Gearset Poaches Senior Talent from Competitor Copado to Accelerate Enterprise Push
In a significant strategic move, UK-based Salesforce DevOps platform Gearset has announced the appointment of Mark Bandettini as Vice President of Alliances, along with two other senior hires from competitor Copado. This talent acquisition signals an aggressive push by Gearset to strengthen its enterprise presence and deepen partnerships with Salesforce and global system integrators.
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Cambridge Success Story Doubles Down on Enterprise Strategy
What began as a bootstrapped startup in Cambridge, UK in 2015 has grown into a formidable player in the Salesforce ecosystem. Now serving over 3,000 customers and with approximately 340 employees, Gearset is leveraging its $55 million growth investment secured in 2022 to accelerate its upmarket expansion.
“While our base was built in SMB and mid-market, we’re making significant traction at the high end already,” said Mike Lees, Chief Revenue Officer at Gearset, who joined the company in October 2024. “We have numerous Fortune 50 customers on our books and seven-figure ARR clients. We’re seeing particularly strong growth among enterprise teams with over 100 Salesforce admins.”
Strategic Focus on Alliance Relationships
The alliance strategy represents a pivotal shift for Gearset, which initially grew through product-led growth and direct customer acquisition. Lees described the company’s enterprise approach as a triangle: “In any enterprise deal we care about, there are three corners – Salesforce, a GSI or RSI partner, and us as the ISV, with the customer in the middle.”
Gearset is heavily investing in relationships with top-tier consulting firms including Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, PwC, and IBM. Slalom is also considered strategically equivalent to a GSI within the Salesforce ecosystem, according to Lees.
“This is our number one strategic focus this year – investing deeply in our Salesforce relationship and building stronger connections with the GSIs that matter to our enterprise clients,” Lees explained. “We’re going deep with enablement, certification, account mapping, and joint working initiatives.”
Copado Veterans Join Forces with Gearset
The hiring of Mark Bandettini, formerly Director of Salesforce Alliance at Copado, represents a significant coup for Gearset. Bandettini brings extensive experience developing GSI relationships and navigating the Salesforce partner ecosystem.
Industry analysts note that while GSI relationships tend to be tied to individuals and partners rather than organizations as a whole, Bandettini’s move could help Gearset establish critical beachheads within these consulting giants.
“Salesforce’s shift toward Agentforce has really leveled the playing field in the DevOps space,” Lees noted. “It’s creating new opportunities for conversations as everyone adapts to this change. We’ve positioned ourselves to facilitate the deployment, testing, and observability of agents within the Salesforce environment.”
Differentiated Approach to Agentforce
While competitors have raced to launch agents on Salesforce’s Agentforce platform, Gearset has taken a more measured approach.
“We’ve spent six months really understanding the challenges customers face with deploying, testing, and monitoring agents within Salesforce,” Lees said. “Rather than rushing to market with some quick-build agents, we’ve extended our core platform to address the fundamental challenges of working in an Agentforce world.”
This approach reflects Gearset’s product philosophy, which emphasizes solving real customer problems rather than chasing marketing headlines. The company has already launched Agentforce deployment capabilities and recently added observability features.
Market Positioning Against Larger Competitors
The DevOps software services market for Salesforce is estimated to be worth approximately $750 million, according to industry analysts. However, the market for services built around these platforms could be significantly larger.
Gearset faces stiff competition from Copado, which has raised over $250 million and reached unicorn status with a $1.2 billion valuation in 2021. Despite having raised only a fraction of that capital, Gearset claims to have four times as many customers as any competitor in the space.
The company’s focus on user experience and higher deployment success rates has helped it win deals against larger competitors. According to a customer testimonial from Thumbtack, switching from Copado to Gearset reduced implementation time from two months to two weeks.
Looking Ahead
As the Salesforce ecosystem continues to evolve, particularly with the emergence of Agentforce, Gearset appears well-positioned to capitalize on its growing enterprise presence. The company recently achieved HIPAA compliance and released new capabilities including Dev Sandbox Syncing, which helps large teams like Amazon manage concurrent development streams.
With its new alliance team in place, Gearset is betting that its combination of technical excellence and strategic partnerships will further accelerate its enterprise growth. The question remains whether this “little SaaS company from Cambridge” can continue to outmaneuver larger, better-funded competitors in the increasingly competitive Salesforce DevOps market.
