Founding Account Executive

The first sales hire at a funded startup, building the motion from zero.

  • Mid-Market / Enterprise
  • Remote (US)

About the role

Founding AEs join a startup that has product-market fit signals and early customers, but no repeatable sales motion yet. You're not inheriting a playbook — you're writing one. You'll work directly with the founder, own the full cycle, and help decide what the ICP, pricing, and process should be.

What you'll do

- Own the full sales cycle from prospecting through close - Self-source the majority of your pipeline - Run discovery with a market that may not know the category exists - Feed product and pricing insight back to the founding team - Help define the sales process the next hires will run

What they're looking for

- 4+ years closing B2B SaaS, ideally at least part of it pre-Series B - Consistent quota attainment with verifiable numbers - Strong self-sourced pipeline history - Comfort with ambiguity, minimal infrastructure, and a moving ICP - Evidence of multi-threading across several stakeholders in one deal

Typical tech stack

Salesforce or HubSpot, Outreach or Salesloft, Gong, Apollo or ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Slack, Notion.