Sancar Typeform

Who they are

Sançar Şahin is Co-Founder of Oliva — a personalised online therapy platform for employers — who previously grew Typeform from 200k MRR to 1.3M ARR using a framework he called the SURF Method.

Person

Sançar studied at The University of Manchester, then built his career through a sequence of marketing and growth roles that progressively raised the stakes. He came up through GetApp and Hotjar before landing at Typeform, where he moved through Director of Marketing, Head of Growth, VP of Marketing, and Product Marketing / Go-to-Market — a full sweep of the growth stack at a company that became one of B2B SaaS's most-cited brand stories. At Typeform he became something of a practitioner-evangelist: he codified a growth approach he calls the SURF Method, spoke about taking the company from 200k MRR to 1.3M ARR, and appeared on a circuit of podcasts and stages — SaaS Breakthrough, BetaKit's Hack to Start, Rebrandly, LiveChat, and the OnBrand Conference — consistently on the same themes: brand building from the ground up, conversational data collection, and using customer feedback as a growth lever. He then co-founded Oliva, a personalised employer mental healthcare platform, alongside Javier Suarez, who previously co-founded TravelPerk. The through-line is taking product-led or brand-forward B2B companies from early traction to scale, then betting that framework on something he built himself.

Network

The most concrete named connection is Javier Suarez — co-founder of TravelPerk and formerly of Booking.com — who co-founded Oliva with Sançar. No other named collaborators or investors surface from the available claims.

Javier Suarez· Co-Founder of Oliva; previously Co-Founder of TravelPerk, ex-Booking.com

How they likely show up

Multiple senior marketing roles at Typeform (Director → Head of Growth → VP → PMM/GTM) → likely comfortable owning an entire function end-to-end, not just a lane.
Codified growth work into a named framework (the SURF Method) and presented it publicly → tends to systematise learnings rather than operate on intuition alone.
Active public writing signal on LinkedIn plus a dense podcast and conference circuit → comfortable being the face of an idea, probably responds well to substantive, specific questions rather than small talk.
Founded Oliva after a sustained operator career rather than straight out of university → brings practitioner credibility to the founder role; likely impatient with theory that hasn't been tested.
Hybrid role-type pattern at Oliva (co-founder with a marketing/GTM background) → probably covers brand, growth, and commercial strategy simultaneously, not siloed.

Conversation tips

→ Reference the SURF Method by name and ask him to walk through the logic — it's his most cited intellectual contribution and signals you've done real prep.
→ The Typeform-to-Oliva transition (operator to founder) is a rich seam — ask what he took from the Typeform GTM playbook that doesn't translate to an early-stage company, not just what does.
→ He's spoken extensively on brand building and customer feedback as growth levers — come with a specific take or counterpoint, not a generic question about 'marketing strategy'.
→ Javier Suarez's TravelPerk background is a shared reference point — if you know the TravelPerk story, use it as context when discussing how Oliva is being built.
→ Don't treat him as primarily a 'mental health founder' — his identity and expertise are in GTM and brand; Oliva is the vehicle, not the whole story.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the SURF Method — he named and packaged a growth framework that he credits with taking Typeform from 200k MRR to 1.3M ARR; asking what the method actually is shows you went past the headline.
Lead with the co-founder pairing: Javier Suarez built TravelPerk into a multi-billion travel tech company — the fact that a founder of that calibre chose to start Oliva with a marketer is a specific, pointed detail worth unpacking.
Reference his OnBrand Conference appearance on brand building from the ground up — it's a practitioner stage, not a thought-leadership circuit, and it signals he cares about craft over profile.

Discovery questions

The SURF Method drove serious MRR growth at Typeform — how much of that framework survived the move to Oliva, and what did you have to throw out when you no longer had Typeform's brand equity behind you?
You went from VP of Marketing at a scaled SaaS company to co-founding a startup in a category — employer mental health — that requires a lot of trust-building with HR buyers. What does the GTM motion look like at this stage?
You've spoken a lot about conversational data collection and customer feedback as growth levers — how are you applying that at Oliva, where the 'product' involves sensitive personal data?

Avoid

Don't open by asking him about mental health as a personal passion — his public identity is as a GTM operator and brand builder, and leading with the category rather than the craft is likely to feel reductive.

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