VP of Sales/BD

Overview

You're the first sales leader at Solstice, building the GTM motion from zero. You'll hire and manage 7 GTM people (3 AEs, 4 Commercial Engagement Leads), close the first major deals yourself, and create the playbook for selling AI content generation to pharmaceutical marketing teams. This is player-coach heavy on the player side early - you'll be in demos and negotiations while also building process, comp plans, and hiring pipeline.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Seed/early Series A (17 employees total)

Size: 17 employees, hiring 17 more across all functions

Growth: Aggressive hiring suggests recent funding round or strong early signal from pilot customers

Market Position: Category creation - selling AI to pharma marketing, which means educating market on what's possible while navigating regulatory concerns

GTM Reality

Current State:

• No established sales team (you're hire #1 for sales leadership)
• Hiring 3 founding AEs and 4 Commercial Engagement Leads reporting to you
• Likely a few pilot customers or early LOIs, but no repeatable sales process
• Product is live but still evolving based on customer feedback

Your Build:

• Define ICP: which pharma companies, which drug portfolios, which buyer personas
• Create sales process: qualification framework, demo flow, pilot structure, pricing/packaging
• Build team: hire, onboard, and ramp 7 people in first 6-9 months
• Establish metrics: what does good look like for activity, pipeline, conversion rates?
• Partner with product: you'll be in weekly syncs translating market feedback into feature requests

Reporting: Likely to CEO/Founder, maybe a CRO if they hire one

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Traditional pharma agencies, generic AI writing tools, internal content teams, potential pharma-specific AI competitors not yet public

Market Education Need: High - most pharma marketers haven't used AI for content, and compliance teams are skeptical

Your Differentiation Thesis: You need to define this - is it speed? cost? compliance confidence? scalability? That's part of the job.

Objection Patterns: You'll discover these through your first 20 deals and train the team on how to handle them

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Closing Deals (35%) | Hiring/Managing Team (30%) | Strategy/Process (25%) | Board/Internal (10%)

Key Activities

• Personal pipeline: Close 3-5 strategic enterprise deals yourself in year one ($100K-500K each). These become case studies and proof points for the team.
• Hiring: Interview 40-60 candidates to hire 7 GTM people. Write job descriptions, sell candidates on vision, negotiate offers, handle the first termination when someone doesn't work out.
• Coaching: 1:1s with each rep weekly, join their calls, review demos, help unstick deals. You're teaching them to sell a product you're still figuring out yourself.
• Playbook creation: Document everything - ICP, qualification criteria, discovery questions, demo script, pricing strategy, objection handling, pilot terms. Update it monthly as you learn.
• Cross-functional: Daily communication with product (what are customers asking for?), marketing (what content do reps need?), ops (hire a VP of ops to build your systems). Weekly exec team meetings.
• Investor updates: Monthly or quarterly metrics reporting to board - pipeline, bookings, team ramp, learnings. They'll ask hard questions about burn rate vs revenue.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're building the plane while flying it - selling to pharma (slow, risk-averse) with AI (new, unproven in this space) at a startup (no brand, limited resources)
• First few hires might not work out - you're guessing at profile since there's no proven playbook, and bad hires at this stage really hurt
• Product gaps will kill deals - prospects will ask for features that don't exist, and you negotiate with product on what gets built when
• Founder tension - you'll disagree with CEO on pricing, which markets to enter, how fast to hire. You need to influence without authority.
• Quota pressure with long cycles - you might not close anything in Q1, then close 3 deals in Q4. Board gets nervous in the meantime.
• Recruiting is a grind - most experienced reps don't want 17-person startup risk, and you can't pay FAANG salaries
• Compliance blockers - you'll lose deals because pharma regulatory affairs won't approve AI-generated content, period. You can't sell your way out of that.

What Success Looks Like

• Hit $1.5-2M in new bookings in year one across team + personal deals
• Hire and ramp 7 GTM people with <1 bad hire that needs replacing
• Build a documented, repeatable sales process (playbook, demo, pricing, pilot structure)
• Establish 3-5 referenceable customers who will evangelize the product
• Get the team to 50%+ of quota by end of year one
• Establish yourself as thought leader in pharma marketing AI (conference talks, LinkedIn presence)

Who You're Selling To

Your Personal Deals (Enterprise):

• SVP/VP of Marketing at mid-to-large biopharma ($500M+ revenue)
• Chief Commercial Officers
• Heads of Brand Strategy for blockbuster drug portfolios

Your Team's Deals (Mid-Market):

• Directors of Marketing at smaller biopharma (50-500 people)
• Brand Leads for specific therapeutic areas
• Marketing Operations leaders looking for efficiency gains

What They Care About:

• ROI proof: can you show 50%+ cost savings vs agency model?
• Compliance confidence: will medical/legal/regulatory approve this?
• Speed to value: how fast from contract to first compliant campaign live?
• Risk mitigation: what if the AI hallucinates medical claims and they get FDA warning letter?
• Change management: how do they get their 20-person marketing team to adopt new workflow?

Requirements

• 8+ years selling enterprise B2B SaaS, with 3+ years in sales leadership (built a team from <5 to 20+ people)
• Experience selling into pharma/life sciences or highly regulated industries (healthcare, financial services) where compliance matters
• Track record of closing $100K+ ACV deals with 6-12 month cycles and 5+ stakeholders
• Player-coach mentality - comfortable carrying personal quota while managing team
• Startup experience - thrived in ambiguous, resource-constrained environments where you built process from scratch
• Strong hiring instincts - can assess sales talent and build diverse, high-performing teams
• Executive presence - can present to C-suite buyers and board members with equal confidence
• Located in or willing to relocate to NYC (early stage company needs in-person leadership)
• Intellectual curiosity about AI - you don't need to be technical, but you need to learn how the product works and stay ahead of the AI hype cycle