SVP of Sales, Richard Yonkers

Previously

VP of Worldwide Sales, PeerNova Inc
VP of Sales Platform & Solutions, 1010data

Company

Knoema is a Snowflake Ventures and Eldridge backed business that is the most comprehensive source of decision-making data in the world. Their tools allow individuals and organizations to discover, visualize, model, and present their data and the world’s data to facilitate better decisions and better outcomes.

Search Background

Erevena had developed a strong relationship with Knoema’s CEO, Charles Poliacof, over a number of years. Charles joined the business in early 2020 and set about staffing an executive team that could help the business grow into it’s potential. With ~75 people and a timely product, Charles was able to secure investment from Snowflake and Eldridge, as well as some key early customers which demonstrated Knoema had strong product-market fit. With Charles looking to scale the organisation as a whole, he needed a trusted partner and proven scaled executive to help scale the revenue. This meant someone who could plot the course from the first $5m of ARR to the first $50m.

Requirements

Knoema needed someone who could both shape a strategic vision as well as execute with early customer wins. An SVP of Sales would need to hire, develop and manage A players, while helping shape Knoema’s proposition in the market. This hire needed to be a capable of not just scaling sales, but also working with early customers directly to ensure Knoema’s positioning, messaging and pricing was optimized. Knoema also needed this person to be capable of both selling to business buyers as opposed to just IT decision makers, plus also having a firm understanding of data technology solutions. This requirement narrowed the market as most people experienced with data solutions of this nature have sold to more technical decision makers.

Result

Erevena identified and introduced Richard Yonkers to the business. Richard had spent over 6 and a half years with 1010data, helping the business to acquisition and to $90m of ARR. Richard deeply understands data solutions, but also has the experience to join Knoema at this stage of their development and plot the course forward from here as a strategic partner to Charles. Once on board Richard quickly started to grow his sales team and we look forward to seeing Knoema’s evolution in the coming years given the market opportunity ahead of them.

Charles Poliacof

CEO

I originally met Erevena as a candidate, and was blown away by their thoughtful questions and clear ability to get to the value drivers and heart of what is required. On this search, Chris was very cerebral, thoughtful and consistently offered a thorough assessment of a candidate’s quality, as well as trade-offs relating to the rest of the shortlist. He was always available, responsive and collaborative and I view him as a partner, not a service provider. I would have no hesitation recommending Erevena for an executive level search – their knowledge, process and network particularly for senior sales leadership is first class.

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