Solutions Engineer to First Hire Account Executive - Your ADVICE needed.

A founder reached out to me to join his startup as the first AE/SE hire in the developer tools space. I would contribute to developing their GTM strategy, sales playbook, and logo attainment.


Does anyone have experience doing this? Thoughts? Concerns? What is the expected comp plan?


Thank you!

🎈 Mentorship
💰 Compensation
4
AnchorPoint
Politicker
1
Business Coach
Be smart... think it through with your mentor/coach.  Put everything in writing: today's agreement and what the future holds.  Whatever promises are made should be in writing.  Have your attorney review.  Don't short cut this - it could be very costly down the road.
thalassophile888
Opinionated
0
Enterprise Solutions Engineer
Thank you for the reminder to get additional things in writing! 
AnchorPoint
Politicker
0
Business Coach
Get everything in writing especially while every one still loves each other!  Lack of a clear agreement in writing is a non starter.
Ozz
Politicker
1
Account Executive
Yeah, I was an SE at a Private Equity owned SaaS company which gave me a ton of training and I was able to implement those best practices into the startup. It's been an amazing journey from 0 - 1MM ARR in 11 month. Lot's of just trying stuff out but I was able to go in and fix their inbound lead funnel and that really helped up scale without much SDR support and outbound so that's helped us get to where we're at now. 

Concerns were that both founders have 0 sales and minimal SaaS experience even though they were able to build the software and get few customers. What brought be over was one of the Founder is a subject matter expert and relatively young too so he was willing to learn and let me run stuff without too much interference. The comp plan was a joke to begin with so I had to take a leap of faith and negotiate some decent equity but I did my own research on pricing on our competitors and the industry and thought we definitely were highly differentiated and could disrupt the market (luckily it's come to fruition) and I'm having my best W-2 year right now on top of equity. There is a gamble on that joining a startup and unless your development tools really differentiate it will be tough ride to get traction. Good opportunity but make sure that you can truly scale it or I wouldn't take on the risk. 
thalassophile888
Opinionated
0
Enterprise Solutions Engineer
Thank you for your insights. 
carbonara
Executive
0
Account Executive
I'm having conversations with a start up right now and I'm in a similar journey of being a founding sales person of a team. There's 2 senior sales leaders who joined and I'd be tasked with building out the sales development playbook. 

Would love to chat with you more in detail to gather insights. Would you be open to this?
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