There are more than 1000 companies using Cognism to reach new potential clients and generate new business. Can you explain what a difference Cognism makes for a sales team and what data you provide?
We are providing B2B email addresses and mobile phone numbers that are cleared against Do Not Call lists, meaning Cognism is globally compliant. The pandemic has led to people working from home, which in turn has made it difficult to reach decision-makers by calling the company headquarters. Our product is key for outbound salespeople that want to reach the right people to pitch their product.

Cognism also provides data that indicates buying intent. How does that work?
We work together with the company Bombora which tracks back online behavior such as downloading content and looking at ads to IP addresses. Now if someone is doing research on CRM systems, that person might be more willing to purchase a CRM system than others.

Cognism is an impressive growth story. Founded in 2015 Cognism crossed the threshold of USD 22 million annual recurring revenues last year. What drove that growth?
It is clearly our revenue engine and our great direct sales team that has allowed us to grow so quickly, with around half of our sales being outbound.

I think that a lot of companies fail because of their weak go-to-market strategy. Sales is more important than product in the sense that no matter how brilliant your product is – you’ll fail if your GTM is weak.

When we started Cognism, our product wasn’t at the same level it is now, but we focused relentlessly on getting the outbound motion going. The secret is building a strong sales team and investing in the best technology for your salespeople. Such a well-configured salesforce is unbeatable.

Managing a high-growth company is a challenging task. On what do you focus on most as CEO?
Hiring, hiring, and fundraising. When you start your journey as an entrepreneur, you don’t know what qualities an outstanding Head of Product or Head of Sales has, but it is essential to hire the best.

It is also important to understand that the people that can propel a startup from 0 to 1 million of sales, from 1 to 10 million, and from 10 to 100 million are not necessarily the same. For hiring, we have worked with advisors who have done this before and understand the changing dynamics.

In 2021 alone, Cognism went from 200 to 270 employees in several countries. How hard is it to fill that many positions?
The hiring environment is certainly challenging. In London alone, there are currently 4600 open sales development representative positions. The ability to hire remotely, the fact that we have our engineering team in the Balkans and the great Glassdoor reviews we have help us. We also recently hired a head of talent and as I mentioned earlier, work with advisors on hiring.

I like to make decisions based on data and a thorough analysis of the question at hand.

You’re a very numbers-oriented CEO and manage Cognism with Key Performance Indicators. Does this come from your past work experience as a quant?
I’m an engineer and the maths don’t lie. I like to make decisions based on data and a thorough analysis of the question at hand. If you base decisions on a hunch or a vision, things can go disastrously wrong.

How did you even become aware of the problem that Cognism is solving?
I was working in finance and Cognism was initially built as a fintech to help hedge funds find clients. We realized that selling to hedge funds is extremely difficult, so we pivoted to other clients.

As it turns out, the contact data that we provide is a need-to-have product. The signature marketing platform Mailtastic that we acquired in 2020 is a nice-to-have product. That difference is very interesting. As a startup, if you offer a need-to-have product, you will be unstoppable.

But you still bought the company with a nice-to-have product.
Because it helps us with data collection. We have managed to grow the business, and have learned a lot about how to integrate a company and have teams working together. Buying a product with positive net retention was a good move, and we’ll buy more companies if we find the right ones and continue to consolidate the European market.

Cognism certainly has the money to consolidate the market, after the recent fundraising of almost USD 90 million. And with Viking Global Investors, you have attracted an investor with very deep pockets.
Fundraising is always a challenge and a massive drain of time for a CEO that should rather be building the business. I’d say that having investors with deep pockets allows us to invest in acquisitions and new areas of growth and should also make future fundraising less distractive.

Now the great thing was that early investors were able to cash out in this financing round through secondary sales and many did so. This is a very positive development, when private investments become more liquid because it means that this asset class is becoming more attractive.

In general, I’d say that institutional investors have developed a better understanding of technology companies and their ability to grow. Their challenge, of course, is how to identify the right companies to invest in.

In terms of future growth, will you put more emphasis on the US or on Europe?
We see ourselves as a European company and will focus on growth in Europe. We just recently hired a new Head of Sales in Germany. But we do have a presence in the US, where we also hired a new Head of Sales and want to be perceived as an international data provider.

For example, we have the largest number of mobile phone numbers in the US of any providers, and we have a higher data quality than anyone else.

Speaking of competition, your biggest competitor Zoominfo listed on Nasdaq is valued at USD 20 billion for USD 670m of revenue. How can you compete with them?
The market we’re active in is gigantic, our total addressable market is USD 24 billion worldwide and growing fast. With USD 22m of revenue, we haven’t even scratched the surface of it.

Apart from ample room for growth, we pursue a different strategy, we have tight partnerships with other providers while Zoominfo wants to build one platform. Our biggest challenge is not the competition, but building our sales capacity with outbound teams and sales development representatives in each and every country we’re active in.

A personal goal of mine is for Cognism to become a unicorn in the coming years.

What are your ambitions for the coming years, an IPO?
The thing that interests me the most as an engineer is building the right processes that allow the company to grow and to understand the drivers of that growth. My focus is on growth right now, not on an exit.

A personal goal of mine is for Cognism to become a unicorn in the coming years. European tech is an incredibly exciting space to be in right now: the funding environment is maturing, European startups can compete with US startups, and there is a hungry next generation of tech leaders to take the ecosystem to the next level. The next decade is going to be very exciting.