Overview
You prospect into enterprise software companies, e-commerce brands, and tech companies that need in-app chat, video, or activity feed features. Your job is to find developers, engineering leaders, and product managers, get them interested in Stream's APIs, and book qualified meetings for Account Executives. You're selling to a technical audience that evaluates build-vs-buy decisions.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some inbound leads |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative (technical evaluation) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (SDR hands off at meeting stage) |
| Deal Size | Varies ($20K-$200K+ ACV typical for API platforms) |
| Quota (est.) | 15-25 qualified meetings/month |
Company Context
Stage: Growth stage (330 employees, dual HQ in Boulder and Amsterdam)
Size: 330 employees
Growth: Actively promoting SDRs internally (2 just moved up), hiring to backfill, suggests pipeline growth
Market Position: Established player in developer API space for real-time features
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 30-40% Inbound - Developers who sign up for free trials, read docs, or request demos from website
- 60-70% Outbound - Cold outreach to target accounts that fit ICP (companies building apps with social/communication features)
- Some developer community leads from content/events
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding meetings to AE team. You work with Karina McCarthy who manages the SDR function under Rev Ops.
SE Support: Likely have Solutions Engineers for technical demos post-handoff
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Likely competing against Sendbird, PubNub, Twilio (for chat/video), and build-in-house options
How They Differentiate: Developer-friendly SDKs for multiple platforms, enterprise-grade infrastructure, faster implementation than building from scratch
Common Objections: "We can build this internally", "Too expensive vs our current solution", "We're not prioritizing this feature right now"
Win Themes: Time-to-market, scalability, enterprise support, multiple use cases (chat + video + feeds)
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Prospecting/Calling (50%) | Research/List Building (20%) | Email/LinkedIn (20%) | Meetings/Internal (10%)
Key Activities
- Cold calling: 40-60 calls per day to developers, engineering managers, and product leads. Most don't pick up. You're trying to identify who owns the roadmap for communication features. Many companies aren't currently building these features, so you're often timing-based prospecting.
- Email sequences: Running multi-touch campaigns in Amplemarket. Writing technical enough to not sound like generic sales spam, but simple enough to get a response. You test subject lines and messaging constantly.
- Account research: Identifying target companies that likely need real-time features (social apps, e-commerce with community features, SaaS with collaboration, gaming companies). Researching their product to find relevant angles.
- Discovery/qualification calls: When prospects respond, you run 15-20 minute calls to understand their use case, technical requirements, timeline, and whether they're evaluating build-vs-buy. Then hand off to AE with detailed notes.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Technical audience that ignores sales outreach. Developers and engineering leaders don't respond to generic SDR emails. You need to sound like you understand their stack.
- Long evaluation cycles. Even when you book a meeting, many prospects are in early research phase and won't buy for 6-9 months. Your AE might not close for a year.
- Gatekeeping. Getting past ops teams to reach the actual engineering decision-makers is difficult. Many hide behind "submit through our vendor form" responses.
- Timing dependency. Most prospects don't need this right now. You're looking for the small percentage actively building or rebuilding communication features.
- Competitive displacement is tough. If they already have Sendbird or built their own, convincing them to switch requires a strong business case.
What Success Looks Like
- Hitting 15-20 qualified meetings per month (meetings that show up and have genuine evaluation interest)
- 30-40% of your meetings convert to opportunities in AE pipeline
- Getting promoted to AE within 12-18 months (like Sean and Brooke just did)
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- Engineering Managers / Directors of Engineering
- VP of Engineering or CTO (at smaller companies)
- Product Managers (for feature prioritization)
- Technical Co-founders
What They Care About:
- Time to implement vs building in-house
- Scalability and uptime (can't have chat/video go down)
- SDK quality and developer experience
- Cost vs engineering resources to build and maintain
- Compliance and data security (especially for enterprise)
Requirements
- Comfortable calling technical buyers (developers, engineers) - they talk and evaluate differently than typical business buyers
- Self-motivated to hit daily activity metrics (calls, emails, meetings booked)
- Ability to learn technical concepts quickly (APIs, SDKs, webhooks, etc.) without being a developer yourself
- Coachable and willing to test new messaging - the promoted SDRs were noted for "creativity and adopting new technologies"
- Hybrid work: 3 days/week in Boulder office (not fully remote)
- Resilience with rejection - technical audiences are particularly unresponsive to cold outreach