James Isilay
Co-Founder and CEO, Cognism. On 1 show, 3 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestoranalystengineerLinkedIn ↗cognism.com ↗
He co-founded Cognism in 2015, scaling the B2B sales intelligence and data platform through tens of millions in ARR, major venture rounds, and international expansion. Before founding Cognism, he earned a master’s degree in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College London and worked as a quantitative analyst and trader.
1shows
3appearances
68statements
4resolved
3supported
0contradicted
75%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything James Isilay said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Isilay: UK startups should wait until $10M ARR before US expansion
“Whereas we stayed focused on the U.K. Market and his advice was stay focused on the U.K. Market until you get to ten million AAR and then look at the U.S. Market. And that real, that was invaluable advice and stopped us blowing through our money too quickly.”
Isilay: Cognism net retention is around 85% and moving toward 90%
“So our net retention our net retention is around 85% right now, and it's moving towards it, 90%.”
Isilay: Founders mistakenly fear boards instead of using them for structured feedback
“One of the key mistakes I see again and again is that founders want to, like, fear creating a board. It's not really a control thing. It's really a head space thing. It's really about creating time with those mentors to kind of like review where the business i…”
Isilay: Niceness-Driven Sales Culture Boosts Retention and Hiring
“I create the sales culture around that value of we are nice and fairness, and it really creates a different type of sales culture to the, you'll see at other companies. And it really helps us with employee retention, so I think it's really helped the, and it's…”
Fully remote offshore developers are far less sticky than office-based talent
“What we've found is that when we've actually had developers that are just work from home, that they're not, they're far less sticky.”
Outsourcing demand capture marketing to agencies failed twice for Cognism
“Our key lesson here was we tried to outsource this. I, you know, initially tried to outsource this. Before building a team and really didn't get much success, you know, using agencies. And recently, again, we tried to outsource this to try and get cost efficie…”
Pitch M&A multiples on current ARR to founders, closing ARR to boards
“One of the, like, methods and tactics there that I used in terms of negotiation is really, you know, talk about valuation multiples that are higher on the current AR, and then with the board, talk about the multiple at the close of the transaction. So you can …”
Isilay: European tech companies lack capital and sales investment compared to US and UK
“I think in Europe in particular, there's a lot of great product companies that have you know, I don't have the capital to grow and have you know, like Generally weak. You know, don't have the investment in the sales team. And also in their home markets, it's u…”
Isilay: Cognism will reach $20M ARR by end of next year
“And we should finish this year at 11.5, and then next year, you know, I'm certain with the kind of metrics that we've got that we'll get, but we'll be at 20 at the end of next year.”
Islay: European product companies lack sales investment and capital
“I think in Europe in particular, there's a lot of great product companies that have you know, don't have the capital to grow and have you know, like, Generally weak. You know, don't have the investment in the sales team. And also in their home markets, it's us…”
Isilay: Peter Deferin's Mentorship Only Worked After Cognism Passed $50M ARR
“When Peter Deferin became my mentor originally, I probably, I knew, I know now that I really took him to an earlier stage, because the advice that he gave me wasn't really resonating and didn't really have impact, because I had taken him a bit early, but right…”
Isilay: Startups should run monthly board and RevOps meetings until $50M ARR
“That meeting, like regular board meetings and regular revenue operation meetings from our first year were really key in our scaling. It really provided, you know, when we did those on a monthly basis, like now the cadence for those has moved to a quarterly bas…”
Cognism replaced majority of C-suite over 12 months with scale-experienced executives
“Over the last year, in the last 12 months, my whole focus has been on hiring a new C-suite. So I hired a new CTO, a new CFO, a new CHRO, a new CLO and a new CPO and yeah, I think I've said them all. So I pretty much turned over about the majority of my C-suite…”
Isilay: Top executives retain existing key talent and recruit trusted former colleagues
“What I've seen works, the execs that are really good have come in, found the really good key talent, but then brought in talent that they've worked with before to fill the gaps. And that's been a sign of a really good executive.”
Isilay: Pair bad executive news with immediate positive news to energize teams
“If you could convey some good news immediately after the bad news, it softens the blow, and it makes it kind of a lot more and it also can pump up the organization. So you can use it as a good thing to pump up The energy of the organization.”
Cognism pays an average of $16K for software engineers in Tunisia
“Now we're actually building a new office in Tunisia where the actual average cost of the engineers is around 16 K.”
South Africa is an optimal hiring market for English marketing content
“We have a lot of marketing staff in South Africa, which has been a great location for hiring in terms of marketing content.”
Kaspr achieved 110% SMB net retention compared to Cognism's 60%
“Where when we were actually acquiring those kind of micro and SMB businesses at 15 K packages, we really had very poor retention of them. And what we saw when we looked into Casper was for that same type of audience they had on annual contracts, they had about…”
Cognism surpasses $10M ARR milestone
“We were seven million and now we've just gone over ten million.”
Cognism pays Macedonian data researchers approximately €500 per month
“Oh in terms of expense, I mean, I would say it's not, I mean, typically like we're paying about you know, 500 euros per person like an average for, you know, so that's kind of the average. Price. I'd have to per month.”
Hiring data staff in Macedonia was cheaper than hiring in India
“It's very, when we, when I looked at it was cheaper than having higher say in India.”
Isilay: Cognism customers stay for around 14 months on average
“I mean, yeah that would be I say like in general, it's around about 14 months.”
The other half of the tape: James Isilay's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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Top Founders 2
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens James's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Cognism | 3 +1 | 68 | 75% 3/4 | full record on Top Founders → |