Account Executive

Overview

You sell Monaco's AI revenue platform to startup founders who need help building their revenue engine. Most of your buyers are technical founders or first-time CEOs without sales backgrounds. You're selling into a new category (revenue automation), so a lot of your job is explaining what Monaco does and why it's different from a CRM.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early-stage (39 employees, likely Seed/Series A)

Size: 39 employees

Growth: Actively hiring across GTM - signals expansion mode

Market Position: Category creator in "revenue automation" - you're not competing on features, you're defining a new space

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 40% Inbound - founders who find Monaco through Sam's network, content, or web search for "AI sales platform"
• 50% Outbound - cold outreach to early-stage founders at seed/Series A companies
• 10% Referrals - existing customers telling their founder friends

SDR/AE Structure: Likely self-sourcing or shared SDR pool at this stage. You'll do some of your own prospecting.

SE Support: No dedicated SE - you'll demo the product yourself and work with Client Ops for technical setup.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Traditional CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce), AI sales tools (Clay, Apollo, 6sense), rev ops consultants

How They Differentiate: Monaco is positioning as "all-in-one revenue platform" vs point solutions. The AI does the work vs just organizing data.

Common Objections: "We already have a CRM," "Can't we just use ChatGPT + Salesforce?," "Too early for this level of automation," "Need to build sales muscle ourselves first"

Win Themes: Founders without sales DNA, speed to revenue for early-stage startups, consolidation of 5+ tools into one platform

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (25%) | Active Deals (40%) | Demos & Discovery (25%) | Internal (10%)

Key Activities

• Prospecting seed/Series A founders: You identify companies that just raised funding, reach out on LinkedIn/email, and try to book discovery calls. You're targeting technical founders or first-time CEOs who don't have a VP Sales yet.
• Discovery calls: You diagnose their revenue challenges - usually it's "we have no pipeline," "our reps can't scale," or "we're wasting time on manual follow-ups." You need to figure out if they even know they have a revenue operations problem.
• Product demos: You walk through how Monaco builds TAM, runs outbound sequences, and manages pipeline. You're explaining AI automation to buyers who may be skeptical or confused. Lots of "how is this different from [CRM]?" questions.
• Navigating multi-stakeholder deals: Even at startups, you're often selling to founder + early sales hire + maybe an advisor. You need buy-in from the person doing the work AND the person signing the contract.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're creating category awareness from scratch. Many prospects don't understand what "revenue automation" means or why they need it beyond their existing CRM.
• Startup budgets are tight and unpredictable. Deals can stall because they ran out of money or shifted priorities overnight.
• You're selling into a crowded martech stack. Founders are already using Apollo, Clay, HubSpot, etc. You need to convince them to consolidate AND that Monaco is better than stitching together point solutions.
• The product is evolving fast (it's AI-native at a 39-person company). Features change, bugs happen, and you need to manage expectations while selling cutting-edge tech.

What Success Looks Like

• You close 4-6 deals per month in the $15-50K ACV range
• Your customers go live within 2-3 weeks and start seeing pipeline growth quickly
• You build repeatable discovery questions and objection handling for this new category

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Seed/Series A founders (often technical, CEO or co-founder)
• Early-stage heads of sales or revenue (first GTM hire)

What They Care About:

• Speed to first revenue - they need pipeline yesterday
• Not having to hire a big sales team or rev ops person yet
• Consolidating tools to reduce spend and complexity
• AI doing the grunt work so they can focus on closing deals and talking to customers

Requirements

• 2-4 years selling B2B SaaS, ideally to startups or SMBs
• Comfortable selling into ambiguity - you're explaining a new category, not a known product
• Self-sourcing skills - you'll do some of your own prospecting
• Ability to demo technical products and field "how does the AI work?" questions without an SE
• Comfort with fast-changing environments - the product and GTM strategy will evolve as the company scales