205. Roeland Delrue, Co-Founder of Aikido Security - Why joining the buyer’s journey beats forcing MEDDICC-style sales processes

In this episode, we’re joined by Roeland Delrue, Co-founder of Aikido Security, the fast-growing application security platform that just became a unicorn in under 4 years. 

Roeland shares what it really takes to scale a company at breakneck speed, from going 5× year-over-year, to balancing startups and enterprise in one GTM motion, to raising a Series B with a single goal: becoming “unignorable.” We unpack how Aikido uses product-led growth, brutal revenue focus, and buyer-first sales mentality to win in one of the most competitive markets in SaaS.

We spoke with Roeland about building for continuous wins, why revenue clarity beats buzzwords, and how Aikido joins the buyer’s journey instead of forcing rigid sales methodologies.

Here are some of the key questions we address:

• How did Aikido grow from $5M to $20M+ ARR in one year?

• What does it mean to build an unignorable company?

• Why brutal focus on revenue simplifies product, hiring, and prioritization decisions

• Why joining the buyer’s journey beats forcing MEDDICC-style sales processes

• How product-led trials reduce churn and increase win rates

• What it takes to scale from unicorn to decacorn (and why $100M ARR is the next real milestone)

🎧 Tune in to hear how Roeland is building one of Europe’s fastest-scaling security companies and why speed, product, and revenue discipline beat category buzzwords every time.