Bluebird

Bluebird - the only search firm in the world that consists of 100% ex-SaaS & AI operators.

Do you want to speak with the person you'll hire within 7 working days for any of your open GTM & Tech roles?

Stop wasting time working with traditional agencies, and get in touch.

Founder & CEO

Golden Egg Check

At Golden Egg Check, we’re on a mission to back the next generation of category-defining founders. Our focus is on early-stage (pre-seed and seed) startups with the potential to scale fast and build meaningful companies. We combine funding with hands-on guidance, a strong community, and direct access to our network of operators, angels, and VCs.

As a Partner, I bring my background as a founder and operator in the SaaS industry. As an IPO'd sales leader, and having built and scaled Bluebird into Europe’s leading SaaS recruitment firm, I know first-hand the challenges founders face when it comes to building high-performance teams and go-to-market structures. My role at Golden Egg Check is to bridge that experience with our portfolio, helping founders navigate talent, culture, and sales execution from day one.

Together with the team, I support:
	•	Deal flow & selection: Sourcing and evaluating high-potential startups.
	•	Portfolio support: Advising founders on hiring, GTM strategy, and scaling teams.
	•	Community building: Connecting entrepreneurs, angels, and VCs across our ecosystem.
	•	Capital raising: Growing our investor base and co-investment opportunities.

Golden Egg Check Capital is a platform. We believe early-stage founders deserve both capital and an operator-led support system that understands the grind of building from scratch. That’s the part I love bringing into the mix.

Partner

FastSpring

Built FastSpring's EMEA team from the ground up, growing it from $0 to $3mio ARR and 3 to 15 FTE.

Head of Sales, EMEA

SolarWinds

"Machiel has an exceptional work ethic and coupled with his outstanding sales ability, he has helped grow our EMEA business at an exponential rate. Machiel has been pivotal in the hiring and grooming of our Dutch sales team and has shown an exceptional capability to train from the ground up."

Director of Sales

#1 AE world wide in 2015:
$1.4mln in ARR
124 New Logo's
165% quota attainment

Account Executive

Customer Success Manager

Inside Sales Representative

Sales Development Representative

Are you an ambitious Founder, looking to reach your company's full potential through hiring exceptional people? You're at the right place.

I am a former SaaS sales leader who is disrupting the executive search and recruitment space.

Bluebird saves SaaS & AI companies time by introducing them to highly qualified Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Product, Engineering & AI people & leaders (up to C-level) surprisingly fast. On average it takes Bluebird only 7 working days to introduce you to the person you will end up hiring.

My professional achievements as a SaaS leader:
- Pivotal role in N-able's/Solarwinds' growth from $6M to $250M ARR, hired 40+ people, and successfully IPO'd
- Built FastSpring's EMEA team from the ground up, hiring 12 people and growing it from $0-$3M ARR within a year

25,000 followers... Time to (re)introduce myself!
 
My name is Machiel. I'm 35 y/o, and I live in Utrecht with my wife and 6-month old daughter.
 
I spent the first 10 years of my career selling software.
In that time, the company I worked for grew from $6M to $250M ARR, went from acquisition, to IPO, to acquisition, and I grew from SDR to Sales Director.
 
It was an incredible ride. But I realized I didn’t just want to play the finite game of exits.
I wanted to play the infinite game.
 
When my brother suggested:
“Recruiters often get a bad name. But if a former operator built a firm, it could actually change the industry…”
—Bluebird was born.
 
At its core, my motivation was (and still is) to build an environment where I’d actually want to work myself.
An environment built on integrity, authenticity, transparency and teamwork.
A place where you earn what you deserve, and where high performance and people centricity go hand in hand.
 
I found out that I loved the work: helping people navigate one of the most important decisions in their lives, one person at a time, slowly building an ecosystem.
 
Fast forward to today: we’re proud to be the top SaaS GTM & tech recruitment firm in Europe (and step by step in APAC & the US). And it feels like a true community-created company. Everyone who’s ever mentioned Bluebird in a positive way has shaped our story. For that, I’m deeply grateful 🙏
 
On the personal side: we recently did a strengths test.
Mine: Achiever, Responsibility, Competition, Positivity, Activator.
 
