Thomas Cuvelier, Partner at RTP Global
AI startups raised a staggering $22.3B in Q1 2025 – the second-highest quarter on record. New companies are rocketing from zero to $1M ARR in a very short space of time. This is off the back of prosumer buzz, pilot projects and experimental enterprise purchases . But the leap to $10M in ARR? That’s where the real game begins and where many promising startups stall.
When we look at hot AI startups like Lovable, the AI app design assistant that crossed $10M ARR in just 18 months, Recraft or Context.ai, they didn’t just have great products. They had a strong sales culture early on. They had a knack for building communities, and actioned enterprise motions that drove their reliable, long-term revenue growth.
So where do you start?
Start with solid foundation. Before considering a sales hire, founders need to lay the groundwork by first understanding their ICPs. It is of utmost importance to narrow down a well defined segment that will be the product promoter and build the initial traction – whether that’s indie developers, product designers, budget-conscious small business owners or something else.
Secondly, founders should be selling in the early days of their business to validate their product market fit. They need to understand where to find customers (channels, persona) and how to sell to them (pricing, product packaging, sales cycles).
Avoid hiring a VP of Sales too early
Founders, wait until you have a few reps and a proven process they can scale. The best early sales rep tend to have a building mindset. They can handle ambiguity and build deep experience through discovery in the early stages and have short feedback loops.
The key is to create a lean sales process, iterate quickly and track learnings aggressively to continuously improve messaging/ICP targeting.
Time the VP of Sales hire right
A business is effectively ready to bring in a VP of Sales when a strong product-market fit has been found, evidenced by repeatable sales processes ($1M+ ARR, 10-20 repeatable deals) with a clear ICP.
Ideally, you have two or three sales reps are on-board with a small sales pipeline. This means there’s enough momentum for someone to come onboard to manage, coach and scale. And the business is in scale mode – there’s a shift away from founder-led sales towards team-led sales.
Find the right person
There is, of course, no magic formula for hiring the right VP of Sales. But the cohort of our portfolio companies that have done it successfully seem to follow these six steps:
- Stage alignment: Look for someone who’s built sales teams from $1M to $10M+, not someone who only scaled from $50M to $200M and might be a “manager” as opposed to a “builder”
- Builder mindset: It’s not just about writing playbooks and setting up CRM processes. What’s important is the ability to attract and bring on junior talent. The very best sales VPs typically come with their teams; when you hire them, you are actually hiring an entire team of high quality AEs.
- Strategic muscle: A good fit will know how to run forecasting, pipeline reviews, deal strategy, identify new markets, build territories and experiment with pricing and GTM approaches.
- Cultural fit: This is often underrated but individuals that are collaborative, metrics-driven, willing to get hands-on and not overly corporate or ‘political’ make great sales VPs.
- Involve the whole team: The hiring process should include product and marketing stakeholders – not just the founder. Why? Because relationships between sales VPs and other members of the leadership team will break down without agreed alignment on a company’s product-market fit and ICP.
- Lean on your investors for support: Your investment partner can – and should – help you access top talent and access to go-to-market playbooks for your key markets. At RTP Global, we’ve helped many startups make the leap to build and grow in the US. We also did it ourselves when we set up our office in New York. So whether it’s launching a US beta, hiring your first members of staff in a market or navigating enterprise procurement, we’re in your corner.
For more advice on hiring the right salesperson, we spoke to three senior sales leaders with experience of growing sales teams in successful startups. Read more here.
Plus bonus advice, for the founders scaling into the US market
The US market is notoriously hard to crack for non-US companies. Again, taking learnings from the portfolio companies that have done it successfully, here’s what we’d advise:
- Secure a few US logos first: Bringing some recognisable US customers onboard helps establish a local brand and builds trust with your first US sales hires. Those sales people need to buy into the products to do their job well.
- Establish a ‘local presence’: That means going beyond having some team members on the ground (and often the founder or co-founder). Tailor your website or product to a US audience (adding a US office address to a website can do miracles)
- Bridge cultural differences: Ensuring that the hire can bridge the gap between a company’s existing culture and the US business culture to ensure cohesive integration and communication. Timezone management can also be particularly important, as can having US and local teams spending time together physically in the early days of a launch in the US.
The bottom line: Reaching $10M ARR is where AI startups separate from the pack. And your first VP of Sales can make or break that journey. Get the timing wrong, and you risk burning time, budget and team morale. Get it right, and you unlock the next phase of growth with confidence.
