How an $8.5B German SaaS Company Targeting SMEs Built Its Commercial Leadership Team

We previously mapped Celonis’ commercial leadership team and found the company has become a top hunting ground for enterprise SaaS leadership.

This time, we’re doing the same with Personio, another of Germany’s most valuable private tech companies and Europe’s market leader in people operating systems. Founded in 2015, Personio serves 14,000+ customers, from major European startups to SMEs, and has built a commercial talent pool with SME experience that the wider SaaS market is now drawing from.

We identified 81 current and former commercial leaders1 at Personio, from Head to C-level, across Europe, some of whom we’ve engaged directly through our executive search work. As with Celonis, we looked at how the funding-to-revenue history shaped hiring cycles, which profiles were brought in to lead commercial efforts, and where those leaders went next.

This article was compiled in collaboration with the SaaS Practice at The Big Search. If you’re interested in leadership and talent trends, looking to hire a SaaS leader, or simply want to discuss the findings, feel free to reach out: Ilya Grigorev or ilya@thebigsearch.com

The first commercial leader we found was Christoph Deckert, hired as Head of Growth in 2016. Unusually, he didn’t come from the SaaS sector but from defence, with past experiences at Airbus Defence & Space and Deloitte.

The first VPs followed in 2018. Oliver Manojlovic joined as VP of Sales to professionalise the sales function when Personio was at $2-4M ARR. Christian Weisbrodt came in as VP of Marketing to build the marketing engine to support the next phase of growth.

As with Celonis, Personio’s hiring accelerated after its Series C. Commercial leadership headcount grew by 230% from 2020 to 2024. The company benefited from the pandemic, as people and HR tools found traction among organisations managing remote or distributed teams.

Our data also confirms that the company underwent layoffs in 2024 and 2025 as it shifted from growth-at-all-costs to efficiency. 5 VPs2 left Personio at that time, and four moved into C-level positions at SaaS companies within a few months.

Based on our research, Personio employs 34 commercial leaders across Europe today. Marketing makes up the largest share at 30.3%. That tracks their strategy, which leans on scalable marketing strategies, particularly SEO and paid search.

All three C-levels worked at Dropbox at some point in their careers. Geraldine MacCarthy, the first commercial C-level hired in 2020, came from Dropbox, where she led the Business EMEA division. Naman Khan led growth into the enterprise segment. Philip Lacor was VP Global Sales and CS.

And nearly 10% of all commercial leaders have Dropbox on their CV. Beyond Dropbox, Personio also hired talent with SLG experience (Salesforce, Zendesk), HR/people tech experience, or both. Shantanu Shekhar, for example, joined as VP Revenue Operations after helping scale LinkedIn EMEA from $250M to $2B ARR as part of the leadership team for LinkedIn Talent Solutions.

But finding this calibre of talent in Europe isn’t easy, something we can confirm from our own searches. In an interview, co-founder Hanno Renner described the difficulty of recruiting experienced executives on the continent. Their former CMO, Naman Khan, was relocated from the US, and their current CRO, Philip Lacor, is US-based, even though Personio has closed its US operations.

The Series C also marked a shift in Personio’s hiring philosophy. Before 2020, the company hired less established talent and trained it internally. After 2020, they went for credentialed hires, not to be developed but to execute immediately.

The trade-off was tenure. Pre-Series C talent stayed 4 to 8 years on average. Post-Series C hires averaged 1.5 to 3 years, and most left during the restructuring period.

We found that ~30% of Personio alumni work(ed) for another HR or people tech company: Leapsome, HiBob, Deel, Oyster, LinkedIn, or simpleclub. The HR software GTM playbook is specific enough that Personio’s skill set is transferable. In our experience, these leaders know the sector and how to target HR and finance buyers in SMEs, and the European ecosystem has no shortage of companies trying to run that same motion.

Many alumni also seek out Seed to Series B SaaS companies, often as one of the first commercial leadership hires. Oliver Manojlovic, for example, joined Dash0 as CRO in November 2025. The company raised $110M at Series B at a $1B valuation four months later. Ben Kiziltug joined n8n as VP Sales in September 2024, when the company was still at Series A.

In terms of scope, most alumni have moved into roles at a similar level. 17% moved up to C-level, though all at earlier-stage companies.

Personio is one of the most hunted commercial talent pipelines in European B2B SaaS. The company trained SME SaaS leaders with SLG track records, the kind of profiles that, as Hanno Renner himself described, are difficult to find in Europe.

Over the years, Personio has produced two distinct types of talent. The pre-Series C ones built the commercial function from scratch. The post-Series C ones came in once the structure was established and are more accustomed to operating at scale.

We’ve worked with both profiles across multiple searches. If you’re building a commercial team in European SME SaaS, these two profiles solve different problems. A Series A-B company building GTM from zero would benefit from the first. A post-Series C company looking to professionalise an existing sales org would benefit from the second one.

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