Founding Account Manager / Customer Success Manager

Fresh off a $15M Series A led by Accel (total funding now $20M+), Agave is profitable, growing fast, and scaling the team. Join a profitable, Xm ARR startup (YC W22, Accel-backed) as our second dedicated account manager. You'll help with retention, expansion, customer success strategy, process building, and cross-functional product input. You will report directly to our co-founder to grow and retain Agave's customer base from $Xm ARR to $XXm ARR+.

About the role

We've made significant progress with 5XX+ customers, $Xm ARR, and profitability for over 2 years. Our first Founding Account Manager has established our core customer success motion. Now, we're hiring our second Founding Account Manager to help retain customers, maximize value delivery, and unlock growth within our existing customer base. You'll own customer retention and expansion while working on all aspects of customer success and revenue expansion—from defining expansion plays and pricing strategies to identifying upsell opportunities and optimizing customer health metrics.

You'll ramp quickly into a growing and engaged customer base. Unlike typical account managers who just execute a playbook, you'll help sharpen and scale ours. This is a career-defining role at a fast-growing, early-stage startup for a hungry, scrappy, and energetic individual.

Responsibilities

• Retention + renewal: Build deep relationships with customer champions and economic buyers to drive on-time renewals at high rates. Monitor account health, identify churn risks early, and execute retention strategies. Ensure customers renew at high rates.
• Customer escalations: Act as the front line of defense for unhappy customers. Navigate difficult conversations and coordinate with Engineering and Product to resolve issues quickly. Turn detractors into promoters through exceptional service recovery.
• Expansion + growth: Identify and close expansion opportunities (new use cases, new products, etc.) with existing customers.
• Customer advocacy: Run QBRs with key accounts to review ROI, identify opportunities, and strengthen relationships. Gather product feedback and advocate for customer needs with Engineering and Product teams.
• Process improvement: Improve customer success processes (playbooks, health scoring, QBR templates, renewal workflows, CRM hygiene, expansion dashboards, etc.).
• Cross-team work: Join weekly sprint planning with Engineering to represent customer priorities.

Requirements

Hard requirements:

• 3+ years of account management experience: 2+ years managing customer accounts at a B2B SaaS company. You understand the relationship-building, process, and tenacity required to retain and expand 5-6 figure B2B SaaS contracts.
• Previously managed a book of $1M+ ARR involving B2B SaaS accounts.
• Prior customer success + expansion success: Strong record evidenced by retention rates, NRR/GRR metrics, and manager feedback. Be prepared to share specific numbers in interviews.

Soft requirements:

• Hands-on: You have been a successful IC and want to continue being one. You must love operating in the messy weeds of customer relationships and driving expansion. You do not want to be an armchair expert.
• Owner mindset: You are self-directed and able to work with minimal supervision. We can trust you to flag at-risk customers early and fight to save them. Where there's a gap, you fill it without asking.
• Strong EQ: You know when to listen and when to sell. You are attuned to customer sentiment and early warning signs of churn.
• Uncanny ability to deliver results: You get the job done consistently, doing any task needed to deliver on time. You're gritty and not easily discouraged.

Nice to have:

• Experience managing customer accounts in the construction tech industry.
• Experience at a startup, ideally Series B/C or earlier.
• Comfortable operating without established processes; you've built from scratch before.
• Familiarity with accounting concepts and nuances.

Benefits

• Healthcare: We cover 90% of your healthcare costs with several plan options.
• 401k: We match 100% of your contributions, up to 4% of annual salary.
• Performance Bonuses: Annual performance bonuses when we hit company growth goals, which are a percentage of your base salary. These are large, meaningful rewards that scale with growth.
• Relocation: Sizable relocation bonus for those outside the Bay Area, and a bonus for anyone (even within the Bay Area) who moves within a 15-minute walk of our office.
• Breakfast & Dinner, delivered: Stipends through DoorDash, plus a kitchen stocked with coffee, snacks, drinks, and more.
• Gym: On-site gym with Peloton, squat rack, Tempo, Yoga setup, and more.
• Visa: We sponsor visas (H1B, TN, etc.) for candidates who are a good fit.
• Commuter benefits: Pre-tax contributions toward commuting costs, and we cover the full cost of a Muni pass for public transit users.

Pay

Compensation Range: $115K - $165K

About the Interview Process

• Intro Screen (15min.) [Virtual]: Informal chat to learn more about the role. We'll ask for details on your past roles and what you're looking for next.
• Writing Exercise (30min.) [Virtual]: Quick exercise where you draft a mock expansion proposal to maximize renewal and upsell conversion.
• Experience Screen (45min.) [Virtual]: Deeper dive into your account management experience with another Agave co-founder.
• Case Study: Longer form, written exercise assessing your ability to build processes, assess tradeoffs, and drive a conclusion.
• On-site (60min. x 5 people) [In-Person in SF, we pay for the trip]: Interviews with each co-founder and a few other team members. Each interview is 1 hour: 45 minutes for our questions and 15 minutes for yours.