Founding Account Executive

Delphina•San Francisco, CA

12d

About The Position

Do you want to own revenue at an early-stage AI company, not just carry a quota? Do you like running real deals end-to-end, from first conversation through POV, close, and expansion? Do you want a role where your judgment directly shapes how a company wins, prices, and scales? At Delphina, this role sits at the center of growth. You’ll own pipeline and deals, guide sophisticated buyers through high-stakes proof-of-value motions, and turn early wins into durable expansion. You’ll work directly with the founders and help define how we move from founder-led sales to a repeatable, scalable GTM engine. This is not a traditional “run the script” AE role. It’s for someone who wants real ownership -- of customers, revenue, and the systems that turn early traction into a company. Why This Market Matters Most companies have plenty of data but still struggle to answer their most important questions. Dashboards are brittle. Analytics is slow. Answers often require scarce data engineering time. And executives don’t trust results enough to act. Delphina helps teams answer complex, decision-critical questions quickly and reliably -- without long build cycles or heavy engineering lift. Our customers aren’t buying prettier charts. They’re deciding where to invest, what to stop, and how to grow. That urgency creates real budgets, senior buyers, and expansion-driven deals -- the kind of market where strong AEs can build meaningful, repeatable revenue. Why Delphina Will Win Founders and team with experience solving these problems at Uber, Google, Meta, OpenAI; educations from Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley Support and funding from world-class angels and VCs including Fei-Fei Li, Costanoa Ventures, and Radical Ventures AI-native technology designed for complex questions, not a bolt-on to pre-LLM analytics Hands-on POVs that deliver value fast and create conviction Founder-led product and GTM with tight feedback loops Early customer traction and a clear path to scaling revenue The Role Your job: build pipeline, close deals, and turn early wins into expansion -- while helping define how we sell. You’ll own deals end-to-end: sourcing and qualifying opportunities, running discovery, guiding customers through POVs, building business cases, closing contracts, and identifying expansion paths. Along the way, you’ll help turn what works into repeatable sales plays, pricing intuition, and GTM systems that scale beyond founder involvement. This role sits at the intersection of sales, value engineering, and early GTM strategy. It’s ideal for someone who wants quota-carrying responsibility and meaningful influence over how the company grows.

Requirements

3–5+ years of experience as a quota-carrying AE in B2B SaaS, ideally at fast-growing startups (Seed–Series C)
Proven track record of closing mid-market or enterprise deals with multiple stakeholders
Strong discovery skills and comfort selling to both technical and business buyers
Ability to lead complex sales cycles that include POVs, pilots, or evaluations
Comfort operating with ambiguity and building while selling
High urgency and bias toward action
Clear, confident communicator -- written and verbal -- with senior leaders
Ownership mindset: you take responsibility for outcomes, not just activities
Growth mindset and willingness to learn technical concepts well enough to sell credibly
You use AI to build leverage (research, prep, follow-ups, systems), not just write emails

Nice To Haves

Experience selling analytics, data, or AI products (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, dbt, Looker, Tableau)
Experience selling deals that expand over time (land-and-expand motions)
Experience helping build early sales playbooks, pricing intuition, or qualification frameworks

Responsibilities

Build and maintain a healthy pipeline of mid-market (200-2,000 employee) or enterprise (2,000+ employees) customers, with a path toward enterprise expansion
Own deals from first conversation through close, with clear qualification and momentum
Turn vague customer interest into decision-relevant problems tied to real business outcomes
Identify buying committees, success criteria, and blockers early
Lead high-impact proof-of-value motions in partnership with solutions and product
Keep POVs focused, urgent, and tied to a clear buying decision
Quantify business impact and help customers build internal conviction and a buyer-ready business case
Develop strong customer relationships and identify new use cases, teams, and value opportunities post-close
Partner closely with founders to refine ICP, pricing intuition, qualification standards, and sales playbooks
Turn early wins (and losses) into repeatable systems