Founding sellers are being paid like senior hires. Sim's open founding sales role in San Francisco lists a $150,000 to $175,000 base and $300,000 to $350,000 in on-target earnings, and YouShift and Vocca post founding account executive packages that reach $300,000 or more.
A Founding Account Executive is usually the first quota-carrying seller a startup hires. It usually arrives after a seed or Series A round, while founders still close most deals. A company opening that role will soon need contact data, a CRM, sequencing, and call recording. That makes the posting one of the clearer early buying signals for vendors that sell to new sales teams.
This list ranks 10 venture-backed startups by the number of distinct founding sales roles they posted in the last 90 days, using Landbase job-posting data, then by 12-month headcount growth.
How the companies were selected
- Signal definition: at least one job posting in the last 90 days titled Founding Account Executive, Founding AE, Founding Sales, or First Account Executive, counted as distinct role titles
- Company size: 5 to 300 employees, with companies of at least 15 employees preferred over very small teams
- Venture-backed: at least one disclosed equity round from institutional investors or an accelerator; public, PE-owned, and non-equity-funded companies were removed
- Excluded: staffing firms, recruiting platforms, job boards, and companies that post roles on behalf of clients
Role counts measure open requisitions in Landbase's job-posting index over 90 days. They can include reposts or the same role listed in several locations, and a posting is a signal of intent rather than a confirmed hire. Headcount growth is calculated from professional-profile data and can differ from company-reported figures, especially for very small teams.
1) Featherless AI
CEO: Eugene Cheah
Founding sales roles: 2 (founding account executive (AI cloud), founding sales engineer)
12-month headcount growth: +88%
Latest round: $20 million Series A, April 2026, co-led by AMD Ventures and Airbus Ventures
HQ: San Francisco
Category: Serverless open-model inference
What Featherless AI sells
Featherless runs a serverless inference cloud that gives developers API access to tens of thousands of open-source AI models without managing GPUs.
The hiring signal
The company is building a two-person North American deal team. Its Founding Account Executive (AI Cloud) posting is remote across the U.S. and Canada, carries quota, and reports to the CRO and founders. A separate Founding Sales Engineer role is described as the first sales engineer, paired with that AE.
Funding and growth
Featherless raised a $20 million Series A co-led by AMD Ventures and Airbus Ventures, with BMW i Ventures, Kickstart Ventures, Panache Ventures, and Wavemaker Ventures participating.
What it means for sellers
Buyers here are developers, ML engineers, and CTOs. Vendors with technical-buyer data and developer intent signals have a direct angle while the AE and SE set up their motion.
2) Paid
CEO: Manny Medina
Founding sales roles: 2 (founding account executive, founding AE)
12-month headcount growth: +58%
Latest round: $21.6 million seed, September 2025, led by Lightspeed
HQ: London
Category: Billing and monetization for AI agents
What Paid sells
Paid provides pricing, cost tracking, and results-based billing for companies that sell AI agents. TechCrunch named Artisan and ERP vendor IFS as customers.
The hiring signal
Landbase recorded two founding AE postings from Paid in September 2026, titled Founding Account Executive and Founding AE. Paid's careers listings could not be retrieved for this article, so the role locations were not confirmed.
Funding and growth
Paid raised a $21.6 million seed round led by Lightspeed, with FUSE and EQT Ventures participating.
What it means for sellers
A sales team run by a founder from sales engagement software will likely have firm views on tooling. Expect close evaluation of sequencing and data tools.
3) Tacto
Co-founders: André Petry, Nico Bentenrieder, Johannes Groll
Founding sales roles: 2 (founding account executive – Benelux, founding account executive – Nordics)
12-month headcount growth: +23%
Latest round: Series A led by Sequoia, December 2023
HQ: Munich
Category: AI procurement for manufacturers
What Tacto sells
Tacto sells a procurement and supplier management platform for mid-sized manufacturers. It automates quote requests and evaluation, tracks supplier certifications, analyzes prices, and helps buyers prepare for negotiations.
The hiring signal
Tacto is hiring founding AEs to open new countries rather than to replace founder-led sales. Its Founding Account Executive – Nordics posting and a matching Benelux role describe Tacto as the category leader in DACH manufacturing procurement and call each region greenfield.
Funding and growth
Sequoia led Tacto's Series A, with Index Ventures also among its backers.
What it means for sellers
Country launches need local account data, Dutch and Nordic manufacturing contact lists, localized outbound content, and event budgets. Vendors with strong European industrial coverage are the best fit.
