Why is sales the first problem a CEO needs to address / Interview with James Isilay — CEO of Cognism

Highway to Scale

In today's episode I'm joined by James who is the CEO of Cognism — a company that redefines the way you conduct all of your prospecting and sales activities.
In just a few short years, Cognism turned from a fresh startup into a global powerhouse that raised more than 38 million dollars in funding and grew to a couple hundred employees. And they are still going strong with their planned entry into the US market. In this podcast, James will tell us more about his mindset when it comes to raising outside capital and why is it important for a CEO to always hire people that are better than them.
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HOSTED BY:
Dorian — Bornfight Content Creator
https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsdorian/
[e-mail]
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GUEST:
James Isilay — Cognism CEO
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ABOUT JAMES:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-isilay-8164b910/
James Isilay is the co-founder and CEO of Cognism, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the UK. Last year, Cognism grew from $2.5M to $7M in ARR and was voted by LinkedIn as one of the UK’s Top 25 Startups. An inspirational and enterprising businessman, James approaches work with unrivalled technical and organisational skills, perseverance, precision and total dedication.
Before founding Cognism, James was employed as an Algorithmic Trader at Axpo Group and as a Quantitative/Technical Analyst at EGL Trading. James has an MEng in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College London.
He is an expert in lead generation, sales management and alpha discovery using algorithmic technologies, natural language processing and machine learning.
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ABOUT COGNISM:
https://www.cognism.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cognism/
Cognism is the world's best global sales intelligence platform. Powered by patented AI technology, we provide salespeople, growth marketers, RevOps professionals and Go-To-Market leaders with complete, intelligent, actionable, compliant data to find and deliver new revenue, faster.
Cognism is on a mission to drive the next evolution of sales and marketing technology. We believe there is a better way for revenue teams to approach prospecting which will drive predictable outcomes. We are taking prospecting from an art to a science.
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PODCAST CONTENTS:
00:00 — Intro
01:21 — What is Cognism all about
04:15 — Thoughts about sales
07:16 — AI and ML in successful products
09:26 — Raising outside capital
13:41 — Thoughts on bootstrapping
17:27 — US vs European market
20:16 — Digitalization once the pandemic is done
22:48 — Work-life balance
26:40 — Delegating operational tasks
29:56 — Challenges of building Cognism
32:24 — Advice for new startup owners
34:37 — Future of Cognism
36:57 — Outro
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WANT TO BE A GUEST ON THE PODCAST?
Contact me on Linkedin -> https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsdorian/
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