Our Story
After 15 years helping B2B SaaS vendors scale, including 16 unicorns and hundreds of VC-backed companies, we saw the same challenges repeat themselves. We had built multi-million-pound recruitment businesses before, but always on the same flawed model: high fees, transactional delivery, and little accountability. That experience gave us perspective and the conviction to build something better. Saiyo was created to give SaaS leaders a smarter, more scalable way to grow their teams.
Our Mission
Our mission is to reinvent recruitment for SaaS companies - replacing bloated fees and slow delivery with a smarter, scalable model. We exist to be the most trusted hiring partner, giving leaders a predictable, flexible way to build world-class teams, with accountability, speed, and shared success at the core.
It started as an idea
While leading a global executive search firm, our founder, Chris Birkedale, kept coming back to one question: why isn’t there a better way to recruit for B2B SaaS companies?
After 15 years working with some of the fastest-growing vendors in the world, he had seen first-hand how transactional, expensive recruitment models consistently failed the very businesses that needed speed, flexibility, and partnership the most.
That frustration became the seed of Saiyo.
Saiyo was born
With the belief that recruitment could and should work differently, Chris launched Saiyo. The vision was simple but ambitious: create a recruitment model built for the realities of scaling SaaS businesses - fast, flexible, embedded, and predictable.
Product Market Fit
The first step was proving the model. By combining deep SaaS expertise, proven headhunting methods, and a subscription-based approach, Saiyo quickly showed that Recruitment as a Service (RaaS) wasn’t just a new idea - it was a better one.
Early Customers
Our first customers were some of the most ambitious SaaS scale-ups in Europe and the U.S. They trusted Saiyo to help them build their Leadership, GTM & Professional Services teams - and we delivered. The success of those early partnerships gave us the validation to keep pushing forward.
Growth
Momentum built fast. Saiyo expanded into new regions, assembling a global remote team of recruiters, researchers, and SaaS specialists. With every new partnership, our reputation grew as the go-to partner for companies serious about scaling.
Sam Joins
As demand grew, so did the need for more leadership. Sam joined the business as Operations Director, bringing fresh perspective, energy, and experience to help guide Saiyo into its next stage of growth.
Technology Stack
We wanted the Saiyo experience to be as seamless as possible for our customers. So we built an end-to-end onboarding process and launched our client portal, complete with Slack integration. Under the hood, we integrated AI-powered search and talent mapping, giving our clients faster access to the right candidates. Now customers could manage pipelines, collaborate in real time, and feel like Saiyo was truly part of their team.
Where are we today?
Saiyo is the #1 RaaS solution for global SaaS recruitment. From Series A scale-ups to established leaders, we partner with the most ambitious B2B SaaS companies around the world - helping them build teams faster, smarter, and more cost-effectively than anyone else.
Recruitment as a Service
Headhunt search on subscription
Executive Search
VP & C-suite hiring
CV as a Service
Top of funnel hiring support
