Founding Sales Lead

Sapien is building Proof of Quality, an evaluation system for AI work. As AI systems and agents take on more real work, companies need better ways to determine whether the data, outputs, reasoning and decisions they rely on actually meet their standards. Proof of Quality, or PoQ, evaluates AI work against the customer’s own definition of quality, combining automation with qualified human judgment where expertise and context matter. After two years and more than 195 million tasks, we’re hiring our first dedicated sales lead to help take PoQ to market. The Role You’ll own the commercial process end to end: prospecting, discovery, demos, pilots, pricing, negotiation and close. This is not a traditional sales role with a mature product, established ICP and proven playbook waiting for you. We have strong hypotheses and early signals, but we are still determining where PoQ has the strongest pull, which buyers feel the problem most acutely, what use cases repeat, and what customers will pay for. Your job is to create enough high-quality market conversations to find those patterns quickly, turn the strongest opportunities into pilots and revenue, and feed what you learn back into product, pricing and positioning. You’ll work closely with the founders and engineering team, but you need to be capable of owning the work yourself. What You’ll Do Build a strong pipeline through thoughtful outbound, networks, communities and warm introductions. Run credible discovery with AI labs, agent companies, data teams, engineering leaders and other technical buyers. Lead demos and understand customer problems deeply enough to get beyond the first question. Move strong opportunities into structured PoQ pilots and convert successful pilots into customers. Personally own deals from first conversation through close. Identify patterns across buyers, use cases, objections and pricing to help sharpen our ICP and go-to-market strategy. Translate customer feedback into useful signal for product and engineering. Own CRM, pipeline and sales operating discipline as the commercial motion develops. Who We’re Looking For We care more about what you’ve actually done than where you’ve worked. You’ll likely be a strong fit if you: Have personally sourced and closed meaningful business. Are excellent at discovery and getting to the real customer problem. Can sell technical products credibly to technical buyers. Are comfortable working without a settled ICP, pitch, pricing model or sales playbook. Have strong product instincts and can operate across sales, business development and market discovery. Use AI tools heavily in your daily work. Think in numbers, patterns and evidence. Move quickly, work independently and enjoy figuring things out. *Experience in AI, data, developer tools, infrastructure or crypto is a strong plus. This is a hands‑on builder role. If you are most comfortable managing a team or delegating the actual selling, this probably isn’t the right fit. What Success Looks Like We’ll measure success across four areas: Qualified conversations: Are you consistently creating conversations with companies that have a real reason to buy? Pilots: Are strong prospects moving into meaningful evaluations of PoQ? Revenue: Are those opportunities becoming paying customers? Market signal: Are we learning faster because of the conversations you’re running, and is that changing who we target, what we build, how we price or how we position PoQ? In your first 90 days, you should be able to independently sell and demo PoQ, establish your own outbound motion, build a meaningful pipeline, move multiple prospects toward pilots, and develop an evidence-backed view of where the strongest commercial opportunities are. #J-18808-Ljbffr Sapien