What You'll Do

Sales Execution — Hackathon

• Own full-cycle sales for Hackathon. Source, qualify, run discovery and demos, negotiate, and close new business for the Hackathon product — no handoffs required.
• Prospect relentlessly. Build and execute your own outbound motion (email, LinkedIn, calling) to fill your own Hackathon pipeline, alongside any inbound/marketing-sourced leads and any warm intros from Brightidea's existing customer base.
• Find the gaps. In discovery and demo calls, identify where the Hackathon product doesn't fully meet a prospect's event, workflow, or requirement.
• Build the bridge. Use AI coding tools to rapidly prototype a solution — a script, a lightweight integration, a custom automation, a mockup of the missing feature — that lets the prospect see (and often use) the fix before the deal stalls.
• Know when to say no. Just as important as building: quickly and technically assess when something can't be reasonably solved for, so you don't overpromise or waste the prospect's time.
• Feed the product loop. Turn what you learn and build in the field into structured input for Hackathon's product and engineering effort — you're often the first person to prove a feature's value before it's ever formally scoped.
• Forecast accurately and manage a pipeline with discipline in the CRM.

Go-to-Market Build — Hackathon

• Help define the ICP and messaging. Sharpen who Hackathon sells to and why, based on real signal from the deals you're running — not a static persona doc inherited from the parent business.
• Stand up the playbook. Document what's working in discovery, demo, and closing so it can be codified into a repeatable process for future Hackathon AEs.
• Shape the tech stack. Weigh in on and help implement the CRM, sales engagement, and AI tooling Hackathon's go-to-market motion will run on as it scales.
• Partner cross-functionally. Work directly with Hackathon's product and marketing functions — and with Brightidea's broader Marketing, Product, and Customer Success teams where useful — to close feedback loops on positioning, packaging, and pricing while the motion is still being formed.
• Pressure-test pricing and packaging. Bring real objections and win/loss patterns back to leadership to inform how Hackathon packages and prices the product going forward.
• Help recruit the team you'll eventually work alongside. As Hackathon's founding AE, you may help source, screen, or reference-check future sales hires as the go-to-market team grows.

What Makes This Role Different

Most Account Executive’s sell around product gaps. This Account Executive closes them — for a single, focused product — and helps build that product's go-to-market engine at the same time. You're equal parts closer, builder, and GTM architect: comfortable being judged on quota, on your ability to stand up a working prototype between one call and the next, and on the lasting playbook and process you leave behind for the Hackathon team that follows you. You get startup-level ownership and speed, backed by the credibility, customer network, and 26-year track record of Brightidea.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of full-cycle B2B SaaS sales experience, with a track record of self-sourced pipeline and closed-won revenue
• Prior experience as an early or founding sales hire, or strong interest in building process from scratch rather than executing an existing playbook
• Genuine hands-on comfort with modern AI coding tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT)
• Enough technical fluency to reason about feasibility: what's a quick script, what's an API integration, what's a real engineering lift
• Strong outbound instincts — you don't wait for leads, you build them
• Comfortable in front of technical and executive buyers alike; able to translate business pain into both a sales narrative and a technical prototype
• Curious, low-ego, and energized by ambiguity — this role doesn't have a well-worn playbook yet, and Hackathon doesn't yet have one either
• Comfortable being the sole (initial) go-to-market hire on a single-product startup team, rather than one of many AEs on an established product

Nice to Have

• Experience selling into innovation, HR, people ops, event, or L&D personas — the buyers most likely to run a hackathon or innovation event
• Prior experience at an early-stage or lean-team SaaS startup where AEs wear multiple hats
• Experience selling event, community, or engagement-platform products
• A portfolio, GitHub, or demo of something you've vibe-coded
• Experience helping build or formalize a sales process, playbook, or tooling stack from the ground up, ideally at a company spun out of or backed by a larger parent

Why Join Hackathon

You'd be the founding go-to-market hire for Hackathon — full ownership of the sales cycle for a single, focused product, paired with real license to build, and a genuine hand in shaping how this new business's go-to-market org operates from here forward. You get the speed and ownership of a startup without the usual startup risk: Hackathon has Brightidea's 26 years of category credibility, existing customer relationships, and operating support behind it. If you've ever wanted to build a go-to-market motion from scratch, or been frustrated watching deals die on "we don't have that feature," this is the role where you get to do both.

Compensation

$150,000 - $300,000 OTE depending on size of quota

Originally posted on Himalayas