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Tekion

Tekion is the cloud-native platform rewiring automotive retail. Founded by former Tesla CIO Jay Vijayan, the company is replacing a decades-old, on-premise Dealer Management System (DMS) oligopoly with a modern, AI-powered Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC) used by 2,000+ dealerships across North America.

Project
Overview

Tekion is one of the most compelling growth stories in enterprise software today. Founded in 2016 by Jay Vijayan, former CIO of Tesla, the company has raised more than $665M from blue-chip investors including Advent International, Alkeon Capital, Dragoneer, Durable Capital Partners, G Squared and Holman, with a most recent valuation north of $4B. Backed by that firepower, Tekion is on a mission to do for automotive retail what Tesla did for the vehicle itself: tear up the legacy playbook and rebuild it for the cloud era. 

With Rob Glenn, former CRO of Coupa, leading the global revenue function, Tekion is in full super-growth mode in the United States. Rob brought Strong Search in as his exclusive recruitment partner for US sales hiring, on the back of work Andy Strong and the team previously delivered for Rob at Coupa, where Strong Search both placed Rob himself and helped him build out a best-in-class global GTM organisation. The brief is unambiguous: hire high-calibre, business-led, value-based SaaS sellers across the whole of the US, in volume, fast. 

The Challenge

Tekion is disrupting an industry that has been dominated by two incumbent DMS providers for the best part of forty years. Winning that fight requires a sales force that can run an enterprise-grade, value-based, business-led sale into dealer principals and OEM executives, not a transactional product pitch. That immediately rules out most of the domain-experienced talent pool. The brief therefore required Strong Search to deliver against four distinct challenges in parallel: 

  • Outside-the-Domain SaaS Talent

    The natural sourcing pool, sellers from incumbent DMS vendors, was largely off-limits. Tekion needed proven SaaS Account Executives who could sell in a consultative, value-driven way and learn the automotive vertical on the move. Identifying, qualifying and converting sellers from adjacent enterprise SaaS categories required a far deeper mapping exercise than a domain-first search.

  • Volume Hiring at Pace

    Tekion is in hyper-growth and needs seats filled now, not next quarter. The mandate covers multiple roles concurrently across the United States, with new searches opening as the team continues to scale. That demands an operating model built for throughput without dropping calibre.

  • National Coverage

    Searches span the entire US footprint, East Coast, West Coast, Central, Southeast, Pacific Northwest, with each territory needing sellers who already carry the regional dealer-group and OEM relationships, or the credibility to build them at speed.

  • Calibre and Culture in a Disruptor Environment

    Tekion is moving fast, building hard, and competing against deeply entrenched incumbents. Every hire has to be commercially elite and culturally wired for a high-velocity, founder-led environment. There is no room for passengers.

The Solution

  • Exclusive US Sales Partnership Built on Proven Trust

    The engagement was mobilised from a standing position of trust. Strong Search had already placed Rob Glenn and built out the global Coupa GTM team alongside him, so there was no learning curve on hiring standards, calibre bar or cultural fit. From day one, the team operated as an extension of Tekion's leadership rather than an external supplier.

  • Talent Mapping Beyond the DMS Domain

    Strong Search built a US-wide map of business-led, value-based SaaS sellers operating in adjacent enterprise software categories, then qualified each candidate against Tekion's deal motion, customer profile and competitive context. The result is a shortlist of operators who can run a complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise sale from day one and learn the automotive nuance on the job.

  • Parallel Multi-Region Execution

    Multiple US territories are being searched simultaneously, with dedicated workstreams per region and shared visibility for Tekion's leadership. This avoids the bottlenecking that typically slows down national hiring programmes and protects pipeline velocity in every market.

  • Embedded with Tekion Leadership

    Weekly cadence with the CRO and regional leaders, real-time pipeline reporting and joint candidate calibration ensure that every hire is delivered to a single, consistent standard. Feedback loops are tight, decisions are fast, and the hiring bar is owned jointly.

  • Always-On Pipeline Build

    Because Tekion is hiring in volume, Strong Search runs an always-on pipeline ahead of role openings. New searches can be activated with qualified talent already in flight, rather than starting cold.

The Results

  • 6

    US Sales Placements Made

    High-calibre, value-based SaaS sellers placed across the United States, all from outside the legacy DMS domain.

  • 7+

    Active Searches Live

    Concurrent US sales searches in flight at time of writing, with further roles in the pipeline as Tekion continues to scale.

  • 100%

    Exclusive US Sales Partner

    Strong Search holds exclusivity on Tekion's US sales hiring, reflecting the trust earned through delivery and the carry-over from prior work with the CRO.

  • 100%

    Placement Retention

    Every hire placed remains in seat and performing, in line with Strong Search's track record across the wider client base.

  • 0

    Domain-Only Hires

    Zero placements made from incumbent DMS vendors. Every seller brought in carries the value-based, business-led SaaS DNA the brief demanded.

Why It
Worked

This engagement is a textbook example of why repeat CRO relationships compound. Rob Glenn knew exactly what Strong Search could deliver because he had lived the Coupa hiring journey alongside the team. There was no procurement-led beauty parade, no benchmark testing, no first-90-days settling in. The work started at full speed because the trust was already in place. 

On top of that foundation, Strong Search brought the two capabilities Tekion actually needs at this stage of its growth curve. First, the ability to source outside an obvious domain pool and still deliver sellers who can ramp into a vertical SaaS motion. Second, the operational muscle to run high-volume, multi-region US hiring in parallel without compromising calibre. That combination of trust, talent reach and execution speed is what is enabling Tekion to keep adding capacity to its US sales engine at the pace its market opportunity demands. 

Our Ongoing
Partnership

Strong Search continues as Tekion’s exclusive US sales recruitment partner, with seven-plus active searches live and further hiring programmed for the remainder of the year. The partnership covers Account Executive, Regional Vice President and frontline sales leadership profiles across every US territory, and is expected to extend further as Tekion’s growth accelerates. The shared goal is straightforward: keep stacking world-class, value-based SaaS sellers into Tekion’s US engine, fast enough to keep pace with one of the most ambitious growth stories in enterprise software. 

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