Founding AE

Cardinal is the AI platform for precision outbound. We run outbound for 40+ YC companies, including Mintlify, Greptile, and Luminai.

"Spray and pray" outbound is dead. The best sales teams operate with extreme precision — finding things in common with customers, monitoring their content, mapping inbound signals, and tracking website visitors. But doing this well means stringing together 10+ tools and hiring a GTM engineer. Cardinal replaces all of that.

Our AI agents find hyper-targeted leads, continuously monitor what prospects are posting and engaging with on social media, generate personalized snippets based on shared context, and orchestrate end-to-end outbound workflows across email and LinkedIn. Cardinal also captures inbound from website visitors, product signups, ad impressions, and social engagement — qualifying and routing them into sequences automatically.

Cardinal is founded by Devi and Jianna, 2x YC founders (S23, W26) and Harvard/MIT CS alums. Their last company, Leafpress, was an energy software company where they closed customers like Lindt and Honeywell from cold outbound.

Cardinal is building the AI platform for precision outbound.

We help the best companies run world-class sales — combining data, AI, and execution into one system that actually drives revenue.

• $1M ARR run rate in ~2 months
• ~80k MRR and growing fast
• Backed by Y Combinator
• Built by 2x YC founders (Harvard + MIT + Prod)

We’re moving fast, closing top customers, and becoming the default outbound stack for the best teams.

This is not a normal AE role.

You’re not just selling - you’re:

• Helping define how modern outbound works
• Working directly with customers to win deals using Cardinal
• Turning insights into repeatable playbooks
• Acting as a bridge between product, customers, and revenue

This role is core to the company.

Cardinal is a sales company - this role directly determines how fast we grow.

• Run full-cycle sales (from first touch → close)
• Work closely with customers to launch and optimize outbound campaigns
• Get customers to their first response fast (this is everything)
• Develop creative outbound strategies (not just templates)
• Turn successful campaigns into repeatable systems
• Push product forward with real customer feedback
• Close high-value deals and expand accounts

We’re looking for scrappy, high-agency sellers who love the craft.

You might be:

• A former founder
• Someone who scaled a startup early
• A top AE who hates doing things the “normal way”
• Someone who has run outbound themselves

You:

• Love working directly with customers
• Are extremely hands-on
• Can figure things out without being told
• Are creative with outbound (not just following playbooks)
• Want to win — and are willing to hustle for it

Cardinal's stack is built for speed and scale:

• Frontend: Next.js + React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Multiple FastAPI microservices handling search, enrichment, sequencing, inbox, and webhooks
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL) + Redis for caching and job queues
• AI: LLM-powered agents for lead discovery, content monitoring, snippet generation, and intelligent sequence personalization

Hard problems we're solving: building AI agents that understand sales context, real-time content monitoring and signal detection across social platforms, multi-channel sequence orchestration across dozens of email domains, and enrichment pipelines that operate at scale.