Most Founding AE hires fail not because the candidate was wrong, but because the role was unclear, the system wasn't ready, and nobody was looking out for the new hire once they started. This engagement fixes all three.
Book an intro call →Most recruiters would have just taken the search. Dave asked me a few questions and I realized I couldn't describe what a repeatable deal looked like yet. He told me to wait — and said he'd rather be my first call when the timing is right than place someone who isn't set up to win. That's a different kind of recruiter.
This engagement is built for two people. Founders at the seed and Series A stage who are running sales themselves and need to transition out without breaking what's working. And first-time sales leaders who just stepped into a role and are hiring across the business — often while still learning it themselves — and need to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
The deals are coming in, but they depend on you being in the room. That's not a repeatable motion — it's a dependency. The longer it stays that way, the harder it is to hand off.
Selling, coaching, forecasting, board prep — the list doesn't stop. A new hire needs time and attention you don't have. Without a structured process, they're figuring things out on their own while you're stretched thin. Something falls through the cracks.
Most recruiters optimize for speed and placement fees. This is an operator search. Dave scaled a sales team from 5 to 50 reps in two years and has had 250+ founder conversations since. That combination of pattern recognition is not something a LinkedIn filter replicates.
Dave delivered strong candidates quickly — and the quality was there. He maintains a real community of founding AEs so he's not starting from scratch on every search. As a European company hiring in the US, that kind of operator relationship is hard to find.
Most Founding AE hires fail at predictable points: wrong profile, unprepared candidate, no ramp structure. This process addresses each one before it becomes a problem.
I start by getting deep on the product — not a surface read, but the kind of understanding that lets me answer hard questions from a skeptical AE. Why does it win? Where does it lose? What makes a buyer act now versus later? I need to be genuinely excited about what I'm representing before I ask anyone to stake their career on it.
Strong Founding AE candidates do their homework. They want case studies, customer proof, press, and a clear picture of the commercial traction so far. I review everything available, identify what will resonate with the candidates we're targeting, and flag what's missing before the first conversation.
Candidates come from a vetted community of Founding AEs who have been evaluated over time. This skips the part of the search that takes the most time and produces the most noise. The candidates who see this opportunity are already known quantities.
Most good candidates fall out of processes not because they're wrong for the role, but because the process was unclear, slow, or made them feel like an afterthought. In a competitive market, how you run the process signals exactly what it's like to work with you.
Before the search begins, we work through the process together. That means agreeing on the steps, what we're looking for at each one, and who on your side is responsible for each conversation. Nothing is handed to you as a template. It gets built around your role, your timeline, and what you actually need to make a confident decision.
I sit down with the founder and the key people who hold the institutional knowledge that makes your sales motion work — product, early customers, anyone whose insight a new rep needs. I pull out what's never been written down: the objections that come up, how the best deals actually closed, what buyers care about most, and why. This becomes the raw material for RepReady.
Everything from the stakeholder interviews gets organized into a structured 30-day onboarding program, two hours per week, covering the five areas that determine whether a new rep hits the ground running or spends their first quarter figuring out what the founder already knew.
Every other recruiter finds you a candidate. Dave Rubinstein makes sure they succeed.
The number one reason a Founding AE underperforms isn't talent. It isn't effort. It isn't fit. It's that no one gave them what they actually needed to succeed. They showed up on day one to a Notion doc and a product demo and were told to figure it out.
RepReady changes that. I conduct structured interviews with your founder and key stakeholders, pulling the institutional knowledge out of their heads, and organize it into a 30-day onboarding program, two hours per week, covering the five areas that determine whether your new hire ramps in 30 days or 90. Most reps spend 6–8 weeks figuring out what the founder already knows. RepReady compresses that to day one — and protects the founder's calendar from becoming the onboarding plan.
Much of the content is also shaped by the Founding AE community itself. The questions in RepReady reflect what AEs who have been through early-stage roles say they wish they had known on day one. Those are the gaps that actually slow ramp, not the ones that look good in an onboarding checklist. That perspective makes it sharper than anything built from the founder's side of the table alone.
Most Founding AEs walk into chaos. The founder is still running deals. Nobody has written anything down. The rep spends their first quarter asking questions nobody has time to answer and figuring out by trial and error what the founder already knew.
RepReady means someone is looking out for the hire before they even start. The chaos doesn't disappear, but instead of landing in it alone, the rep enters with a foundation. They know who buys and why. They know what's worked and what hasn't. They know what to do on day one instead of waiting to be told.
That changes what the first 30 days look like — and what's possible in the first 90.
Other recruiters close the deal. Dave closes the gap.
You're ready when the motion is repeatable — meaning you can explain to someone else why a deal closed, and you're confident a different person could run the same process and get a similar result. If you're still figuring it out yourself, hiring someone to figure it out for you usually doesn't work. The full checklist is in this article.
Traditional recruiters optimize for placement speed and fees. This is an operator search. I get deep on the product before approaching a single candidate, run a structured process designed to surface the right person rather than the fastest yes, and stay involved through onboarding via RepReady. The candidates come from a vetted network — not a cold LinkedIn filter.
RepReady is a 30-day structured onboarding program built from your specific business — your deals, your buyers, your wins and losses. I conduct stakeholder interviews to pull the institutional knowledge out of the founder's head, then organize it into two hours per week covering the five areas that determine whether a new rep ramps in 30 days or 90. The AE enters a process, not a blank page — and the founder's calendar stops being the onboarding plan.
Almost always the same reasons: the role was unclear before the search started, the motion wasn't repeatable enough to hand off, and there was no onboarding structure once they joined. The rep spent their first quarter asking questions nobody had time to answer. It's rarely the wrong person — it's that nobody set the person up to succeed. That's what this engagement is designed to fix.
Because candidates come from a vetted network rather than a cold search, the process moves faster than a traditional recruiting engagement. Most searches reach an offer within six to ten weeks. The preparation work — product review, assets review, process design — happens in parallel with sourcing, so we're not adding time before the search begins.
Seed and Series A B2B SaaS companies where the founder is currently running sales and needs to hand off without losing what's working. Also first-time sales leaders who just stepped into a role and need to hire without the bandwidth to do it carefully. If you're pre-revenue or the motion is still being figured out, the timing may not be right yet — and I'll tell you that on the first call.
30 minutes to talk through where you are in the motion, what the role needs to look like, and whether the timing is right. If it's not, I'll tell you that too.
See if there's a fit →