SDR (Sales Development Representative)

Overview

You're prospecting into marketing ops leaders and demand gen teams at high-growth B2B companies, trying to book demos for Surface's AI-powered lead management platform. You'll sit in the SF office next to the CEO doing cold outbound all day—emails, LinkedIn, calls. This is an early SDR role at a 14-person startup, so you're building the playbook as you go.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early-stage (backed by top investors, exact round unclear)

Size: 14 employees (just grew from 5 to 10)

Growth: Aggressive hiring mode, "insane product velocity"

Market Position: Category player in marketing ops automation—competing against lead routing tools, form builders, and manual processes

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 90%+ Outbound - you're building the outbound motion from scratch
• 10% Inbound - some PLG/product-led motion (they have lead forms), but limited marketing budget at this stage
• Minimal partner/referral flow

SDR/AE Structure: You're likely the first or second SDR—working directly with founders/early AEs

SE Support: Probably no dedicated SE at 14 people—AEs do their own demos

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Likely competing against Chili Piper (lead routing), Clearbit/6sense (lead enrichment), HubSpot/Marketo (marketing automation), and companies just doing this manually

How They Differentiate: AI agents that automate the entire lead ops workflow—not just routing but follow-ups, nurturing, and optimization

Common Objections: "We already have HubSpot", "Our ops team can handle this", "Is this actually AI or just workflow automation?", pricing concerns at early-stage companies

Win Themes: Converting 30% more inbound leads, zero manual maintenance once set up, self-improving systems

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (70%) | Meetings/Handoffs (15%) | Internal/Admin (15%)

Key Activities

• Cold Outreach: 50-80 emails/day and 30-50 LinkedIn messages targeting CMOs, VPs of Marketing, Demand Gen Directors, Marketing Ops Managers at B2B SaaS companies with 50-500 employees. You're looking for companies with inbound volume who are drowning in lead management.
• Call Blocks: 20-40 dials/day when you can get phone numbers. Most prospects won't pick up. You're leaving voicemails and trying to catch people between meetings.
• Sequence Building: Setting up and testing automated email sequences in Outreach/Salesloft (or whatever tool they use). The CEO mentioned "vibe-code and automate your job"—you'll be expected to optimize your own workflows.
• Research & List Building: Finding companies with the right signals (recent funding, high web traffic, job postings for demand gen roles). Pulling lists from ZoomInfo/Apollo/LinkedIn Sales Nav.
• Meeting Handoffs: When you book a demo, you'll brief the AE on what the prospect cares about and sit in on some calls to learn what resonates.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Rejection All Day: 95%+ of your outreach gets ignored. Marketing ops people are slammed and ignore cold emails. This is grinding work.
• Building from Zero: There's no proven playbook. You'll test messaging, iterate on personas, and figure out what works through trial and error.
• Selling an Emerging Category: You're not just selling Surface—you're convincing people they need AI-powered marketing ops in the first place. Lots of education required.
• Early-Stage Chaos: The product is evolving fast ("insane product velocity"), so your pitch will change constantly. What you demo this month might be different next month.
• Founder Intensity: CEO wants you sitting next to him grinding 8 hours/day. This is not a remote-friendly, work-life-balance environment. It's an SF startup grind culture.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 15-20 qualified meetings per month (prospects with budget, pain, and authority)
• Converting 30-40% of those meetings to next steps/opportunities for the AE
• Building reusable sequences and systems that other SDRs can use as the team scales

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP of Marketing / CMO (budget holder, cares about conversion rates and ROI)
• Director of Demand Generation (day-to-day user, cares about campaign efficiency)
• Marketing Ops Manager (technical buyer, cares about integrations and workflow automation)

What They Care About:

• Lead conversion rates: They're losing deals because leads sit in queues or get routed wrong
• Manual workload: Ops teams spend hours on lead assignment, follow-ups, and data cleanup
• Campaign ROI: CMOs want to prove marketing's impact—need better attribution and lead quality data
• Speed to lead: How fast can they respond to high-intent prospects?

Requirements

• Located in SF or willing to relocate—this is 5 days/week in-office
• Comfortable with high-volume outbound (emails, calls, LinkedIn)
• Some sales or SDR experience preferred but not required—they want hustle and coachability
• Technical enough to learn their product and understand marketing ops workflows
• Self-starter who can build and optimize their own prospecting systems
• Thick skin for rejection—this is cold outbound with low response rates
• Bonus: Coding/automation skills to build your own tools ("vibe-code and automate your job")