4) Atira
CEO: Florian Diegruber
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding account executive)
12-month headcount growth: +2,400%
Latest round: $15 million seed, September 2026, led by Accel
HQ: Munich
Category: AI agents for industrial sales and quotation
What Atira sells
Atira builds AI agents that sit between CRM and ERP systems and automate industrial quoting. The agents extract requirements from incoming RFQs, coordinate stakeholders, and generate technical and commercial proposals.
The hiring signal
Atira's Founding Account Executive posting calls the role the company's first commercial hire. It says the co-founders have closed every deal so far, at six-figure ACVs. The AE will sell to DACH industrials and report to the founders, working alongside a BDR, forward deployed engineers, and a GTM engineer.
Funding and growth
Fortune reported that Atira raised $17.5 million, combining the Accel-led seed with a $2.5 million pre-seed. The company reported about 15 customers and about 15 employees, up from four at the start of the year.
What it means for sellers
The founding AE will inherit inbound demand and a playbook still being written. CRM setup, deal desk, and proposal tooling vendors fit well.
5) Sim
CEO: Emir Karabeg
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding sales)
12-month headcount growth: +900%
Latest round: $7 million Series A, November 2025, led by Standard Capital
HQ: San Francisco
Category: AI agent building platform
What Sim sells
Sim is a platform for building, deploying, and monitoring AI agents and workflows on enterprise systems.
The hiring signal
Sim's Y Combinator company page lists Founding Sales alongside founding design and marketing roles, all in person in San Francisco. The posting names eXp Realty, Rivian, and Volkswagen Group Technologies as customers.
Funding and growth
Sim announced a $7 million Series A led by Standard Capital, with Perplexity Fund, SV Angel, and Y Combinator participating.
What it means for sellers
A team of 10 is hiring its first seller and first marketer at the same time. Vendors offering combined product-led and sales-led tooling, such as signup enrichment and lead routing, can sell into both hires.
6) Moritz
CEO: Pamir Ehsas
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding account executive)
12-month headcount growth: +450%
Latest round: $9 million seed, May 2026, backed by Y Combinator and 20VC
HQ: San Francisco (Y Combinator lists Oslo)
Category: AI-native law firm
What Moritz sells
Moritz is an AI-native law firm that combines its own software with attorneys to handle corporate and commercial legal work with same-day turnaround. It sells legal services to companies rather than software to other law firms.
The hiring signal
Moritz's Y Combinator jobs page lists a Founding Account Executive role in New York, San Francisco, or remote, at a $90,000 to $110,000 base with equity. A Founding BDR role is also open.
Funding and growth
The company, previously called Arcline, raised $9 million around its Y Combinator graduation.
What it means for sellers
A law firm selling to startups needs funding-event data and founder contacts more than a traditional legal marketing stack. Vendors offering startup signal data fit well.
7) Vocca
CEO: Eliott Hoffenberg
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding account executive - US market)
12-month headcount growth: +283%
Latest round: $20 million Series A, October 2026, led by Norrsken VC
HQ: Paris
Category: AI voice agents for medical practices
What Vocca sells
Vocca builds AI voice agents that answer patient calls, schedule and reschedule appointments, and handle routine questions for medical practices.
The hiring signal
Vocca's Founding Account Executive – US Market posting is based in New York, lists $180,000 to $300,000 plus equity, and focuses on healthcare groups and multi-site providers. It sits beside open Head of GTM, Country Launcher, and Founding AI Deployment Lead roles for the U.S..
Funding and growth
Vocca raised a $20 million Series A with Heal Capital, Speedinvest, and Firstminute Capital, for $25 million in total funding. The company reported 15,000 practitioners and plans to add 40 employees by the end of 2026.
What it means for sellers
A U.S. launch built from scratch needs healthcare provider data, multi-location practice mapping, and outbound infrastructure in a new market.
8) White Circle
Founder: Denis Shilov
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding account executive)
12-month headcount growth: +180%
Latest round: $11 million seed, May 2026, from AI lab and software leaders
HQ: Paris
Category: AI safety and control platform
What White Circle sells
White Circle provides an API layer that checks AI inputs and outputs in real time against company-defined policies. It flags hallucinations and prompt injection.
The hiring signal
White Circle's Founding Account Executive posting is based in New York. It asks for a seller who can close six-figure deals with technical buying committees and build the sales playbook. The posting says the company has raised a Series A bringing total funding to $70 million, but no public announcement of that round was found.
Funding and growth
The publicly reported round is an $11 million seed with personal investments from Romain Huet of OpenAI, Thomas Wolf of Hugging Face, Olivier Pomel of Datadog, and others.
What it means for sellers
The company is setting up U.S. sales and GTM engineering at the same time. Data and workflow vendors that support relationship-led enterprise selling to security and AI platform teams fit well.
