Ollie Cheal, VP of GTM in EMEA, on building a team in Europe and beyond

We sat down with Ollie Cheal, VP of Go-To-Market (GTM) in EMEA at 1Password, to better understand his vision for our company across Europe, Middle East, Africa, and beyond.

Ollie has extensive experience leading sales organizations in this region, meaning he understands not just the local market nuances but also the importance of broad sales backgrounds in a growing team. Ollie has a keen focus on diversity, fostering a sense of belonging, and creating a culture focused on supporting our customers. He expanded on those themes, as well as what he’s looking for in his next hires.

Why did you join 1Password?

Bad actors are having a field day attacking identity. And there is no better company on the planet to drive identity-based resilience for companies – big and small – than 1Password.

Our society is dependent on digital innovation to drive improved public services, private sector outcomes, and better efficiencies across both. We all want these improvements to accelerate as it makes a real difference to people’s lives.

The largest factor holding back innovation is risk. The risk of losing information or sharing it with the wrong people, and in the associated legal risks. This is most acute in the identity space where we connect the right person, to the right work, on the right device. It’s a meaningful problem to tackle in 2025 and 1Password is best positioned to do it.

What excites you most about where we are in our current growth stage?

1Password is already an established business in EMEA with one third of our ARR coming from this market. Thirty-five of Europe’s largest 100 companies use our product and we’ve just released our MSP (Managed Service Provider) solution for a broader market.

We’re going multi-product, multi-channel, and multilingual all at the same time, which gives us a huge range of conversations to have with our customers. It’s awesome that we can now give clients the 1Password experience based on how they like to buy and communicate.

However, the best bit about our current growth stage is being able to hire an incredible team that will make all this happen. Our culture – focused on creating a sense of belonging and meaning for all employees – resonates with our candidates and we aim to help them grow as people and professionals during their time at 1Password.

What are you focused on to ensure 1Password grows in the EMEA market in 2025?

First, we need to rapidly bring in a highly skilled, highly motivated, and coachable group of people. Second, we need to provide our employees with the right tools and resources to do the job, from the first client call all the way through the customer journey.

Thankfully, we’ve got a wonderful group of existing employees in Europe and North America who can help us develop our team. We’ve also hired outstanding leaders to help coach and develop this group, which will be crucial to delivering the employee experience our teams have come to expect.

As you continue to build out your team, what types of skills are you looking for?

This varies by team but there are some clear fundamentals. Clearly, cultural contribution is table stakes – we’re looking for people who align with our company values of leading with honesty, keeping it simple, and putting people first.

Beyond that, three key elements stand out to me:

• Be driven. This drive needs to come from within. You can’t rely on others to bring it out of you. At 1Password, we love helping people make the most of this effort, but hunger must be innate.

• Be coachable. This is the desire to improve and self-develop. Crucially it is also the ability to make the changes that are necessary to improve. Most people want to do better but not everyone is willing to change, so that’s a key thing I look out for.

• Have keen self-awareness and understanding of the role you’ll play. This refers to the ability to do the job, maintain self-awareness, and understand context. This manifests differently in every team but it’s something that I see as non-negotiable no matter what team you’re joining.

Can you give one piece of advice to potential candidates looking to be a part of our growth in EMEA?

Tailor your approach to organizations and go out of your way to ensure we understand how well you align with the role. We’ve been blown away by some of the efforts our candidates have taken in the past, so take the time to stand out - it works!

1Password