For tech start-ups, founding AE’s are the hardest hires you will ever make.
You are looking for someone with the experience and skills to do one of the most challenging jobs in tech sales but also someone with the risk appetite to go with it. They need to have the financial flexibility to take the risk, but at a stage in their career where they have the skills, experience and network to make an impact.
It’s rare to find people where these align.
The things salespeople look for to be successful are not there yet, playbook, reference clients, partners, leads, brand awareness, and momentum. This makes selling even harder and therefore the risk to the AE must be offset with things like commission guarantees, an attractive equity package and above all, a sense that the founder is backable, that they have a plan, and crucially, understand sales.
For a founder, learning how to hire these people is paramount.
Support from a recruitment partner that understands how to both sell the opportunity to the right talent and then qualify if they are likely to be successful is crucial.
A lot of salespeople think they want to be a founding AE but quickly realise they are not equipped to succeed. They need to be able to do the following, and be able to do it fast:
- Self-generate pipeline
- Operate to a high degree of autonomy
- Stay motivated and focused when priorities change
- Work for a founder directly (sorry founders, but you can be hard to work for!)
- Convince prospects to take a chance on a start-up when it’s easier to stick with the status quo
- Sell a product that doesn’t have full product-market fit
Get this right and the founding AE’s will be transformational to growing your business, get it wrong and you’ll take a painful financial hit.
Recalling some of the best people we have placed into these roles, there are a few words and phrases associated with all of them: hustle, relentless prospecting, and determination.
Without these, it’s not going to work for either side in a founding AE role.
About Indigo
We are SaaS GTM recruitment specialists with extensive experience recruiting professionals across sales, marketing, and sales engineering for US, UK, and Israel-based tech companies. Our start-up and scale-up customers rely on us to find the best people for their businesses, and we take pride in knowing our work helps companies scale quickly.