The Problem
A rep who crushed quota at a 500-person company with brand, inbound, and a playbook often falls apart at a 30-person startup where none of that exists. A wrong early sales hire burns 6–9 months of runway, stalls your pipeline, and sends the wrong signal to your next round.
How It Works
Cogniflo runs the whole search — from mapping the market to putting a screened shortlist in front of you — with one job: make sure the reps you meet can sell in your environment, not just talk about it.
Solo, specialist, and focused on funded seed–Series B startups. No junior researchers, no keyword-matched CV blasts.
We start with your sales motion, not a job title — deal size, cycle length, buyer, and what "week one with no playbook" needs to look like. That defines the achievement profile every candidate is measured against.
We reach passive reps directly and put every serious candidate through a recorded screening call (with consent). We probe self-sourced pipeline, full-cycle proof, and real numbers — AI scoring is a second opinion only, never the decision-maker.
You get a tight shortlist of achievement-based profiles, each backed by a recorded screen — so you know why they're in front of you. We manage the process through offer, close, and start, with a rebate guarantee if a placement doesn't stick.
What We Place
Three search types for funded seed–Series B teams — start with the seat that's costing you pipeline today.
New-business hunters who prospect, run the full cycle, and close — the reps who build pipeline before you have a playbook to hand them.
The player-coach Head of Sales — still closing while building the team, process, and pipeline. The most-botched startup hire, and the one worth getting right.
Pipeline-generating SDRs to feed your hunters, plus AM/CS "farmers" to protect NRR as you scale toward the next round.
Why the screening matters
A wrong early sales hire can cost 6–9 months of runway in lost pipeline, salary, and re-hiring. A right one builds the revenue engine your next round is priced on. That gap is exactly what the recorded-screen methodology is built to close.
Who We Work With
Funded seed–Series B startups, primarily SaaS, hiring their first or next sales reps — where the founder is still doing demos and the wrong hire is a runway-level risk. We never widen past Series B, and we don't drop the startup lens.