In this episode, Vladan speaks with Thijs Visser — co-founder and CCO of Cruit, one of the Netherlands’ most promising recruitment tech startups. Thijs has almost 20 years of sales experience and worked as a sales leader for companies like Wasteless AI, Civer and Orange Cyberdefense before taking the leap into entrepreneurship. Topics: the story behind Cruit, leaving a VP salary for a startup, landing the first clients without reference cases, selling into large enterprises, why cold calling stands out more than ever in the AI era, and what makes a great BDR.
Vladan: Welcome everybody to the Nobel Podcast. Today’s guest is Thijs Visser. Thijs has almost 20 years of sales experience, and he has worked as a sales leader for companies like Wasteless AI, Civer and Orange Cyberdefense. He recently started as co-founder and CCO at Cruit, which is one of the Netherlands’ most promising recruitment technology startups. Welcome, Thijs.
Thijs: Thank you very much, Vladan. I’m very happy to be here.
Vladan: Nice. For everybody’s context, can you maybe explain a bit of the story behind Cruit?
Thijs: Of course. Cruit is optimizing and automating referral hiring with our software. You see that a lot of companies struggle with finding the right talent for their open vacancies. And typically, a lot of companies don’t see — or haven’t unlocked — the potential of the personal networks of their own employees. Cruit is actually tapping into that: we engage those employees to bring in more referral candidates, and eventually of course more hires, because referral candidates typically have the highest chance of getting hired — roughly one in three is hired. With our software, together with the activation around it, we optimize and automate that process. We do that for a lot of companies — large ones like Securitas and Flora Food Group, but also smaller companies like Crisp and Fonq, and a lot of staffing companies too.
Vladan: Interesting. As somebody with a lot of recruitment experience, I know the power of referrals — actually, I think about one-third of our own placements come through referrals, so we also see it as a super valuable channel.
Thijs: That’s great — that’s actually a very good percentage.
From sales leader to co-founder
Vladan: So how was your journey from being a sales leader, working for a company, into a co-founder role — being an entrepreneur?
Thijs: That’s actually quite a story. I’m quite a late co-founder — I mean, I’m not in my twenties anymore. I’ve been working for all kinds of startups and scale-ups, like you mentioned, and also for one enterprise. First in sales roles — back in the days it was called business development manager, or just sales; nowadays of course it’s BDR, SDR, and then account executive. Then I moved towards leading roles — VP Sales, sales director roles — and eventually a very governing sales role at Orange Cyberdefense. Always as an employee, never as a founder. It was always in the back of my mind, but apparently I wasn’t ready for it, or the idea wasn’t there — it just went the way it went.
Once I came back from my last role as sales director at Orange Cyberdefense, I got in contact with some of the people who invested in Cruit. My three fellow co-founders — Zeno, Yuri and Staya — had pivoted from another startup towards Cruit. Very early days: they had an MVP product with a first customer, Crisp, that was testing the software for the first time. They decided to fully pivot and were looking for an investor, and the investor knew I was on the market to go back into startup/scale-up from a commercial perspective. They brought us together. We had a coffee — and that coffee of 15 minutes became a four-hour brainstorm.
Vladan: Nice.
Thijs: That’s actually true. And then we decided to do the thing with the four of us. After a couple of months, the investor, Slingshot Ventures, also decided to invest — and our rocket was launched.
Vladan: Wow, that’s a pretty inspiring story. And how has that been for you? Because I can imagine, as a sales VP you were probably earning a lot more money than a very early-stage startup could offer you. You had to take a pay cut, take a big risk as well. Do you remember how that was in that moment? I can imagine there are a lot of listeners who might be considering starting their own company, or joining a company as a founder, and they’ll face the same challenge.
Thijs: Yeah, that was actually a very strong moment. When it happened — I met the guys, I saw the product, I saw the potential, I saw what the investors saw in it — it was clear to me that if I wouldn’t take this chance to step on board and become a co-founder of Cruit, I would probably never do it. Like I said, it was always in my mind. And yes, it’s true: as a VP Sales or sales director of a large company you earn a lot more money every month. But that doesn’t mean that’s always the thing you’re chasing, right? It was a big decision. Of course, I had my consultant at home as well — I have a wife and two kids. So I checked that, and I decided to do it. It was a very liberating moment, and a very exciting moment. It was a big change in my life — but it’s been a couple of years now, and I have no regrets at all.
Vladan: It’s a very inspiring story so far, and I’m looking forward to the rest. Respect for the gutsy move.
