About the Company

Our client is an early-stage AI software startup based in San Francisco, building a category-defining AI-powered platform for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and packaging supply chain. They have paying customers, real revenue, and are preparing for their first institutional funding round. The team is small, technical, and operator-led.

The Mission

Replace the spreadsheets, emails, and PDFs that hold the packaging industry together with one AI-powered source of truth for packaging specs and artwork. Help brands ship products faster and suppliers respond faster — across procurement, design, and manufacturing.

The Opportunity

This is a founding sales hire — the Founding BDR for the company. You will be the first dedicated outbound seller, working directly with the founder. Your job is to fill the top of the funnel — book qualified meetings with brand, packaging, and supply chain decision-makers so the founder can run discovery and close. The competitive window is open right now: well-funded incumbents exist, but no one has won the mid-market yet. You can.

What You'll Do

Run high-volume outbound across phone, email, and LinkedIn into a curated list of CPG brands, packaging companies, and adjacent manufacturers
Book qualified discovery meetings for the founder (target: minimum 2 meetings/week after a 2-week onboarding ramp)
Own the CRM (HubSpot): clean pipeline, sequence cadences, log every call, keep data tight
Research target accounts and identify the right buyer — Creative Director, Packaging Engineer, Formulator, Procurement, Supply Chain, or Account Executive — depending on company
Iterate weekly on messaging with the founder: what objections came up, what hooks worked, what stories resonate
When given pre-built target lists, work them ruthlessly. When given a blank ICP, source your own.
Bring market signal back to the founder: what buyers care about, what they push back on, what features they ask about

What You Bring — Must-Haves

1–3+ years of B2B SaaS outbound sales experience (SDR / BDR / Founding BDR)
Demonstrated track record of cold-outbound success — you can talk in numbers about dials/day, meetings/week, conversion rates
Excellent spoken English, confident on a cold call, comfortable with US business buyers (East Coast and Central time zones)
Experience selling into non-tech, traditional industries — manufacturing, packaging, supply chain, construction, CPG, or similar "blue-collar" buyers
You can pitch an early-stage product without flinching — you know how to handle "you're too early" and "come back when you have more customers"
Fluency in modern outbound tools: HubSpot (or Salesforce), Apollo / ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Nav, a sequencer (Outreach / Salesloft / Lemlist)
Willing and able to work US business hours that overlap with the East Coast (roughly 6am–2pm PT / 9am–5pm ET)

Nice-to-Haves

Prior founding sales hire at a YC or seed-stage startup
Sold into Procurement, Packaging, or Creative/Brand decision-makers specifically
Closed your own deals (not just SDR meeting-booking)
Experience running outbound from a founder's LinkedIn account
Familiarity with CPG, beauty, or packaging supply chain terminology

Key Success Drivers

Hungry. You want to be a founding hire and grow with the company, not just clock a steady SDR check.
Resourceful. You hit a wall, you find a way around — you don't wait to be told what to do.
Direct. You communicate in specifics, not abstractions. You bring problems and proposed solutions.
Honest. Founders here have been burned by salespeople who oversold themselves. References will be called.
Persistent on the phone. Buyers in this industry are hard to get on calls. You don't take "not a priority" as a final answer — you reframe.
Ownership-minded. You treat the pipeline as your pipeline.
Coachable. You can take direct feedback without getting defensive and turn it into better calls and messaging.

Why Join

Founding-team seat at a revenue-generating, pre-fundraise AI SaaS startup in San Francisco
Direct mentorship from a founder who is hands-on with sales and will personally onboard you
Founder closes deals — you'll watch and learn the full motion, not just book and hand off
Clear path: BDR → Account Executive after the upcoming fundraise
Meaningful early equity for the right person who performs and stays through the round
Build the playbook from scratch — your messaging, your sequences, your wins
Strong technical co-founder — when a prospect asks for a feature, you can credibly say "we'll build it"
Open roadmap, real customer voice — what you hear on calls actually shapes the product
Remote, flexible — work from anywhere with strong US East Coast time-zone overlap
Contractor engagement via Deel — clean, compliant, simple monthly payments

Compensation

Base $1,500–$3,000 USD/month, depending on experience, skills, and location, benchmarked against your local market and aligned with your background
Strong performance-based upside: clear path to a higher comp and equity after the fundraise, with specifics agreed at the final stage
Employment Type: contract (1099)

Interview Process

Recruiter screen (30 min)
Founder interview (45–60 min): product walkthrough, mock cold-call / outreach work sample, mutual fit

Founding BDR, AI Packaging SaaS (Remote)