Founding AE - Hack

Founding Account Executive, Hackathon

San Francisco/Remote

Brightidea launched the first online innovation platform in 2000, and 26 years later, we're still closer to the beginning of this category than the end. More than 300 global brands run on our platform today, including Coca-Cola, Docusign and Johnson & Johnson, with over 100,000 people using Brightidea every month and customers self-reporting more than $15 billion in business impact generated through it.

We believe innovation management is on the same trajectory finance, HR, and sales followed decades ago: as it becomes a larger share of what every business does, the systems to manage it become essential. We'd rather be early to that shift and help define what the category looks like than show up once it's obvious to everyone.

Hackathon is our newest bet on that thesis: a standalone startup spun out of Brightidea to build and sell a dedicated hackathon and innovation-event product. It runs with its own product, brand, and go-to-market motion, but has the backing, customer relationships, and 26 years of category credibility of its parent behind it. Joining now means joining a startup team of one (soon to be more) with a running start, not a business built from a blank sheet of paper.

We're hiring a Founding Account Executive to sell Hackathon exclusively — a new kind of Account Executive who doesn't just sell the product as it exists today, but actively finds the gaps between what a prospect needs and what Hackathon currently does, closes that gap in real time, and helps build the go-to-market motion itself as the first go-to-market hire on the team.

This is a full-cycle sales role focused entirely on the Hackathon product: you'll generate your own pipeline through outbound prospecting, run the sales process end to end, and close. But the differentiator is what happens when a deal stalls on "we don't do that yet." Instead of logging a feature request and waiting, you'll use AI tools to prototype the missing capability yourself or you'll diagnose quickly and confidently that it's genuinely not feasible right now, and reposition the deal accordingly.

Because this is a founding seat at a startup still finding its shape, your impact isn't limited to your own quota. You'll help stand up the playbook, process, and tooling that every AE hired after you will inherit — for Hackathon specifically, not for Brightidea's broader platform business.

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, Linked In, 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…