On Thursday evening, the 16th of April, the SaaS Awards 2026 were presented to the most outstanding talent in the SaaS industry. No fewer than six winners each received a SaaS Award during the festive award ceremony at Hotel Arena in Amsterdam. With more nominees, more votes, outstanding winners and the most attendees; this edition of our SaaS Awards was bigger and better than ever before.
This year’s SaaS Awards consist of six different categories: Customer Success, Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, Rising Star, and Founder/CEO. In all six categories, SaaS talent could be nominated. From hundreds of nominations, the SaaS jury ultimately compiled a top 3 per category. After a three-week social ranking period in which nominees could encourage their networks to vote for them, six winners were ultimately selected based on thousands of votes.
🏆 This years winners
In the Customer Success category, Saahil Karkera, VP of Customer Success at Oakay, took the win. Isabel van Kouwen secured her SaaS Award in the Marketing category thanks to her work as Senior Content Marketer at Selection Lab. The Partnerships award went to Nicoline Bredt, who, in her role as Strategic Partnerships Manager at Ingrid, managed to double the number of partners within a year. Rising talent Jeffrey Roest, also referred to by colleagues as a “Gen Z unicorn”, took home the Rising Star award for his tireless efforts as Senior Account Manager at Kaseya. The biggest SaaS Sales star of the year was Koen de Groot, recognized for his achievements as Commercial Director and partner at WP SEO AI. Finally, Sohrab Hosseini received the Founder/CEO award for his outstanding performance in innovation, execution, and leadership at Orq.ai.
Customer Success — Saahil Karkera
Marketing — Isabel van Kouwen
Partnerships — Nicoline Bredt
Rising Star — Jeffrey Roest
Sales — Koen de Groot
Founder / CEO — Sohrab Hosseini
The jury
This year’s SaaS Awards jury consisted of six SaaS professionals, including Lotte Smit van Ditshuizen, partner at Arches Capital; Richard Schenzel, Managing Director at Atscale; and Martijn Terpstra, Chief Sales Officer at Papirfly. Also on the panel were Daniel Nackovski, co-founder of SaaSiest, and Mike Boogaard, Managing Director at Winning by Design. In addition, Ida van Hasselt-Kuijken, partner at Fortino Capital, served on the SaaS jury for the second year in a row. Together, these jury members selected the best talent from all nominations and narrowed it down to a strong top 3 per category.
About the SaaS Awards
The SaaS Awards were founded in 2021 by Nobel Recruitment with the goal of celebrating outstanding go-to-market talent and bringing the Benelux SaaS community together. The awards ceremony is not a standard corporate event, but a unique, unforgettable evening where founders, commercial leaders, investors, and top talent come together to put the people behind growth at the centre, to connect and be inspired. Across six award categories, the SaaS Awards spotlight the best GTM talent: professionals who raise the bar and continuously redefine what success looks like in the SaaS world. This makes the SaaS Awards the most important night for SaaS in the Benelux.