We’re thrilled to welcome Stephen Reidy, an energetic global sales executive with more than 15 years of experience scaling businesses across regions, to Instabase. At Instabase, he’ll leverage his global enterprise expertise and passion for hyperscaling startups to grow Instabase’s U.K. and Ireland sales teams. In this spotlight, we’ll highlight Stephen’s background, journey to Instabase, and his vision for the company.
About Stephen:
Stephen is a customer-focused, people-first sales leader, with a proven ability to scale global startups. Previously, he was VP of Sales & GM of Northern Europe at GoCardless, where he assumed responsibility for 85 – 90% of the company’s contracted revenue acquisition and scaled a team from four to eighty across the EMEA GTM org (AE, SDR, SE, Partner, etc). Prior to GoCardless, Stephen spent a decade building global enterprise client portfolios at Google and Cisco, including stints in London, the Middle East, and the US, underscoring his ability to demonstrate value and bring clients onboard.
How would you describe yourself as a leader?
Firstly, I am a firm believer in servant leadership; the philosophy of removing the obstacles which prevent the team from achieving greatness. In addition, I am not a fan of the term “manager,” it feels quite archaic to me. I don’t manage people, I work with people, and oftentimes it’s about getting out of their way to let them flourish.
Secondly, it is about really taking the time to understand each individual’s outcomes – what are they actually trying to achieve? By understanding what they want to achieve, I can position myself to help them meet their personal and career goals, or identify the people who can.
Finally, growing up I played a lot of team sports, and learned a lot about what it takes to build and maintain a high-performance, team culture. As such, I place a lot of emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, something I saw in abundance when I spoke with the Instabase team.
Why did you join Instabase?
Whenever I am evaluating a career move I look at two things – the product and the people.
When it comes to the product I start with one simple question – what problem are they solving? In Instabase’s case, I was sold on the endless opportunities that Instabase’s automation platform offers clients, streamlining the access to AI and deep learning capability. Anant’s vision for Instabase as the next major business operating system is one I firmly believe in and am very excited about contributing to that mission.
However, the most important aspect of my evaluation is the people. Throughout my conversations with Instabase, I found I left every single call extremely energized by the prospect of working here.. There’s a palpable energy in this team – smart, engaging, driven, ambitious – and I found the more people I spoke to, the more I wanted to join. We have some incredible talent at Instabase and I cannot wait to learn from each of them.
What will your role entail?
In my new role, I’m tasked with overseeing Instabase’s sales team in the U.K. & Ireland, and continuing to educate customers on the business outcomes that deep learning delivers.
What makes you excited about the future of Instabase?
Instabase is a series B startup onboarding some of the largest financial institutions in the world, and quite literally changing how these customers think about automation. They are seeing real value in the problems we’re solving and want to learn more! In some respects we’re punching above our weight and I actually find that very exciting.
What’s next?
Make the team successful, make the customers successful, and keep adding to both in equal measure!
