🚀 NEW: How to Hire AI-Native Sales Talent ➔
Kanav Hasija has a rule for when to make the first sales hire.
Wait until founder-led sales reach at least $500,000 in ARR. Maybe even $1 million. By then, there should be enough signal to know the product is working and enough of a sales motion for someone else to take over.
MeltPlan was at roughly $250,000 when he decided not to wait.
The company had found its wedge. Its first product, MeltBid, was proving relatively easy to sell, and Kanav saw an opportunity to get in front of as many of the country’s largest general contractors as possible while the market was still taking shape.
Closing every deal immediately wasn’t the point. Getting MeltPlan into the consideration set was.
“We should do a land grab,” Kanav said. “Even if you don’t close immediately, we want as many customers or prospects to know about us.”
It was time to build the sales team earlier than planned.
Kanav was not a first-time founder trying to figure out what a good salesperson looked like.
Before MeltPlan, he helped scale Innovaccer from zero to roughly $150 million in ARR. He had hired and managed sales teams before. But Innovaccer was a health-tech company. MeltPlan sells AI-powered pre-construction software, and Kanav had not spent the previous decade building relationships with salespeople in construction tech.
If he had been hiring outside the industry, he had the network to run the search himself. But construction tech had matured. There were now proven sellers who understood its buyers, sales cycles, and particular way of doing business. Kanav wanted access to that talent market without compromising on the early-stage qualities MeltPlan needed.
One of his advisors, former Autodesk CEO Amar Hanspal, recommended Captivate.
MeltPlan needed two founding AEs who could help create the playbook, not wait for one to be handed to them.
Kanav started with three filters:
That last one could not be found on a resume or LinkedIn profile.
Captivate worked with Kanav to document the brief, calibrate against real profiles early, and map the relevant construction-tech talent market. The team built a pipeline of 34 candidates, giving Kanav the industry access he had been missing without lowering the bar on strategic thinking, humility, or comfort with ambiguity.
Industry experience mattered, but it would not make up for someone who needed a finished product, polished collateral, and an established sales process to succeed.
Kanav spoke with roughly eight to ten candidates and put four through a deeper exercise. The process was designed around MeltPlan’s actual stage, right down to the unfinished parts.
First, Kanav and his co-founder, Tanmaya Kala, met candidates separately. Kanav assessed the overall fit. Tanmaya, a former DPR Construction executive, tested their depth in the industry.
Then the founders demonstrated MeltPlan’s product.
They weren’t only watching whether a candidate understood it. They were watching what happened next. Did the candidate diagnose the presentation? Offer useful feedback? See a better way to explain the product? Start improving the sales motion without being asked?
Later, Kanav shared where the business stood and invited candidates to think through its strategy with him. The strongest were given a real problem to take away and turn into a 12-month plan.
The final meeting happened in person. After the candidate presented the work, Kanav intentionally left the last hour without an agenda.
“I try to intentionally make the meeting boring,” he said. “Can they put the energy back in the meeting? Can they engage the room?”
For a founding seller, that wasn’t a personality test. It was the work.
“Whatever you are dealing with as an issue, run the candidates through the same process,” Kanav said. “You will have a better idea of how they will react to the systems you are dealing with right now.”
Kanav knew how to assess the candidates in front of him. What he could not see directly was how they felt after leaving the room.
That became the most valuable part of the partnership for him.
After MeltPlan’s interviews, Captivate went back to each candidate and asked what they liked, what concerned them, and where they saw red, yellow, or green flags. Candidates shared things with the recruiting team that they were unlikely to say directly to the founder they were trying to impress.
“The thing I liked the most was the back-channeling,” Kanav said. “Candidates were opening up to Captivate. Once I gathered that feedback, I could navigate them pretty easily.”
The search moved quickly, but Kanav wasn’t making decisions with less information. He was getting a more complete picture of each candidate while there was still time to respond to concerns and keep the right people engaged.
MeltPlan hired Brent Harbour and Greg Saunders approximately five weeks after the search began.
Hiring two had always been the plan.
“One AE can always have the excuse that the product doesn’t work or the market isn’t there,” Kanav said. “With two AEs, you’ll never find an excuse. One will do better than the other.”
There was one part Kanav had not planned: Brent and Greg had worked together before. They already knew each other, trusted each other, and understood how to operate as a team.
At the time of the interview, it was still too early to judge them on independently closed revenue. But the early signs showed why they had been hired.
They were taking ownership of smaller and at-risk deals. They had started cleaning up MeltPlan’s collateral, processes, and internal documentation. They were sending ideas back to marketing, shadowing each other’s calls, and trading accounts without getting territorial about who owned what.
They weren’t waiting for MeltPlan to finish building the system around them.
They had already started building it.
Roles placed: Two Founding Account Executives, Brent Harbour and Greg Saunders
Captivate team: Justin Jensen and Kendra Morales
‍
AI-powered pre-construction software company
Kanav Hasija has a rule for when to make the first sales hire.
