My reasons for building Constructor EMEA

After the first 3 months at Constructor and many of you having this conversation with me 1on1 and/or finding yourself in similar situations, I figured it’s worth sharing in a more public forum:

Throughout the last 10+ years I played my part and gathered valuable experience in the early EMEA build for multiple US scale ups. After close to 7 years in the Cybersecurity industry it was time to evaluate what to do next professionally.

As I wasn’t entertaining conversations during my Lacework build, I was blown away by the possibilities opening up in current market conditions. The previous months certainly looked less favorable for GTM folks vs. the candidate-power driven years before.?

I wanted to take my time to evaluate deeply and make the decision that truly fits in the context of the following areas:

1. Identify a large market that I can quickly get intellectually interested in where it’ll come rather easy for me to learn new things because I find them exciting - I felt I had been in the Cybersecurity market for long enough so I wanted to explore something new, within SaaS of course.
2. Have a highly differentiated product that is loved by its customers.
3. Build a key GTM function for a healthy company with amazing metrics - both the ones they generate for their customers as well as the metrics that the company is evaluated against in private or public markets.
4. Work with exceptional characters whom I truly want to be around in every function - but especially in the CEO and other key executives.
5. Be able to have a meaningful impact with what I bring to the table for what the company needs right now and in the coming years.

I am very thankful for the many different avenues of opportunities finding their way to me. Many of you have brought things to my attention or connected me with investors, founders, executives and the like resulting in an evaluation of about 15 different companies. Thank you very much for supporting this path!

These companies were all in somewhat early stages - between 500k and 40m in revenues and between seed stage and series B in funding. I got to deeply understand and evaluate different industries and the intricacies of companies founded in my home country Germany and other EMEA countries vs. US-based startups and scaleups.

After a few weeks of conversations and a bunch of travel which to my wife and kids must have felt like an additional job, I was quite far down the line with two companies for key roles in their organization.

This was the point I got to know of Constructor via a NYC-based recruiter. I was never previously in touch with that specific recruiter or her firm nor had I ever heard of Constructor before. The recruiter though did a very thorough job of providing me just the right level of written information about the setup, numbers etc. so that I could go deep in my own time before engaging in conversations with the recruiter and the CRO of Constructor - Kevin Laymoun .?

It was clear via the provided information that the company was onto something special - just reviewing the metrics provided. Also, I very much liked the style in which the CEO, Eli Finkelshteyn communicated and led the company.?

Hence, I engaged in a conversation with the NYC-based CRO and went to go see him in person while he was over in Europe. This was great timing for us both - I’m not sure we would have made that mutual decision as quickly if it was remote only.

Now when we met and I then did my due diligence in various shapes and forms including conversations with Eli and all key team members, Constructor looked like the best kept secret in Enterprise B2B SaaS to date:

• Nearly 100% growth 3 years in a row to over 30m ARR
• On track for another year of similar growth thereafter
• Operating frugally and financially sound resulting in not needing to depend on the investment community for survival
• Many top tier Enterprise logos globally - including within EMEA - the likes of the LEGO Group , Under Armour , SEPHORA and many more
• Very strong and tangible business cases Constructor was able to achieve with their customers = clear ways of improving key KPIs for them repeatedly: Conversion rates on their eCommerce sites, average order value, revenue per visitor etc. → ultimately making their customers more money and profits consistently.
• Along with the above, the key metrics for the company such as GRR, NRR, Average Deal size etc. also looked extremely solid - at first and second glance. The product isn’t cheap, and the whole company works to make sure customers consistently experience the value and have no second thoughts after buying it.

All in all, the current Constructor team had built something very meaningful while preserving cash and ensuring a healthy financial state - a rare occurrence in Enterprise SaaS.

Through all the conversations I was able to judge whether I could have an impact and bring the company value. Also, some friction in the hiring process here and there allowed both sides to figure out how things would go under a bit of pressure. This was hugely valuable (!)

Having joined Constructor in January 2024, I got to work with the team up close and could quickly see how if we added 1+1, we would get 5 as a result. The team had done a great job of doing some of the grunt work in EMEA and I now get to help build this special snowflake over the next few years. We quickly figured out what each person can bring to the table to immediately achieve things that felt improbable just weeks ago.

It’s early days here, but with the current team in place as well as some additional key people that joined the EMEA team recently or will join shortly, I am bullish about what can be achieved for our customers and all stakeholders alike.

As we always say - “Brick by brick”, day by day focusing on the basics and controlling the controllables while not worrying about the things outside of our hands.

I very much appreciate the trust of everyone involved. The foreseeable future looks bright and we’ll give it our all.

See you out there!

Bernd