20 April 2026 · 4 min read

meritt. joins Supercharger Ventures: 20 years of sales led us here.

meritt. has been accepted into the Supercharger Ventures accelerator in Malta. CEO and co-founder Will Koning reflects on 20 years in sales, the fundamental belief that education, assessment, and hir…
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meritt. joins Supercharger Ventures: 20 years of sales led us here

Some big news.

meritt. has been accepted into the Supercharger Ventures accelerator in Malta.

Before I get to what that means, I want to talk about why I'm doing this.

I've spent 20 years in sales. What's kept me in it isn't the deals. It's the people. I've watched quiet, coachable reps outperform the loudest person in the room. I've seen candidates get written off because they didn't fit a template, then go on to build careers nobody saw coming. Developing salespeople, spotting the traits others miss, giving people a real shot, that's been my obsession for two decades.

Along the way I've landed on a belief that shapes everything I do. Great education, great assessment, and great hiring are not three separate things. They are one thing. You cannot hire salespeople well without assessing them properly. You cannot assess them properly without understanding how they learn. And you cannot develop them unless the hiring process was built around who they actually are. The industry has treated these as silos for decades. That's why 42% of reps hit quota and a mis-hired AE costs £150k.

meritt. exists to bring them back together. Screen for the four traits that actually predict success: curiosity, coachability, grit, communication. Assess fairly. Hire with evidence. Develop with intent.

For 20 years this vision sat in my head as something that ought to exist. AI is what makes it real. Not AI that replaces recruiters, AI that gives good recruiters superpowers. The dream of education, assessment, and hiring working as one system is finally buildable.

And now we get to build it. Supercharger Ventures has given us the backing, the environment, and the belief to create something the sales industry has never had. I'm genuinely grateful. To the SCV team, thank you for seeing what we see and betting on it with us.

20 years of watching this industry get it wrong has given me a clear picture of what getting it right looks like. Now we get to build it.

Your team on meritt.

better salespeople. better hires.

What is Supercharger Ventures?

Supercharger Ventures is an accelerator based in Malta that backs early-stage companies building AI-driven products in education, workforce and human capital. It offers founders access to mentorship from operators who have scaled AI businesses internationally, alongside investment, network and go-to-market support. For meritt., acceptance into the programme is both capital and credibility. It signals that the AI investment community sees sales hiring as a category worth building category-defining companies in, and that human-in-the-loop models are gaining ground over pure-automation approaches.

Why is sales hiring the hardest hire a company makes?

Because sales performance is determined by traits that traditional hiring processes cannot measure. Only around 42% of sales reps hit quota. A mis-hired AE costs a company roughly £150,000 once you factor salary, ramp, lost pipeline and team disruption. CVs show experience, not curiosity. Interviews reward charm, not coachability. The result is that most companies hire based on signals that have little correlation with on-the-job success. meritt. was built to assess the four traits that actually predict performance: curiosity, coachability, grit and communication.

How does meritt. use AI in recruitment?

meritt. uses AI to do what humans cannot do at scale: screen thousands of candidates against trait-based criteria, surface genuine signal in video and written responses, and give every applicant meaningful feedback. The humans do what AI cannot: read nuance, coach candidates, build client relationships and make the final call on fit. This is human-in-the-loop recruitment. AI as a force multiplier for good recruiters, not a replacement. The opposite approach, full automation, removes the judgement that makes hiring decisions trustworthy in the first place.

What does this milestone mean for meritt. clients and candidates?

For clients, it means accelerated product development, deeper investment in the four-trait assessment framework, and access to an international network that will strengthen meritt. as a platform. For candidates, it means more opportunities, faster feedback and a hiring process built around fairness. The Supercharger programme does not change what meritt. is for the people who use it. It compounds it. The core commitment stays the same: better salespeople, better hires, and a recruiter in the loop who actually cares how the story ends.

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Four behaviours, role skills. Published in full.

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