The Achiever + Competition side makes me obsessed with creating the best company in our industry. It is also why I still can’t handle losing in amateur tennis… ideally I’d just enjoy the game, but here we are 🎾😅
 
Above all: I’m Charlie’s father and Danielle’s husband. That’s the role that matters most, and keeps everything else in perspective ❤️
 
Here’s to the next chapter, and thank you to every single person who’s been part of this.
 
PS. Here’s a picture of my wife, my daughter, and me at our wedding 2.5 weeks ago.

Machiel Kunst

Founder of the #1 SaaS & AI search firm for GTM & Tech // Partner at GEC Capital

Last Friday was the most memorable evening of my career 💙

We celebrated 5 years of Bluebird, surrounded by more than a hundred friends of our company. Founders, leaders, investors, and top candidates who’ve shaped our journey in one way or another.

I gave a short speech that evening, though it turned out more emotional than planned. I shared how Bluebird started with a whiteboard as our CRM, in the middle of COVID.
How we grew step by step... From 4 people, then 7, then 13, and today, a team of 30+ across Europe, the US, and APAC.

I talked about why I started Bluebird in the first place: I wanted to build the company I would’ve wanted to work for.
A place where people act with integrity.
Where everyone can be their authentic selves.
Where transparency and trust are non-negotiable.

And today, I can say we’ve built that.

We’ve placed 1,500+ people across 400 software and AI companies, helping founders grow faster and people find their next chapter.
We’ve partnered long-term with launching customers like Studytube and Sana Commerce, growing alongside them for almost 6 years.

Bluebird has become a community I’m deeply proud of.

To our customers, candidates, VCs, and above all, our team, thank you for being part of this journey 🙏
You made this night (and these five years) unforgettable.

A big thank you to Bogdan Fecioru & Tessa Peterse from Dapper - B2B Growth Agency - for a part of the organization, and for recording all of it! Looking forward to the after movie 🙌 

💙

Partner at GEC Capital // Founder of the #1 SaaS & AI search firm for GTM & Tech

Five years.

That’s how long my friend and colleague Marc has been on the Bluebird journey with me. But our story goes back almost a decade.

We first worked together at SolarWinds. We got along well at work, but it was actually after I left that our friendship really started. I was heading off on a long trip to Latin America, and on a whim I asked Marc if he wanted to join me for a few weeks in Peru. His response: “yeah, f*ck it, let’s do it.”

Next thing we knew we were climbing Machu Picchu (without proper hiking gear), traveling across the country, and having the absolute best time.

Fast forward a few years, I’d just started Bluebird. We had some revenue coming in, but very little proof still. Over dinner I said to Marc: “I’d love for you to join me. I can’t offer you a proper base salary yet, but I promise it’ll be worth it. We’re going to build something amazing.”

The next day, on the last day of the month, he called me: “I’m in.” He quit his job that same day so he could start with us immediately.

Since then, Marc has been a pillar of Bluebird, building our marketing recruitment practice from scratch, shaping the culture, and helping grow the company from basically nothing to where it is today.

Marc, congratulations on your five-year anniversary at Bluebird. I’m incredibly grateful for your friendship, your leap of faith, and everything you’ve built here. Our friendship will last forever, and I hope we get to do this together for many, many years to come.

Now… let’s celebrate properly: lunch today and a round of pitch & putt ⛳️

Excited to share that I’ve joined Golden Egg Check (GEC) as a Partner!

GEC is a VC investing in early-stage tech startups. I’m joining Thomas Mensink on his mission to build one of the best (pre-)seed-stage investment firms in Europe.

Why did I say yes?
Thomas was delivering massive value in the VC landscape long before he set up a fund.
He connected founders to investors, scouted for top-tier VCs, and advised investors directly.
And eventually, people in his network said: you should start your own fund.
I connect strongly to the value-first, bottom-up approach.

What I love about GEC’s model:
They co-invest with smaller ticket sizes alongside lead investors..
That means they can back way more startups.
This reduces risks for LPs, and it's statistically optimal for the best possible returns.

So far, GEC’s main value has been twofold:
First, by helping founders raise capital through direct introductions to the right investors;
And second, by fostering a strong, high-quality founder community, built on the large number of investments and portfolio companies we support.

With me on board, we’re adding another layer:
👉 Go-to-market advice
👉 Talent strategy
👉 Access to the best operators in the industry

I’ll also be personally investing in GEC’s second fund, which we’ve just started raising.

