Nick Mills General Manager EMEA, CircleCI

Company

CircleCI allows teams to rapidly build quality projects, at scale. Their mission is to give people the power to build and deliver software at the speed of imagination. At the time of the search, CircleCI had raised $60M in venture funding, led by Scale.

Search Background

The company had launched in Japan and were looking to a GM for the EMEA region to continue their international growth. CircleCI had onboarded initial European customers, including some of the top start-ups in the region such as Spotify and TransferWise, and leading eCommerce players like One Kings Lane.

Requirements

CircleCI have a go-to-market model which integrates user growth, marketing and sales conversion. The search required someone to build the model for the EMEA region, while originating process being adaptable. An understanding of the increasingly common ‘bottoms-up’ SaaS business model was a key requirement, making it a challenging search to find someone in Europe capable of building and executing this for CircleCI.

Result

Erevena secured Nick Mills, formerly the Head of UK&I Revenue at Stripe. Nick had a blend of experience in sales leadership and general management with Facebook and Adelphic, and latterly with Stripe. His experience at Stripe, a developer-focused business, meant Nick was one of the few candidates in London who combined the capability to build their audience with the integrated sales and marketing knowledge required. With a relative lack of talent in Europe in this model compared to the US, it was important to think strategically about where this person could come from, and then position CircleCI as an opportunity that would be attractive to someone leaving business as successful as Stripe.