Account Executive

Overview

You're selling Weavy, an AI-powered creative workflow platform, to creative professionals and design teams. You're one of three reps on the sales team, working alongside an ex-Figma GTM lead. You're running full-cycle deals—prospecting, demoing, closing—while helping figure out what the repeatable sales motion actually looks like at a 38-person startup.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Likely Seed/Series A (38 employees, actively hiring sales)

Size: 38 employees

Growth: Small sales team (3 reps total), poster came from Figma which signals they're investing in GTM talent

Market Position: Category creator in AI-native creative tools—competing against both traditional design tools adding AI features and newer AI creative startups

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 20% Inbound - Product-led signups, website demos, word-of-mouth in creative communities
• 70% Outbound - LinkedIn, targeted outreach to design teams at scale-ups/mid-market companies
• 10% Referrals - Early customer advocates

SDR/AE Structure: No dedicated SDRs—you're self-sourcing. The poster mentions "sales team of three" not "3 AEs + SDR team"

SE Support: Likely no dedicated SEs at this size. You're doing your own demos, possibly pulling in a founder or product person for technical deep-dives

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Figma (adding AI features), Adobe Firefly, Midjourney (for generation), Canva (for teams), other AI creative workflow tools

How They Differentiate: Node-based workflow combining multiple AI models (GPT, Stable Diffusion, Runway, etc.) with pro editing tools in one platform—positioning as "Artistic Intelligence" vs pure AI generation

Common Objections: "We already use Figma/Adobe," "Our designers don't trust AI," "How is this different from just using ChatGPT/Midjourney separately?"

Win Themes: Workflow efficiency for creative teams at scale, unified platform vs tool-switching, maintaining creative control while leveraging AI

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (40%) | Active Deals (35%) | Internal/Admin (25%)

Key Activities

• Cold outreach to design teams: You're targeting creative directors, design leads, and heads of creative at companies that need to produce high volumes of creative work. LinkedIn messages, email sequences, maybe some calls. Conversion rates are low because designers are skeptical of AI and get pitched constantly.
• Product demos: You're walking prospects through the node-based workflow, showing how to chain AI models together, demonstrating the editing tools. You need to understand creative workflows well enough to speak their language. Demos are 30-45 minutes, you're probably doing 5-8 per week.
• Managing deals without a clear playbook: There's no well-worn sales process yet. You're figuring out who the real decision-maker is (creative lead? IT? procurement?), what the approval process looks like, whether there's budget. Some deals will close in 3 weeks, others will drag for 3 months because no one's bought creative AI tooling before.
• Weekly sales syncs and feedback loops: With only 3 reps, you're constantly sharing what's working, what objections you're hearing, what messaging resonates. Product is still evolving based on customer feedback, so you're also the voice of the customer to the product team.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Many creative professionals are skeptical or threatened by AI. You'll hear "this will replace designers" or "AI art isn't real art" regularly. You're not just selling software, you're selling a mindset shift.
• The buyer isn't always clear. Sometimes it's the design lead who loves it but has no budget authority. Sometimes it's a VP who sees ROI but whose team resists change. You're navigating politics without established champion plays.
• You're building the playbook as you go. There's no battle-tested pitch deck, no clear ICP with proven conversion rates, no "if they say X, counter with Y" guide. It's scrappy and experimental.
• At 38 people, there's limited support infrastructure. You're probably doing your own contract redlines, handling basic onboarding questions, troubleshooting access issues—stuff that would be handled by other teams at a bigger company.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 1-2 deals per month, with deal sizes growing as you move upmarket from individual teams to company-wide licenses
• Building a repeatable outreach motion that gets 20-30% reply rates from creative leads
• Getting customers to renew and expand—early retention/expansion metrics are critical at this stage

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Creative Directors / Heads of Design at mid-market companies (100-1000 employees)
• Marketing leaders at companies producing high volumes of creative content
• Product Design leads at tech companies exploring AI-enhanced workflows

What They Care About:

• Speed to market—can their team produce more creative variations faster without adding headcount
• Quality control—does AI output meet their brand standards, can designers maintain creative direction
• Team adoption—will their designers actually use this or resist it
• ROI story—can they quantify time savings or cost avoidance vs hiring more designers or using multiple tools

Requirements

• 2-4 years in B2B SaaS sales, ideally selling to creative/marketing teams who are skeptical buyers
• Comfortable with ambiguity and building processes from scratch—this isn't a structured sales org yet
• Genuine interest in or understanding of creative workflows (if you don't know the difference between a layer and a node, you'll struggle in demos)
• Self-starter who can generate pipeline without SDR support or a flood of inbound leads
• Willing to be hands-on with everything from prospecting to post-sale handoff since there's limited support team