Wait until founder-led sales reach at least $500,000 in ARR. Maybe even $1 million. By then, there should be enough signal to know the product is working and enough of a sales motion for someone else to take over.
MeltPlan was at roughly $250,000 when he decided not to wait.
The company had found its wedge. Its first product, MeltBid, was proving relatively easy to sell, and Kanav saw an opportunity to get in front of as many of the country’s largest general contractors as possible while the market was still taking shape.
Closing every deal immediately wasn’t the point. Getting MeltPlan into the consideration set was.
“We should do a land grab,” Kanav said. “Even if you don’t close immediately, we want as many customers or prospects to know about us.”
It was time to build the sales team earlier than planned.
Kanav was not a first-time founder trying to figure out what a good salesperson looked like.
Before MeltPlan, he helped scale Innovaccer from zero to roughly $150 million in ARR. He had hired and managed sales teams before. But Innovaccer was a health-tech company. MeltPlan sells AI-powered pre-construction software, and Kanav had not spent the previous decade building relationships with salespeople in construction tech.
If he had been hiring outside the industry, he had the network to run the search himself. But construction tech had matured. There were now proven sellers who understood its buyers, sales cycles, and particular way of doing business. Kanav wanted access to that talent market without compromising on the early-stage qualities MeltPlan needed.
One of his advisors, former Autodesk CEO Amar Hanspal, recommended Captivate.
MeltPlan needed two founding AEs who could help create the playbook, not wait for one to be handed to them.
Kanav started with three filters:
That last one could not be found on a resume or LinkedIn profile.
Captivate worked with Kanav to document the brief, calibrate against real profiles early, and map the relevant construction-tech talent market. The team built a pipeline of 34 candidates, giving Kanav the industry access he had been missing without lowering the bar on strategic thinking, humility, or comfort with ambiguity.
Industry experience mattered, but it would not make up for someone who needed a finished product, polished collateral, and an established sales process to succeed.
Kanav spoke with roughly eight to ten candidates and put four through a deeper exercise. The process was designed around MeltPlan’s actual stage, right down to the unfinished parts.
First, Kanav and his co-founder, Tanmaya Kala, met candidates separately. Kanav assessed the overall fit. Tanmaya, a former DPR Construction executive, tested their depth in the industry.
Then the founders demonstrated MeltPlan’s product.
They weren’t only watching whether a candidate understood it. They were watching what happened next. Did the candidate diagnose the presentation? Offer useful feedback? See a better way to explain the product? Start improving the sales motion without being asked?
Later, Kanav shared where the business stood and invited candidates to think through its strategy with him. The strongest were given a real problem to take away and turn into a 12-month plan.
The final meeting happened in person. After the candidate presented the work, Kanav intentionally left the last hour without an agenda.
“I try to intentionally make the meeting boring,” he said. “Can they put the energy back in the meeting? Can they engage the room?”
For a founding seller, that wasn’t a personality test. It was the work.
“Whatever you are dealing with as an issue, run the candidates through the same process,” Kanav said. “You will have a better idea of how they will react to the systems you are dealing with right now.”
Kanav knew how to assess the candidates in front of him. What he could not see directly was how they felt after leaving the room.
That became the most valuable part of the partnership for him.
After MeltPlan’s interviews, Captivate went back to each candidate and asked what they liked, what concerned them, and where they saw red, yellow, or green flags. Candidates shared things with the recruiting team that they were unlikely to say directly to the founder they were trying to impress.
“The thing I liked the most was the back-channeling,” Kanav said. “Candidates were opening up to Captivate. Once I gathered that feedback, I could navigate them pretty easily.”
The search moved quickly, but Kanav wasn’t making decisions with less information. He was getting a more complete picture of each candidate while there was still time to respond to concerns and keep the right people engaged.
MeltPlan hired Brent Harbour and Greg Saunders approximately five weeks after the search began.
Hiring two had always been the plan.
“One AE can always have the excuse that the product doesn’t work or the market isn’t there,” Kanav said. “With two AEs, you’ll never find an excuse. One will do better than the other.”
There was one part Kanav had not planned: Brent and Greg had worked together before. They already knew each other, trusted each other, and understood how to operate as a team.
At the time of the interview, it was still too early to judge them on independently closed revenue. But the early signs showed why they had been hired.
They were taking ownership of smaller and at-risk deals. They had started cleaning up MeltPlan’s collateral, processes, and internal documentation. They were sending ideas back to marketing, shadowing each other’s calls, and trading accounts without getting territorial about who owned what.
They weren’t waiting for MeltPlan to finish building the system around them.
They had already started building it.
Roles placed: Two Founding Account Executives, Brent Harbour and Greg Saunders
Captivate team: Justin Jensen and Kendra Morales
‍