This is a part-time role next to my work as Founder & CEO of Bluebird. But one that will push me personally and professionally in a big way.

Super proud to join this journey. Grateful to the GEC team. And very excited for what’s ahead.

If you’re curious to hear more about what I’ll be doing at GEC - and how you could be involved - let me know.

PS. We’re targeting our first close in Q1 ’26 and are actively bringing (new) investors (LPs) on board. Interested? Any introductions or support would mean a lot.

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A founder came to us recently saying:
“We need a VP Sales.”

On paper, it made sense. They’re building one of the most exciting AI companies in Europe. The deals are massive: 7-figure enterprise contracts.

But as we dug deeper on the call, here’s what we heard:
“There’s no repeatable sales motion yet.”
“I need someone who can help close customer #3, #4, #5.”
“I don’t want to micromanage, I need someone who can advance the strategy without me in the room.”

That’s when we hit pause.

Because hiring a VP Sales here would almost certainly fail. A VP builds teams, installs process, scales what already works.
But there was nothing to scale yet.

What they actually needed was an extraordinary, creative Enterprise AE. Someone senior enough to run multi-stakeholder cycles end-to-end, hands-on enough to personally bring in the first lighthouse customers.

And we were the only firm that told them this...
Why? Because exec search firms only do exec roles. At Bluebird, we do both executive search and IC hiring. Which means we can tell a founder the truth, even when it doesn’t lead to the biggest fee.

The founder agreed. We pivoted the search.
And now we’re about to place one of the best enterprise sellers in Europe into their team.

👉 Before you hire, ask yourself: “Do we need someone to scale the motion... or to prove and build it first?”

Recruitment has a reputation problem.

And honestly? A lot of it is well deserved.

We went digging through real reviews people left online about recruiters… and decided to read them out loud on camera.

Some were hilarious.
Some were brutal.
All of them made one thing clear: this industry needs to do better.

I hope this video also gives a glimpse into the personalities that make up our culture at Bluebird, because recruitment really is one of the most amazing jobs out there: you get to shape a company’s most important asset (its people) while impacting lives every single day, helping people navigate one of the most complex and meaningful decisions they’ll make.

🎥 Here’s the video! Have a laugh, cringe a little, and see why we’re on a mission to raise the bar.

The number of times we’ve been called in to replace a CRO with a VP Sales is staggering.

And here’s the thing: it’s almost always about timing.

Too often, SaaS & AI companies hire a CRO before they have a repeatable sales motion. They think:

“We need someone senior to take us to the next level.”

But what they really need is very different:

- A VP Sales to win customers #10–#50.
- Someone who can build and prove a scalable playbook.
- A leader who’s still close enough to the field to know where things break.

A CRO comes later, when repeatability exists, and you need someone to orchestrate across Sales, Marketing, and CS.
Without that foundation, even the best CRO is set up to fail.

We’ve seen this pattern many times: the title sounded right, but it didn’t match the stage the company was in. The result? Wasted time, wasted money, and another failed exec hire.

👉 Founders: before you hire, ask yourself: do you need someone to build and prove the first motion, or someone to scale multiple motions? The answer will tell you whether it’s time for a VP Sales or a CRO.

🚨 London founders — this one’s for YOU.

On October 16th we’re bringing together some of the best founders in SaaS & AI for an evening you don’t want to miss.

And the panel? Absolutely stacked:

🔥 Stephen Whitworth — Co-founder of incident.io. Just fresh off the back of a $62M Series B funding round that’s cemented them as one of the fastest-growing scale-ups in the UK.

🔥 Harrison Rose — Former Co-founder of Paddle (yep, the $1B+ SaaS rocket ship) and now building GoodFit.io, which just locked in a $13M Series A to redefine the future of recruiting.

🔥 Erez Golan — Co-Founder of Playroll, a next-gen platform helping companies hire and pay talent globally. Another founder who’s on a rocket-trajectory.

We’re putting these founders in the spotlight to share the real stories behind the hype: raising huge rounds, building companies that scale, and the mistakes + breakthroughs that got them there.

If you’re a software or AI founder in London, this is YOUR room.

📍 October 16th. London.
💥 Energy guaranteed.

Register via this link: https://luma.com/9jdrao9r

🚀 Big news: Léah Bardo is joining the Bluebird team!

