I’ve spoken with 300+ B2B founders since May 2025. When one of those conversations becomes an active search, the role goes up here.
Five Account Executive jobs are open right now across four companies: three Founding Account Executive seats (RevOps AI, marketing measurement and enterprise AI loss prevention), a mid-market seat at the same loss prevention company, and one early seat in healthcare AI, all US-based, at companies that already have revenue. Base salaries run $100K–$200K, with OTE up to $400K+. Four are remote US; the loss prevention mid-market seat is in the New York office, and the healthcare AI role requires living on the East Coast. All of them want a senior closer who can build the motion, and I only put forward roles I’d be excited to sell myself.
How do I decide which roles to put forward?
I assess the product as if I were going to sell it myself, and I don’t forward what fails that test. That sounds like a slogan; in practice it’s a filter that kills most of what crosses my desk. I spent six years at Salesforce and scaled Outreach’s commercial team from 4 to 40 AEs, and I was a founding AE myself — zero to $10M ARR. I know what it feels like to carry a number against a product that isn’t ready, and I’m not going to hand that to someone who trusts me.
So before a search makes this page I want three things. Evidence the product actually works, not just that the founder believes it does. A comp plan where the variable is reachable given the pipeline that actually exists, not the pipeline in the deck — or, where the seat is pure hunting with no pipeline yet, a number set with that in mind and explained before anyone signs. And a founder who can answer, specifically, what they’ve personally closed and why. Miss the third and the first two rarely survive contact with reality — the founder can’t hand you a playbook they never wrote.
Why don’t you name the companies?
Because most of these searches are confidential, and a founder who tells me the honest version of their pipeline deserves not to read it back on a public page. What you get instead is everything that actually decides whether a seat is worth taking: comp, buyer, deal size, cycle length, what’s proven and what isn’t, and where I’d push for clarity before signing. The name comes on the first call.
It also keeps the write-ups honest. When a page can’t lean on a logo, it has to carry the argument on the substance, which is the same reason I write them at this length rather than posting a job ad.
What makes a founding AE role worth taking?
The comp number is the least useful signal on the page, and it’s the one most candidates anchor on. A $350K OTE against pipeline that doesn’t exist is worth less than a $250K OTE at a company where the motion is proven and the ramp is honest. What good founding AE roles look like is the longer version of this; what a Founding Account Executive actually earns gives you the market ranges to benchmark against.
The short version is that you’re underwriting three things at once: whether the product has real pull, whether the founder can tell you the truth about it, and whether the plan pays you while you find out. Every write-up above is organised around those three, which is why they’re longer than a job description and more useful than one.
What happens after you book a call?
Fifteen minutes, and I’ll tell you what I actually think. If one of the open searches fits, I’ll make the introduction and tell you what to push on in the first conversation. If none fits, I’ll say so rather than forwarding you into a process that wastes a month — and I’ll tell you what to look for in your next seat, so you recognize a good one when it goes up here. The questions worth asking before you sign is what I’d hand you either way.