“If I wouldn’t take this chance to become a co-founder of Cruit, I would probably never do it.”
Landing the first clients without reference cases
Vladan: Can you take us back to that moment in time? You had Crisp as a launching client, and on the back of that your goal was obviously to find more clients and tell the story of Cruit. How did you go about that in the beginning?
Thijs: At first it’s very difficult. If you have no customers, or just one — which was still a non-paying customer at the time, by the way, so we had to convert it to paying as well — you have no reference cases. You’re actually selling on what it can offer, based on the story and the product that you have. That’s much more difficult than when you have all kinds of success stories behind you, like we have now, where you can show on a lot of verticals what you’ve achieved with other customers.
In the beginning we were quite open to proof of concepts — do a three-month trial, and if they didn’t like it, they could stop. Luckily we’re in the position now that we don’t have to do that anymore; we have our advantages, we have our cases. But in the beginning it’s quite a difficult process. You have to keep believing in what you do, stick to what you know and what you’ve seen with your first customer, and spread that story. So we spread the Crisp story a lot — and it was a very successful one, so we were lucky with that. Eventually more came, the trust came, and we met people high up in organizations who believed in us. We’re very thankful, of course, for the clients next to Crisp in the early days who gave us the chance to prove what we can do for them.
Vladan: I can fully understand. So basically, when you’re starting up, you have to take on every sort of proof of concept or client case you can, fight for it, and grow and expand on the back of that — a bit of a snowball effect, so to speak.
Thijs: Yeah. And it’s a thin line, because you don’t want to become too desperate — “oh, you can do a proof of concept, please try a proof of concept” — because you have to fake it to make it, right? So of course we were trying to show that we had many clients that were signed and starting with us. But eventually, I think you have to stay true to yourself — be honest, after the fake-it-to-make-it part. And then the product showed itself. The first clients we took on directly became successful, and of course that helped the story towards others. We’re still in that process — it’s never easy to sign new customers — but we do see that the traction in the market is ramping up. People see us, know us, we’re at events — that helps a lot as well.
Selling into large enterprises as a startup
Vladan: How does it work when you’re a startup and you’re selling into really big clients — like Securitas or Manpower, some real enterprises?
Thijs: You have to win the trust. It’s actually multi-level sales — almost managing all stakeholders within that company. It’s not that you have one person that likes you, who says “okay, I want to buy this,” brings it to a director, and they sign off. Most of the time you have many stakeholders to manage at all different levels. The person who buys it — typically for us that’s recruiters or heads of recruitment — then of course marketing, employer branding has a say in it. When they’re interested, it goes much higher in the organization, to a director. There’s legal, there’s security — of course we’re also GDPR compliant. So that’s a lot of meetings to make sure everyone is on board and willing to sign with Cruit. And that takes time, right? It’s not something you do overnight. We have a large client, Flora Food Group — it took just under a year to sign them. And that’s typical for SaaS sales at large enterprises. You don’t have to be scared of it. Just make sure you don’t do only large enterprises, because then your deal flow is very low. In my opinion it’s good to have a combination: do smaller companies, and have the larger ones progressing in the background.
By the way, a very insightful moment for me with Cruit: when we signed Flora Food Group, I realized we had never seen them. We did it all online.
Vladan: Oh wow.
Thijs: With a corporate, with all those meetings. That was definitely an eye-opener for me — that that’s apparently possible in 2025. We actually met them live for the first time after they were rolled out. The real-life connection still matters — I strongly believe in that and I’ll never let it go — but apparently a lot more is possible via video or calls than I thought in the old days.
Vladan: Especially when you guys consider expanding to other countries — that’s a good option too.
Thijs: Exactly.
“It’s strange — in the new AI era, with all those automations, calling seems to be even more important than it was before. It’s the only way to stand out.”
Outbound, AI tools, and why the phone wins
Vladan: How does your typical sales cycle or sales motion look? Is it inbound driven, outbound, partner sales?
Thijs: I think we’re quite outbound driven. We do see more and more inbound coming now, because we’re more well-known, like I just said. But we have a very strong outbound sales motion with our BDRs — from you guys, of course. And I believe strongly, even more than before, that phone calling is the number one tool to actually get someone on board.
If you look at tools — we have so many tools available, and we use them a lot. We have Apollo, we have Clay, all kinds of tools to enrich data and set up automations. But because those AI tools are so strong, so powerful, and so well-known now that everyone is using them — I don’t know how it is for you, but if I look at my LinkedIn in a day, I have 10, 15, 20 clearly automated messages. I will never respond to them; I maybe don’t even look at them. But if someone actually calls me and asks me an inviting question — which is difficult, of course, but if you do it well you have three minutes to make your case — that’s how we close appointments and demos. So it’s strange: in the new AI era, with all those automations, calling seems to be even more important than before.
