The summer might be cooling off, but the tech scene in Colorado is heating up.
Long a big tech underdog, Colorado is rapidly catching up to hubs like Austin and Seattle. Cities like Denver are seeing major venture-capital investment, and even smaller locales like Louisville, where infotech company Swimlane’s headquarters are located, are showing up in terms of tech growth. This year, Swimlane closed out a $70 million growth funding round, and its go-to-market teams are focused on rolling out a brand-new product.
Fast-growing startups like Swimlane are offering Colorado techies — in addition to national and global talent — opportunities to learn in a dynamic environment where tenacity, passion and adaptability are essential for company and individual expansion and evolution. Plus, you can’t beat the mountain views.
Built In Colorado sat down with Swimlane, OTA Insight and Flatfile to find out what their go-to-market teams look for in candidates and how those candidates can contribute to achieving bigger-than-ever goals.
What they do: Swimlane is on the fast track to automating cyber security. Its automated security operations platform enables organizations to respond to threats. Swimlane launched its latest low-code automation platform this year. The software provides security professionals a chance to solve problems easily without coding experience.
Who they’re looking for: Swimlane is a growing startup in a rapidly-evolving industry, so it’s essential for the company and product to be ahead of the curve. “To do that, everyone needs to be adaptable to the needs of their team and the company as a whole,” Radcliffe said. One of the company’s core values is “always be leveling up,” and living that value is essential for candidates joining the go-to-market teams.
“A candidate who is adaptable is constantly looking for ways to improve and take their projects to the next level,” Radcliffe said. “That means being willing to change directions or look at things from a different perspective.”
In the fast lane: Swimlane recently launched its newest security automation product, Swimlane Turbine, this year. Radcliffe’s team has a big priority on the books for 2023: bringing Turbine to the public and attracting enterprise customers around the world. “The security automation capabilities in Turbine are cutting edge and truly help security teams more than ever before,” Radcliffe said. “It’s important that we continue to grow awareness of our low-code security automation solution and shine a light on how it helps industry-leading organizations.”
Forget the status-quo: Leveling up isn’t the only core value Radcliffe’s team aspires to live. Another of Swimlane’s core values is to be “happy innovators,” which especially applies to go-to-market teams like Radcliffe’s. Developing a new product and bringing it to market requires out-of-the-box thinking and leaving the status-quo behind. But innovation doesn’t stop there. “We couldn’t do it without creative problem solvers in sales, marketing, customer success and more,” Radcliffe said.
“The cybersecurity world is dynamic, and we work to stay on the forefront of security automation, orchestration and response,” he continued. “The security industry was started by innovators, and our go-to-market teams continue to be Happy Innovators to drive more success.”
What they do: OTA Insight was born during the London Olympics, where its three founders saw an opportunity to help the hospitality industry visualize and leverage its data. Now, the cloud-based data intelligence platform provides revenue management solutions so hoteliers can make smarter revenue and distribution decisions. OTA Insights pushes boundaries in more ways than hotel data — it has offices in London, Sydner, Brussels, Singapore, Denver, Dallas, Ghent and Sao Paulo.
Who they’re looking for: In a growing market where prospective clients abound, go-to-market sales professionals have plenty of responsibilities and relationships to manage simultaneously. “Tenacity is an important skill for all salespeople on our team to have,” Matchus said. “There are conflicting priorities and different ways you can go, so it is imperative to keep your head on straight, stay curious and focus on what will help you succeed.”
Exceeding needs: OTA Insight has grown significantly in the past 10 years. With more than 55,000 clients around the world, and more than 325 global team members, it’s important to cultivate a client-centric environment. That means building products that not only meet –– but exceed –– customer needs. “As we continue building and bringing in new products, our biggest priority is to ensure successful rollouts and to provide consistent success for our team as we gain market share to support and achieve our goals,” Matchus said.
Lean on me: Matchus’ team prides itself on its ability to collaborate. “In such a virtual world, it has been hard for some companies to maintain a positive team culture,” she said. “As we continue to grow and increase market share, we learn and thrive best when we lean on each other and learn from each other. This is something we consistently encourage throughout our teams.”
What they do: To make data consumption effective and safe, Flatfile’s drop-in file importer supports multiple spreadsheet formats. The importer features intuitive header matching to match column headers with values, data validation and data hooks, which helps users focus more on the outcome than the prep work required to get data in shareable shape.
Who they’re looking for: Weiss’ team is on the lookout for new members who can pivot quickly and go with the flow at a fast-paced, quickly-growing company where change is common. “Go-to-market as a function is one made of people, as opposed to a product, so you can easily ‘fail fast’ and change strategy,” Weiss said. “When we see something not going well, we can shift our focus fast and try to fix it, so being flexible is super important.”
Though flexibility is important, there are times when team members need to be firm in their beliefs. “When interviewing candidates I look to see how people can speak up when some kind of change feels like it might not be the right one,” Weiss said.
Pivotal growth: Flatfile is at a critical juncture, and that means right now is a pivotal moment for employees’ careers. “We’re growing quickly and learning a lot, and we’re in a new space with new technology — it’s going to be tough,” Weiss said. “These are the moments of growth for people. There are changes in the market, and new customers are discovering our product. Our team is going to learn a lot from this situation.”
Experiences like that don’t come often, Weiss continued, but because of Flatfile’s current position in the market, and where it wants to be, her team members can expect to experience plenty of individual growth by the end of 2023. “We have many successful customers and a great product, and we just raised money,” Weiss said. “As a go-to-market team, we must push forward and onboard customers quickly and more effectively. Now that we’re starting to make a name for ourselves in the market, it’s crucial we both retain and grow our revenue.”
Arm-in-arm: Passion is endless on the customer success and enablement team. “Everybody here cares a lot about the organization, our customers and our prospects. We want to do what’s right for them and the company,” Weiss said. “Everyone stands together arm in arm because of the shared drive to make Flatfile better and our customers wildly successful.”
At the end of 2021, the sales team was trying to close several big deals. Sales sought out the customer success team to discuss implementation, and “it felt like an all-hands-on-deck moment because we knew we were on target to hit our best quarter ever,” Weiss said. “Seeing that potential got people even more excited about our goals, and we ultimately exceeded our targets.”