9) YouShift
CEO: Lucía Vives Martorell
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding account executive)
12-month headcount growth: +167%
Latest round: Not publicly disclosed; Y Combinator W25 company
HQ: New York
Category: AI shift scheduling for healthcare
What YouShift sells
YouShift sells AI-driven workforce management and shift scheduling for hospitals, physician groups, and health systems.
The hiring signal
The Founding Account Executive posting offers two levels: mid-level at $220,000 to $260,000 OTE and senior at $300,000 to $350,000 OTE. The mid-level AE owns groups of roughly 30 to 400 clinicians at $7,500 to $100,000 ACV, while enterprise deals above $200,000 remain mostly founder-led.
Funding and growth
YouShift is backed by Y Combinator. No priced round has been announced.
What it means for sellers
Segmenting physician groups by clinician count is a data problem. Healthcare provider databases and territory planning tools have a clear opening.
10) Murphy
CEO: Borja Solé Fauria
Founding sales roles: 1 (founding account executive - mid-market, Spain)
12-month headcount growth: +162%
Latest round: $15 million pre-seed and seed, July 2025, led by Northzone
HQ: Barcelona
Category: AI debt collection
What Murphy sells
Murphy uses AI voice agents and omnichannel outreach across calls, SMS, email, and WhatsApp to run debt collection for lenders, fintechs, and collection agencies.
The hiring signal
Landbase captured a mid-market founding AE role for Spain. That Barcelona-based mid-market role is still listed, and Murphy's careers page now also lists six Founding Strategic Account Executive roles for enterprise markets in Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Mexico, and the Netherlands.
Funding and growth
Sifted reported that Murphy raised about $15 million led by Northzone, with Lakestar, Seedcamp, and ElevenLabs participating.
What it means for sellers
Opening six countries at once requires multilingual contact data for banks and lenders, local compliance context, and sales hiring support.
What the founding AE data shows
First, the founding AE hire clusters right after a new round. Atira, Vocca, Featherless, White Circle, and Moritz all raised in 2026 and posted founding sales roles within months. A first sales hire is one of the earliest uses of new capital, and it usually comes before the leadership hire covered in Landbase's list of startups hiring their first VP of Sales, a role that typically arrives later to scale the team.
Second, European companies use the founding AE title for country launches. Tacto (Benelux and Nordics), Murphy (six markets), and Vocca (U.S.) hire founding AEs to open a new geography even after building a sales team at home.
Third, AI infrastructure and vertical AI dominate. Featherless, Sim, White Circle, and Paid sell to builders of AI products, while Atira, Vocca, YouShift, Murphy, and Moritz apply AI to industrial sales, healthcare, collections, and law.
For GTM teams, a founding AE posting is most useful combined with funding date, headcount growth, and leadership signals through data enrichment. Teams can also compare this list with Landbase's ranking of AI startups adding headcount fastest.
All ten go-to-market hiring signals in this series are collected in GTM Hiring Signals to Watch in 2026.
How to find companies with this hiring signal in Landbase
The ranking in this article was built from Landbase job-posting data, enriched with funding stage and 12-month headcount change.
Landbase's web and CLI interfaces access the same account, datasets, and saved work.
For more complex requirements, the Advanced Dataset Creator supports filters, calculations, and custom output fields.
Landbase's data infrastructure includes more than 800 million contacts and more than 40 million companies across more than 1,500 fields, with enrichment from more than 20 providers.
A founding AE workflow could, for example, find companies with 15 to 100 employees that posted a Founding Account Executive role in the last 30 days, raised a seed or Series A round in the past six months, and have no VP of Sales on staff, then pull the CEO's and the newly hired seller's contact details.
The Landbase CLI setup supports these workflows from a standard terminal and from AI coding environments including Claude Code and Codex.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which startups are hiring the most Founding Account Executives?
In Landbase data for the last 90 days, Featherless AI, Paid, and Tacto each posted two distinct founding sales roles, the most among the companies that qualified. Atira, Sim, Moritz, Vocca, White Circle, YouShift, and Murphy each posted one, ranked by 12-month headcount growth.
What does hiring a Founding Account Executive indicate?
It usually means a startup is moving from founder-led sales to a dedicated sales function, typically soon after a seed or Series A round.
How reliable are job-posting signals?
Postings show intent, not confirmed hires. Counts can include reposts or the same role in several locations, and roles can close or be filled quickly.
Who should sell to companies hiring a founding AE?
Vendors of contact data, CRM, sales engagement, call recording, CPQ and contract tooling, sales recruiting, and enablement are the closest fit.
How can GTM teams track founding AE hiring?
Teams can filter job postings by founding sales titles and date, then combine that with funding stage, headcount growth, and leadership data. Landbase supports this through natural-language search, enrichment, and structured datasets in its web app and CLI.
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