Paragon

The AI Growth Engine for Industrials

Founding Sales

$50K - $200K0.10% - 2.00%San Francisco, CA, US
Job type
Full-time
Role
Sales
Experience
Any (new grads ok)
Visa
US citizen/visa only
Connect directly with founders of the best YC-funded startups.
Apply to role ›
Ishir Vaidyanath
Ishir Vaidyanath
Founder

About the role

As Paragon’s first full-time sales hire, you will help build the sales engine from the ground up.

This is not a “send 80 templated emails and update Salesforce” role. You will work directly with the founders to find real companies, real buyers, real pain, and real ways to start conversations. One day you may be researching a distributor’s branches and customer base. The next day you may be cold calling prospects, attending a trade show, building a scraped lead list, writing outbound sequences, testing a new AI workflow, or figuring out how to get in front of the right person when no obvious path exists.

You should be high agency, comfortable with ambiguity, and willing to do the unglamorous work required to create pipeline from zero.

What You’ll Do

Build and test sales pipelines until you find what works

  • Understand our customers, both in what they care about and what will actually improve their lives, and how we can best speak to that. You will have say over product decisions
  • Write and run outbound campaigns across email, phone, conferences, referrals, and any other channel that works
  • Cold call prospects, navigate gatekeepers, and get to the right decision-makers
  • Attend industry events and conferences to create conversations in person
  • Use AI tools to move faster: build lead lists, write scripts, personalize outreach, summarize research, clean data, and improve your own workflows
  • Set up lightweight systems for prospecting, follow-up, enrichment, CRM hygiene, reporting, and campaign tracking
  • Work directly with the founders to test messaging, identify painful wedges, and learn which markets respond
  • Turn sales motions into repeatable playbooks

You Might Be a Fit If

  • You are high energy, persistent, and hard to discourage
  • You are comfortable cold emailing, cold calling, walking up to people at conferences, and finding creative ways to reach buyers
  • You are curious enough to learn an unfamiliar industry and sharp enough to ask good questions
  • You use AI tools naturally and are excited to automate parts of your own job
  • Experience in B2B sales, outbound, customer development, recruiting, founder-led sales, or a high-pressure customer-facing role

Why Join

You will be Paragon’s first full-time sales hire, working directly with the founders to build the sales motion from zero. You will own real pipeline, test messaging in the market, talk directly to customers, and turn what works into the company’s first repeatable sales playbook. This is a chance to learn fast, take real ownership, and help bring AI into a massive, overlooked part of the economy.

About the interview

Step 1: 30 min call with founder

Step 1.5: possible project

Step 2: Evaluative call with founder

Step 3: Offer

About Paragon

Paragon is the AI partner for industrials companies. We focus on revenue growth and margin expansion, building fully autonomous agents that can deeply understand technically complex products. Millions of dollars of industrial spend already pass through our agents and we are only getting started.

Paragon
Founded:2025
Batch:W25
Team Size:2
Status:
Active
Founders
Kasyap Chakra
Kasyap Chakra
Founder
Ishir Vaidyanath
Ishir Vaidyanath
Founder