Vladan: Because it’s the only way to stand out.
Thijs: Yeah. And it’s personal.
Vladan: Quite counterintuitive, but I fully agree. And I can imagine — you’ve been in sales since 2007, so the phone is no stranger to you.
Thijs: No. There’s a Dutch phrase — “de beller is sneller,” the caller is faster. I strongly believe in that. Back in the days it was important because there were no tools — we weren’t even using LinkedIn in the beginning. Nowadays you have all those tools, but it’s funny that calling is the way to stand out again. That doesn’t mean those tools aren’t very powerful to use — it’s so easy to build your prospect list, enrich it, see who you can call, see how they’ve already been touched in your HubSpot, what’s been said. That’s all automated, and it takes a lot of time away before you make the call.
Vladan: Maybe tying into that — is there one specific sales campaign or approach that has worked really well for you, that you’d recommend to other people?
Thijs: I would say it helps very much if you do vertical selling. You need a vertical with some proof. We have a lot of staffing companies as clients, and when you have a lot of them, it’s of course very easy to start calling the other ones and show what kind of cases you have — because the cases are similar. That helps a lot.
And we were quite surprised, actually — we recently started doing our own webinars. This year we’re doing a lot more events in general, like Recruitment Tech and Werf& Live, where we have a stand and speak together with a client or just ourselves. But this year we also signed up for their webinars, and we realized webinars are actually very interesting for lead generation. More people can subscribe than when you have a live meeting in a room where only 80 people fit. You still have their contact details, and they’ve already shown some warm interest — so calling them up after a webinar is very successful. So we decided to do our own webinars as well, and that brings in quite good leads and easy warm follow-ups.
What makes a great BDR
Vladan: Nice — that sounds like a great approach. And you mentioned earlier that you have a few great BDRs on the team. What do you think makes a great BDR?
Thijs: Various characteristics, I would say. You should hire for character, because that’s something someone has — of course it can change slightly over time, but you are who you are. Selling, or SaaS, can be taught, in my opinion. One of those character traits should be that you’re very eager and driven, and that you have ambition — I think ambition is the most important part to be very successful — and to learn, to ask millions of questions until I get tired of it.
One of my BDRs, Olaf, did a great thing the other day. He had an update call after a demo where we’d sent a proposal, and I was not in the office. He said: “Hey, can you check the Fireflies recording — the AI notetaker? I’m curious what you think, whether I should have done anything different in that call.” Perfect. Then you know you’re there. It doesn’t mean you’re the most senior account executive ever yet — doesn’t matter. But you have the potential; it means you’ll probably get there. And I think that’s one of the most important things. I’m happy to share all the knowledge I have — and of course I don’t know everything; I hope they’ll teach me new things as well, they’re younger, they’re in a new environment. But that’s the main key: the willingness to learn.
Vladan: A hundred percent. Olaf, the guy we placed, is doing an exceptional job, I guess.
Thijs: Yeah, we’re very happy with him.
Vladan: But he also couldn’t be successful without proper training and onboarding. What is the number one tip you can give our listeners in terms of onboarding or training?
Thijs: It depends a bit on how large your company is. For us, as we’re relatively small — I think we’re now with 12 or 13 people — I think it’s very important to work together on a daily, almost hourly basis in the beginning. Everything he’s doing, you can discuss immediately. I’d say a BDR, in our case, should be able to pick up the phone and start dialing within two days of training. Does that mean it directly goes smoothly? Of course not. The first calls we do together, and I show how we do it. If you have a larger company with a larger sales team, you have to build your onboarding program and set up meetings for that. But still, I think the key to being very successful is working together very closely — and then, step by step, letting go more and more, until eventually they’re fully on their own. And I think it’s key that you’re always there to reflect, to assist and to advise.
Vladan: So really like a buddy system. That also means clearing up a lot of your own schedule, right? When onboarding somebody, to really be available for that person and be the buddy they need.
Thijs: Absolutely. I strongly believe in that.
Vladan: Nice. Thanks a lot, Thijs — we wish you the best with Cruit and all your success. Thank you guys for listening. If you’re interested in following Thijs, I’m sure you’ll be able to find him on LinkedIn. And if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure to give it a like and a follow. See you guys next time. Cheers.
