Startups Lead
$180,000–$200,000 year
On-siteSan Francisco, California, United States
Job Summary
Own Blacksmith's new business motion for early-stage startups, specifically targeting YC companies and venture-backed ecosystems. Build and manage a territory by generating pipeline through outbound efforts, referrals, events, and VC relationships while identifying promising firms before infrastructure decisions lock in. Develop deep relationships with founders, CTOs, and engineering leaders to translate technical CI/CD value into clear velocity improvements. Help shape the YC and accelerator programs, identify repeatable acquisition plays, and bring direct feedback from developers to product teams. Run fast, lightweight sales cycles that match startup buying behaviors and scale successful motions into a repeatable GTM strategy.
Required Qualifications
- 2+ years of quota-carrying sales or partnerships experience
- Experience ideally with developer tools, infrastructure, cloud services, or technical SaaS
- Understanding of how startups operate
- Understanding of how founders and engineering leaders make buying decisions
- Ability to run a high volume of opportunities without sacrificing follow-through or customer experience
- Comfort selling directly to founders, CTOs, and engineers
- Technical curiosity and willingness to understand how the product actually works
- Ability to move quickly without a six-step enterprise process
- Ability to think creatively about pipeline generation without relying solely on sequences and cold outbound
- Ability to build a motion rather than inherit one
Desired Qualifications
- Experience working at an early-stage startup
- Existing network across YC, venture-backed startups, founders, or investors
- Experience selling into Seed through Series B companies
- Experience building startup, emerging, or SMB sales motions
- Understanding of GitHub Actions, CI/CD, developer infrastructure, or cloud economics
- Experience with product-led or usage-based businesses
- Being active in the startup community and genuinely enjoying meeting founders and learning what they're building
- Experience building a territory, community, or ecosystem from scratch
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