Founding Go-to-Market Lead, Wholesale Distribution

Founding Go-to-Market Lead, Wholesale Distribution Join DeepSense as Founding GTM Lead to validate and launch an AI product for US wholesale distributors. Own customer discovery, paid pilots, and early go-to-market. Wholesale distributors still take a large share of their customer orders by email: a PDF from a contractor, a spreadsheet from a plant, a photo of a handwritten list, a few lines typed into the email body. Someone on the order desk reads each one and keys it into the ERP (the distributor's core system: Prophet 21, Eclipse, Infor, and others). Ten minutes and forty clicks per order, six people doing it all day, and every mistyped part number is a return. We are building software that reads those orders in any format, matches them to the distributor's catalog and contract pricing, and creates the order in the ERP itself, with a person reviewing only the exceptions. We are at the validation stage: before we build the full product, we want to talk to twenty distributors and run three paid pilots on real order flow. Your job is to make that happen. Who we are DeepSense is an AI-native company builder headquartered in Cyprus. We build software businesses with small teams and a lot of AI agents doing the routine work, and we are starting a new venture for the US wholesale distribution industry. This role is our first person on the ground in the United States. What you will do in the first 90 days - Weeks 1–2: build a target list of about 100 distributors in one vertical (plumbing and HVAC) with $20–100M in revenue, using association and buying-group membership and your own network. Our agents do the research and draft the outreach; you put your name on it and pick up the phone. - Weeks 3–8: book and lead 20 conversations (45 minutes each) with owners, presidents, and directors of operations. The goal is to learn, not to sell: how orders come in today, how many people touch them, what breaks, what they have tried, why they said no to the vendors who called before us, whether their ERP has an API license. Our founder joins most calls; an agent takes notes. - Weeks 9–12: convert the best conversations into three paid pilots ($3,000–5,000 for 60 days) on live email order flow, and help define what "success" means for each one. - Throughout: tell us the truth about what you hear, including "nobody wants this." That answer is worth as much to us as a yes. How we will measure the work Three to four booked conversations per week; most of them with the person who owns the P&L or operations; three signed pilots by the end of the contract. Who you are - 8–15 years in US wholesale distribution, on one of two sides: you ran operations, customer service, or inside sales at a distributor with $30–200M in revenue, or you sold or implemented software for distributors (Epicor Prophet 21 or Eclipse, Infor CloudSuite Distribution or SX.e, Conexiom, DCKAP, Unilog, Proton, or similar). - You have personally sat on, or managed, an order desk, and you know what a bad part-number match costs. - You can name twenty distributors you would call tomorrow, and some of them would take the call. - You are comfortable hearing no fifteen times in a row and writing down exactly why. - You can travel to two industry events during the contract. - You are based in the US, ideally within reach of Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, or the Ohio Valley. Nice to have - Relationships inside a buying group (Affiliated Distributors, IMARK) or an association (ASA, HARDI, NAED, NAW). - An earlier stint at an early-stage company, or a distributor that went through an ERP migration. - You have already used AI tools in your own work and have opinions about what they get wrong. Who this is not for Enterprise software sellers who have never been on a warehouse floor. People who want to build a sales team before there is a product. Consultants who advise but do not make calls. Anyone who needs a finished product and a price list before they can start a conversation. How we work Small team, no middle management. AI agents do the list building, research, drafting, note taking, and follow-up scheduling; you do the part that needs a human who speaks the industry's language. Weekly written updates instead of status meetings. Decisions on the product are made from your call notes, so we will read every one of them. Process 1. A 30-minute intro call with the founder. 2. A paid trial task ($1,000, five working days): book three conversations with directors of operations at distributors in the target vertical and send us notes from the first one. 3. Contract offer within 48 hours of the trial. Contract-to-hire · Remote, US (Midwest or South preferred) · ~20% travel $10,000–14,000 per month for a 3-month full-time contract; conversion to a founding full-time role at $130,000–170,000 base, pilot bonus, and 0.5–1% equity Location Chicago Remote status Fully Remote Employment type Contract Position Founding Go-to-Market Lead, Wholesale Distribution Applicant tracking system by Teamtailor