Eli Chamoun & Daniel Marshall: Chief Revenue Officer & Chief Customer Officer

Company

Hawk is a Munich-based provider of AI-powered financial crime detection software founded in 2018 by CEO Tobias Schweiger and CPO Wolfgang Berner. One of the biggest problems at the time that the pair noticed was that banks were stuck with legacy AML systems that threw up excessive false positives, while still missing sophisticated financial crime. With this knowledge at hand, they built an AI-native platform from the outset, that to this day, has an explainable AI and model governance layer. The platform processes over 90% of transactions in real time and gives credit unions, banks and fintechs auditable reasoning behind every risk decision, rather than a black box. Hawk has raised more than $135m over multiple rounds from investors. These include One Peak Partners, Picus Capital and Macquarie.

Background

Hawk had already proven its product-market fit and regulatory credibility, winning business from mid-market regional banks up to Tier 1 institutions. Their next phase includes shifting from early growth to more predictable ARR growth and a more disciplined, scalable enterprise go-to-market motion.

As part of that shift, Hawk wanted a scaled CRO to own global revenue strategy and drive growth across both new business and customer expansion, with a strong focus on Tier 1 financial institutions, and a CCO to build out the customer success and support functions as the client base grew.

Requirements

Chief Revenue Officer

For their CRO, Hawk needed a senior revenue leader from B2B enterprise software in the financial services domain. It was essential to have a proven record of scaling revenue globally and fluency in building and expanding relationships with Tier 1 banks, particularly in the US.

They wanted someone hands-on enough to get into critical deals directly, while also having the executive presence to be credible in front of Tier 1 bank leadership, boards, regulators and investors.

Chief Customer Officer

For their CCO, Hawk needed a similarly experienced operator, with senior leadership experience spanning Customer Success, Professional Services and Support. With the immediate task of implementing several large enterprise contracts at once, Hawk needed someone who had run complex enterprise implementations and managed systems integrators and partners. This person would also need to protect Hawk’s lean, productised approach to services.

Both the CCO and CRO needed to be collaborative, comfortable with ambiguity, and resilient through periods of change.

Placement

Chief Revenue Officer

Eli Chamoun, appointed as President and Chief Revenue Officer, brings more than two decades of experience in financial crime and compliance. He spent 18 years at NICE Actimize, rising to Global Head of Sales and growing the business to $350m in revenue, leading over 200 people across pre-sales, post-sales, sales operations and alliances. He then moved into the CRO seat at SecurityScorecard, bringing first-hand knowledge of the same banks and buying committees Hawk was targeting.

Chief Customer Officer

Daniel Marshall, appointed as Chief Customer Officer, has spent most of his career within enterprise software and AI businesses, working with financial institutions and government agencies. He spent over six years at ServiceNow during a period of hypergrowth. In that time, he built the APAC customer organisation from a standing start to over $400m in revenue. He went on to lead customer success and services for C3.ai across Asia Pacific and Japan, before further post-sales leadership roles at Dataiku and Chainalysis.

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