Founding Account Executive

About Cartesia

Our mission is to build the next generation of AI: ubiquitous, interactive intelligence that runs wherever you are. Today, not even the best models can continuously process and reason over a year-long stream of audio, video and text—1B text tokens, 10B audio tokens and 1T video tokens—let alone do this on-device.

We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences.

We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI.

Role Responsibilities

We're looking to hire a Founding Account Executive to drive our sales efforts and close deals from the ground up. As a key member of our founding GTM team, you'll play a crucial role in executing our sales strategy, with a focus on converting leads from our product-led growth model and closing enterprise deals. This role offers significant opportunity for growth, with the potential to build and lead a team as we expand.

What You'll Do:

• Own the entire sales cycle: prospect, qualify, run discovery, build business cases, and close strategic deals.

• Land and expand accounts by embedding with customers, driving adoption, and shaping long-term roadmaps.

• Build relationships with technical buyers, enterprise stakeholders, and C-suite executives by deeply understanding workflows and pain points.

• Collaborate directly with founders to create our GTM playbook, outbound motion, pricing, and sales collateral.

• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to translate customer insights into product improvements and refined messaging.

• Drive scalable sales processes, pipeline development, and repeatable GTM best practices.

• Deliver product demos, proposals, and partnership opportunities that accelerate growth.

• Provide market and customer feedback to leadership to inform strategy and expansion.

 What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of B2B SaaS sales experience with a proven track record of exceeding quota.

• Experience in high-growth, venture-backed startups (ideally as a founding AE or early GTM hire).

• Strong closer with success in complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles, including 7-figure deals.

• Entrepreneurial self-starter who thrives with limited resources and full ownership of accounts.

• Technical curiosity and ability to quickly learn APIs, AI models, and developer-focused products.

• Customer-first mindset: skilled at discovery, negotiation, and building long-term strategic relationships.

• Excellent communicator who can influence technical teams, executives, and cross-functional stakeholders.

• Builder mentality: experienced in outbound pipeline generation and scaling repeatable GTM processes.

Nice-to-Haves

• Technical degree (CS, Engineering, Math, etc.).

• Experience selling AI/ML, Voice AI, or developer platforms.

• Background in product management or solutions engineering.

• Track record scaling GTM functions at top-tier early-stage startups.

Our culture

🏢 We’re an in-person team based out of San Francisco. We love being in the office, hanging out together and learning from each other everyday.

🚢 We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality and design along the way.

🤝 We support each other. We have an open and inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed.

Our perks

🍽 Lunch, dinner and snacks at the office

🏥 Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees

🏦 401(k) Plan

✈️ Relocation and immigration support

🦖 Your own personal Yoshi