Founding Account Executive

Every sales playbook was written by someone. This is how you become that person instead of inheriting one.

Hey, I’m Shawn, CEO of Disputed. I’ve closed every deal we have so far. That got us here; it won’t get us to the next stage.

Right now the sales team is me. You’d make it two. I need someone who can close six-figure enterprise deals while we figure out together how Disputed sells at scale.

You’ll sell to fraud ops leads, VPs of payments, and their procurement teams at large consumer brands: ticketing marketplaces, e-commerce, fintech. You’ll work directly with me, own full-cycle enterprise sales, and get meaningful early-stage equity.

How to apply: apply through the form, then email me at shawn@disputed.ai with the subject line “Founding AE.” Details at the bottom of this post.

What you’d own

Full-cycle enterprise sales: first conversation through procurement to signature. You won’t own the relationship post-sale, but you’ll continue to help maintain relationships after, especially as we work toward renewals and expansion. You’ll have SDR support for pipeline, and I’ll hand you live deals on day one, mainly with names you know. I’ve handled every deal we have so far and I’m not disappearing; I’ll be in the room when it helps and out of your way when it doesn’t.

• Own deals end to end: Prospect, discover, close, expand. Multithread the fraud ops lead, their VP, procurement, and security.

• Build your own pipeline: Outbound, referrals, partnerships, events, plus SDR support and deals I hand you. You own top of funnel too.

• Sell with insight: Run discovery that teaches the prospect something true about their own dispute data.

• Make the business case: Build the ROI story that gets a fraud ops team budget from their CFO, and help them sell it internally.

• Shape how we sell: Pressure-test messaging, pricing, and process with me. What you learn in deals becomes the playbook.

• Feed the product: You’ll hear things in deals nobody else hears. Bring them back; they steer the roadmap.

Your first 90 days

Week one you’re on live deals. Month one you’ve closed or advanced something real. By month three you’re telling me what to change about how we sell, and I’m listening, because you’re the one in the room every day.

Who does well here

• You have 5+ years closing enterprise SaaS, ideally somewhere without a big brand behind you. You know what it takes to earn every meeting.

• You’ve sold to risk, fraud, or payments buyers, or you can learn a technical domain fast enough that a fraud ops lead takes you seriously without me in the room.

• You’ve built your own pipeline and hit your number doing it. Preferably as an early hire, where there was no one else to blame.

• You’ve already rebuilt how you sell around AI. I want to hear what you’ve automated and what you stopped doing because a tool does it better.

• You sell with insight. If your style is relationship golf, we’ll frustrate each other.

I care more about how you run a complex deal than how many years you’ve done it.

Comp and trajectory

$260–300k OTE, base plus commission, split roughly 50/50 at target. Commission is uncapped with accelerators. Expansion pays like new business: when you grow an account, you’re paid on the growth. Meaningful early-stage equity, since this is a founding role and the package reflects it.

And you won’t be ramping into an empty territory. The pipeline is live on day one, the full market is yours, and there’s SDR support behind you. The plan is built so you can earn real commission early, not wait out a ramp.

Sound like your kind of problem?

Apply through the form so you’re in the system. Then email me at shawn@disputed.ai with the subject line “Founding AE” and tell me about the hardest deal you’ve ever closed and the one thing you did that actually won it. I’m less interested in the size than in whether you can explain why it almost didn’t happen and what you did about it. The email is what I'll read first.

— Shawn Kelley, CEO · Disputed, Inc.

Disputed, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. If you need an accommodation at any point in the process, email shawn@disputed.ai and we’ll work it out.