🤝 Founding Sales Development Representative (San Francisco)

Runway is a collaborative business planning platform designed to make business intuitively understandable for everyone.

Our Mission: To make business accessible and understandable to everyone. We believe that teams that understand the “why” behind their work are more productive and make better decisions. True alignment and collaboration come from having a shared source of truth that everyone understands.

Our Approach: Runway replaces traditional spreadsheets with a modern planning platform that brings clarity and context to business operations for all teams — not just finance. Just as Figma made design accessible across the organization, Runway does the same for business planning.

Why It Matters: Understanding requires more than just access to numbers; real collaboration happens when teams see how their work fits into the bigger picture. By providing this context, Runway helps teams save time and move faster.

Our Customers: World-class companies like AngelList, Superhuman, Stability.AI, ConvertKit, Lambda Labs, Lob, and SandboxVR rely on Runway to run their businesses more efficiently.

Our Investors: We are supported by a select group of investors that we admire, including Garry Tan (YC & Initialized), a16z, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant, Dylan Field (founder of Figma), Eric Ries, Claire Hughes Johnson (COO of Stripe), Henry Ward (founder of Carta), Akshay Kothari (COO of Notion), Eugene Wei, Lenny Rachitsky, Nikita Bier, Scott Belsky, Soleio Cuervo, Balaji Srinivasan, and many others.

We're early, so you'll have an opportunity to shape not just our product, but the company itself: who we work with, and how we work together.

We strive to be clear in our communication and over-communicate by default.

We believe in the value of face-time to solve really hard problems, so we:

• Meet together as a company every quarter in our San Francisco office.

• Open up offices in places with many teammates (we currently have offices in SF and NYC).

• Make it easy to fly out and meet together.

Below are the values we share as a team, so if you like these, you may enjoy working here.

• 💩 Give a Shit: Giving a shit can’t be taught. It’s an inner drive that compels you to do what’s right and do it well. Have passion, take pride, and care deeply about your impact.

• 💡 Create Clarity: Cut through ambiguity and reveal the truth. Start with why, then answer how and what. Treat problems like puzzles, dig deeper, and find the right path.

• 🤝 Build Trust: With trust, it’s safe to take risks. We get there by being open, honest, and accountable. Actively listen, speak your mind, and consistently show up.

• ✨ Raise the Bar: Scrap the status quo and push yourself to create something that wows. Get others excited to do the same. Iterate, elevate, and don’t stop moving forward.

As Runway’s first Business Development Representative, you will be at the forefront of our sales efforts, driving outbound activities and managing inbound to build a strong pipeline of qualified opportunities. You’ll work closely with our Head of Sales, Account Executives, marketing, and CX to refine and execute a strategy that will shape our go-to-market approach, setting the foundation for long-term success.

This is an outbound-focused role which will be foundational in shaping how we build pipeline at Runway. As our Founding SDR, you’ll play a critical role in defining the outbound motion: experimenting, iterating, and helping establish scalable prospecting practices, while maintaining consistent performance.

We’re looking for someone scrappy and resourceful who thrives in fast-paced environments and is eager to leverage the latest tools and data to build a scalable pipeline. Your work will directly influence Runway’s ability to generate and nurture opportunities, ultimately driving revenue growth.

• Outbound prospecting: Proactively engage Sr. Director+ prospects to generate new pipeline. Book qualified meetings through cold calling, emailing, LinkedIn outreach, and other outbound activities, targeting potential customers who haven’t yet interacted with the company.

• Inbound lead qualification: Manage and qualify leads generated from marketing efforts such as content, SEO, webinars, and events. Prioritize high speed to lead, ensuring quick follow-up and qualification before passing to the sales team.

• Maintain high activity and consistency: Execute daily outreach with discipline and urgency, balancing volume and quality across channels to meet pipeline goals.

• Create persona-driven talk tracks: Develop talk tracks and outbound messaging tailored to key personas across industries, company sizes, and buying stages.

• Utilize modern sales tools: Leverage the latest and greatest tools like list building, automation, and intent data to enhance prospecting and outreach effectiveness.

• Collaborate with Marketing and Sales teams: Share insights from prospecting efforts to help refine messaging, targeting, and positioning.

• Develop scalable outbound sales motion: Create and influence the development of repeatable processes that allow for efficient handoffs between marketing, SDR, and sales teams, ensuring a seamless customer experience.

• Track and optimize performance: Regularly review outreach efforts and lead qualification processes to enhance effectiveness and meet performance targets.

• 1+ year of outbound SDR/BDR experience: Proven success in sourcing and qualifying leads in a tech or SaaS environment, with experience owning both outbound prospecting and inbound follow-up.

• Exceptional communicator: You craft concise, compelling outreach across email, phone, and LinkedIn, and can engage senior-level prospects with confidence.

• Scrappy and resourceful: You find creative ways to break through noise — leveraging tools, data, and experimentation to generate pipeline.

• Thrives in ambiguity: You’re energized by fast-paced, evolving environments where you can take initiative, figure things out, and drive forward with limited direction.

• Tech-forward operator: Comfortable using modern sales tools (e.g., Hubspot, Outreach, Gong, Apollo, Clay) to manage workflow and scale outreach effectively.

• Execution and results-driven: You prioritize consistency and follow-through, and are motivated by hitting goals and seeing your work translate to pipeline and revenue.

• Growth mindset: You actively seek feedback, reflect on what’s working or not, and continuously look for ways to get sharper in your craft.

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The OTE range for this full-time position is $90,000-$110,000 + generous early employee equity + benefits. The salary component ranges from $68,000-$83,000. The range displayed in this job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire OTE for this position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by various factors, including job-related skills (as uncovered during the interview process), experience, and relevant education or training. Please note that the compensation details listed in this posting reflect total on-target-earnings, and do not include equity or benefits, which are also a part of the overarching comp package.