Overview
You'll be the first dedicated Revenue Operations Manager at Modulate, a 54-person AI company that built Velma - a voice AI model used by major gaming companies and enterprises. You'll own the entire RevOps function: systems management, pipeline tracking, forecasting, deal desk, data hygiene, and cross-functional process design. This isn't a HubSpot admin role - you're building the operational backbone for a growing GTM org selling a technical AI product.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Revenue Operations Manager (individual contributor building the function) |
| Sales Motion | Likely balanced - outbound to enterprise/gaming accounts, some inbound from existing reputation |
| Deal Complexity | Technical/consultative - selling API-based AI model, integration required |
| Sales Cycle | Est. 2-4 months for enterprise, faster for existing gaming accounts |
| Deal Size | Unknown - API pricing, likely volume-based |
| Quota (est.) | No quota - you support the revenue org, not carrying a number |
Company Context
Stage: Early-stage (likely Seed/Series A based on 54 employees)
Size: 54 employees
Growth: Actively hiring, processing 20M+ minutes of audio daily, expanding from gaming to enterprise (CX, insurance, banking, IT)
Market Position: Category creator in voice AI - competing on accuracy and nuance vs traditional transcription/NLP tools
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- Likely 30-40% Inbound - reputation in gaming industry, word-of-mouth, existing customer expansions
- 60-70% Outbound - new enterprise verticals (CX, insurance, banking), technical buyers who need education on voice AI vs traditional solutions
- Partners/Referrals - possibly some through gaming industry connections
Current State: Small GTM team (you'll find out exact structure), probably 2-5 AEs, possibly 1-2 SDRs. They're growing fast which means processes are probably half-built or inconsistent.
Your Challenge: They have real customers and revenue, but the operational infrastructure is likely duct-taped together. You're coming in to professionalize it.
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Systems/Tools (30%) | Data/Reporting (25%) | Process Design (20%) | Cross-functional Projects (15%) | Firefighting (10%)
Key Activities
- Systems Management: Own HubSpot, Looker, AmpleMarket, Swan, Zapier stack. Fix integrations that break, manage user permissions, evaluate new tools, build workflows. Probably spend 1-2 hours/week just cleaning up data issues.
- Pipeline & Forecast Reporting: Build and maintain dashboards for leadership. Weekly pipeline reviews where you're the one who knows if the numbers are real or inflated. Month-end close where you're reconciling what actually happened vs what was forecasted.
- Process Design: Create the playbook for how deals move through stages, what sales needs to document, how marketing passes leads, when finance gets involved. You'll be in a lot of meetings saying "we need a consistent process for this."
- Deal Desk: Review contracts, pricing exceptions, non-standard terms. Work with finance and legal on approvals. Chase down missing information from AEs who want to close deals but haven't filled out the required fields.
- Cross-functional Glue: Translate between sales ("we need more leads"), marketing ("we're sending qualified leads"), and finance ("we need accurate forecasts"). You're the person who makes those conversations productive instead of finger-pointing.
- Data Hygiene: Merge duplicate records, enforce field standards, audit CRM data quality. It's tedious but if you don't do it, reporting falls apart.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- You're building from scratch: There's no playbook to follow. You'll make decisions about process and architecture that will either scale well or create technical debt. Lots of ambiguity.
- Everyone wants something different: Sales wants speed and flexibility, finance wants controls and accuracy, marketing wants attribution. You're constantly negotiating trade-offs and saying "no" to some people.
- The data is probably a mess: Existing CRM data from rapid growth likely has inconsistent naming, missing fields, duplicate records. You'll spend weeks just cleaning things up before you can build good reports.
- Startup chaos: Priorities change, new tools get adopted without your input, someone makes a "quick fix" that breaks your carefully designed workflow. You need high tolerance for disorder while you create order.
- Technical learning curve: Selling an AI model via API means you need to understand technical concepts to build useful processes. You'll be learning about API calls, usage-based pricing, integration requirements.
What Success Looks Like
- Leadership can see accurate pipeline and forecast data in real-time without asking you to pull reports manually
- Sales reps actually follow the processes you built because they make their jobs easier, not harder
- Month-end close takes 2 days instead of a week of scrambling
- New GTM hires can onboard to systems in their first week because documentation exists
- You catch revenue leakage (missed renewals, wrong pricing, lost deals due to process gaps) and fix it
Who You'll Work With
Internal Partners:
- Sales Team: You're supporting their workflow, fixing their CRM problems, helping them close deals faster
- Marketing: Attribution, lead routing, campaign tracking, MQL definitions
- Finance: Revenue recognition, forecasting, contracts, commission tracking
- Product: Usage data, product-led growth signals if they have PLG motion
- Leadership: CEO/CRO-level reporting, board deck prep, strategic planning
What They Need From You:
- Sales: "Make the tools work so I can focus on selling"
- Marketing: "Tell me what's actually converting"
- Finance: "Give me numbers I can trust"
- Leadership: "Show me where we're winning and where we're stuck"
Requirements
- Based in Boston - they're hybrid, expect 2-3 days/week in office
- Experience building or significantly improving a RevOps function (not just maintaining someone else's system)
- Strong opinions about pipeline management, data hygiene, GTM process - they want someone who's thought deeply about how this should work
- Can work across departments without creating enemies - you'll be telling people to change how they work, need to do it diplomatically
- Genuinely care about the mission/product - they screen for this, want people excited about voice AI
- Bonus: HubSpot, Looker, AmpleMarket, Swan, Zapier experience
- Bonus: Startup experience (tolerance for ambiguity)
- Bonus: B2B SaaS or API/usage-based pricing background
What They're Really Looking For
The phrase "not looking for a HubSpot admin with a fancier title" and "someone who gets a little too excited about pipeline hygiene" tells you everything. They want:
- A builder, not a maintainer: Someone who sees broken processes and fixes them proactively
- Strong opinions, loosely held: They want you to have a POV on how RevOps should work, but be willing to adapt to their reality
- Systems thinker: Can see how changes in one area ripple through the entire revenue org
- High agency: Won't wait to be told what to do - will identify problems and solve them
- Excited about the product: 54-person startup means you'll be close to the product/mission, they want people who care
This is a high-visibility role. You'll report to the Director of BizOps and Strategy and probably present to leadership regularly. If you do this well, you'll have a huge impact on whether they scale smoothly or chaotically.