She’s a native French speaker who will be building out our presence in France 🇫🇷 while also further expanding the UK market – which happens to be our fastest-growing region this year 🇬🇧.

Léah brings an impressive background:
	•	Experience at startups
	•	Top-performing sales rep at Salesforce 💥
	•	And now, another talented Canadian joining our flock 🍁

What stands out most? Léah is intelligent, sharp, has a great sense of humor – in other words: a true Bluebird 💙

Excited to have you with us, Leah. Welcome to the team! 🙌

Sometimes you get sent something that just makes you smile.
This week I got my own Pokémon card from the GoodFit.io team — “The Wavemaker.” 🌊⚡️

Honestly, I feel honored to be considered someone who’s had a small part in Goodfit.io’s journey. Probably more honor than I deserve, but it’s been fantastic to work with Harrison and the team.

And what a moment for them: from bootstrapped to a $13M Series A led by Notion Capital.
Notion is a VC we work closely with, so I’m confident this partnership is only going to grow stronger in the years to come.

Huge congratulations to Harrison, Wahid, and the entire Goodfit.io crew.
Excited to see what’s next, and to catch up in London in two weeks. 🚀💙

🚨 No VrijMiBo plans yet this Friday?

If you consider yourself a Bluebird friend, then this is your sign 👉 come celebrate our 5-year anniversary with us! 🎉

We already have 155 people confirmed – top candidates, founders, leaders, investors… some of the very best in SaaS & AI.
We’ve got space for 175 and we’d 💙 to fill the room and celebrate with all of you 🤩

🔗 Register here: https://luma.com/x1it1qs0

See you Friday! Drink & bites are on us! 🍻

Most founders underestimate how much damage the wrong VP Sales hire can do.

When Upflow (B2B payments SaaS) came to us, they’d already lost ~9 months of momentum, looking for the right GTM leader after Series A.

Within 9 days of kicking off the search, we introduced them to Brad Cross.

Fast forward 3.5 years:
- Brad’s tenure has almost doubled the average for a VP Sales.
- He grew from VP Global Sales → VP Revenue → now Chief Revenue Officer.
- And he’s been instrumental in driving Upflow’s scale.

👉 That’s the difference the right hire makes. A leader who grows with the company and shapes the journey.

Huge credit to Upflow for backing talent the right way, and to Brad for showing what’s possible when cultural fit, a complimentary skill set, and opportunity all come together.

Thinking about your next exec hire? Let me know! I'm happy to share what patterns we’ve seen across 100+ searches.

Hiring your first VP Sales is one of the toughest (and most expensive) decisions a founder makes.

Panaseer, a UK-based cybersecurity scale-up, came to us with that exact challenge. They needed a VP Sales who could:
- Navigate complex enterprise deals in a highly technical space.
- Build a repeatable motion in a market where sales cycles are long and multi-stakeholder.
- Fit seamlessly into a leadership team already full of strong personalities and big ambitions.

Not easy.

Within weeks, we introduced them to the person who became their VP Sales. And it turned out to be the perfect fit.

Why? Because we didn’t just look at shiny CVs or big logos.
We focused on:
- Stage fit → someone who had proven they could take a company from early traction to scale.
- Outcomes → enterprise GTM experience, ability to open doors with CISOs, and build trust in a risk-averse industry.
- Cultural overlap → the right mix of challenger mindset and collaborative leadership.

That hire transformed Panaseer’s go-to-market trajectory.

👉 Founders and investors: if you’ve got a critical exec hire coming up, we can help you find the right person fast.

The most important part of hiring an executive are the key outcomes.

A LinkedIn profile might look impressive…
…but it rarely tells you if someone has:

- Expanded into a new geography
- Reduced average sales cycle length
- Increased win rates by X% through improved sales methodology/process

These outcomes don’t live on a LinkedIn profile.
They only come out in deep conversations by asking the right “how” questions and digging deep into context.

That’s why our executive interviews put outcomes front and center. 

If, as a Founder, you can’t define exactly what success looks like in the next 12–18 months, you’re already setting the search up to fail.

We’ve had conversations like these with thousands of SaaS and AI executives across Europe (and beyond), and we know how to separate the 'builders' from the 'scalers'.

👉 The best founders we work with can describe their exec hire in outcomes, not titles. Can you?

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