – all while effectively pitching the company and the role to each candidate.

We worked with PropellerAds for 2.5 years,  found and hired 28 sales professionals into their teams. Among them were:

• All-in-one Sales Executives
• BDRs
• Account Executives
• Publishers Managers (who attracted and nurtured relationships with publishers);
• Sales Team Lead
• 2 Publishers Team Leads

While we worked with the company, it grew up from a small startup into the world’s market leader. Of course it is not only because of us – the company had a brilliant management team, business model, investors and etc. But we are proud that we helped the company to keep a high pace of scaling by providing the right, talented people who helped the company get ahead of the competition. It was an incredible and invaluable experience!

A MarTech (Marketing Technology) data-driven company, Programmatic DSP+SSP platform. It helps large retail brands run online media advertising campaigns on a large number of websites targeting the right audience using technology and big data. Today it is regional market leader in its niche.

📍 Starting point: company’s founders initially were in the advertising agency business and then spent several years building a unique cutting-edge tech platform. Those years were tough time for them – lack of funding, as a result lack of talent that they could afford to hire. One of the founders and the CEO of the company was the only one Sales person who was searching for clients and dealt with them at the pre-seed stage. Finally they got the seed-stage investments and had an opportunity to hire new people and scale.

Our first meeting was straight with the Founder and the CEO of the company, who is a unique person that inspires, builds trust and “sells” the opportunity to join his team (that worked well later when his personality was an additional selling point making the best candidates at the market accept job offers from the company). He told us that the company had finally secured a seed-stage investments and needed help with finding and hiring sales talent.

At the time we had the meeting and “shaked hands” to collaborate – their sales team consisted of him and one more recently hired sales employee that didn’t perform well… They needed new Sales team members to get new clients, scale the business and beat competitors (there we several companies who offered some similar products/solutions).

So we were chosen as an exclusive external recruitment partner to help building company’s Sales departments almost from scratch.

We started our recruitment job.

We focused on searching for candidates who had worked in Online Advertising, had experience in dealing with large retail brands and had right sales skills. But the company’s product was so cutting-edge and technically complex that it was important for us to begin with developing a high-performing job pitch that included a component that explained the company’s product and business model even to those candidates in simple words.

We actively searched candidates and conducted interviews with them choosing the right ones, sent them to the Founder and the CEO and managed the whole interviewing and hiring process being a full-stack recruitment provider and organizer for him.

We were excited to work directly hand-in-hand with the Founder of the company.  Being in touch with a founder of a startup on an early stage of recruitment collaboration is super-important for us. It gives a lot of insights to both sides and as a result makes hiring process more effective and brings the best talent that really fit a company.

Working  with the Founder and the CEO directly during the first moths of our collaboration with the company helped both of us find a portrait of an “ideal candidate” taking into account labor market realities. It also helped us understand what kind of soft skills and cultural aspects the Founder valued in candidates. And we were looking for them at our interviews.

For an early-stage startup with a small team it is important to bring on board talent that has alignment with existing corporate culture and values of founders. The Founder of Segmento it was very important to select and hire those people who do not only have the right skills and experience but also the right culture and the mindset that is similar to the startup team.

We worked with Segmento for about 2 years. At the beginning we collaborated directly with the Founder and the CEO, later – with hired HRD and the CRO. Altogether we  found and hired 17 sales professionals into the company. Among them were:

• All-in-one Sales and Account Managers
• BDRs (Hunters)
• Account Managers (Farmers)
• Senior Account Managers
• Account Group Head

Some of the employees we hired were promoted within the company from junior and middle-seniority roles to senior and management ones. For example from an Account Manager to Account Group Head, from Account Group Head to a department manager position.

While we were working with the company as external recruiters it grew from a small startup into well-known regional market-leader that was later sold to a strategic investor. This positive experience of collaboration let both the company to expand as business and helped us grow our recruitment expertise in scaling Tech startups into the real market leaders.

The company had brilliant founders and the team – that’s definitely the key factor of company’s success. But we are are glad that had a chance to work with Segmento while its major growth period and that we contributed to its success story building that team.