Meet Jake: GoCardless' Energy Specialist

Jake joined GoCardless six months ago as an account executive in the enterprise sales team. Since then, Jake has become our energy specialist, immersing himself in the market and seeing some great results! We sat down with him to see how he is finding life at GoCardless.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Jake Grave. I have been at GoCardless as our energy specialist in Sales for 6 months, during which I have been lucky enough to work with some phenomenal companies and get them up and running on GoCardless. I’ve worked in sales and customer success in early stage SaaS companies for the past seven years, and in the summer of last year my search for a new challenge at a fast growing FinTech company brought me to GoCardless.

What does a typical week look like?

In an average week I will have several meetings with potential clients as well as numerous client calls and internal meetings. The client meetings are the focus of my week, I spend a good amount of time prepping for those.

At GoCardless, we have put a lot of work into defining our key target segments and the energy sector falls within these. So it’s not just me running aimlessly around, rather, we have a dedicated team of marketing, sales, customer success and partnerships people all focused on the energy sector. Our weekly meetings with this ‘GoTo Market’ team are essential in keeping us focused on driving value for customers in that space and ultimately achieving our goals.

The company culture is also a huge part of working here at GoCardless with lots of opportunities to get to know the whole team - so you might also find me tucking in to a team lunch or winding down on the Xbox at the end of the day.

What are the most interesting aspects of your job?

From day one here I was given the remit of building out my territory and running it like my own business. A large part of that has been immersing myself in the energy industry, a sector I find incredibly interesting, so that I can challenge my clients not only on payment processing but other aspects of their business, thus making myself and GoCardless even more valuable.

What is it like working with challenger energy suppliers?

I love working in the energy sector. It is a complex industry which is undergoing monumental changes driven by regulation, disruptive technology and fast moving new entrants. GoCardless happened on the industry almost by mistake and our product market fit has enabled us to capture 35% of the market.

What do you like most about working at GoCardless?

There are two aspects that spring to mind when I think about working at GoCardless.

Firstly, we’ve been lucky enough to attract some seriously intelligent and talented people across all areas of the business. I feel like the stupidest person in the room most days (a great place to be!) but everyone appreciates different skill sets and is ready to share knowledge and help others progress.

The second brilliant aspect to working at GoCardless is the fact that all areas of the business are pulling in the same direction. This comes from the senior leadership being very clear with our company mission and communicating it well to the whole business. This creates a really collaborative working environment, which we are keen to maintain as we grow over the next few years.

What is your most memorable moment since joining?

Signing two large deals in one day just before Christmas. This was obviously a great early Christmas present, but more importantly, it underlined the great work the team has done in the energy space in making GoCardless the industry standard payment method. It makes for a very exciting 2018!