Revenue Leader

Build and own EIC's first founder-independent revenue engine across Sales, CX, and demand gen. We're looking for an owner who sets their own pace, works on outcomes not hours, and is ready to build something real with equity upside instead of a bigger base.

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About Economic Impact Catalyst

Economic Impact Catalyst (EIC) is a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS company now in its eighth year, building software that helps the people working to close economic gaps actually see what's working. Our platforms, Catalyzer, Startup Space, and LenderImpact, give SBDCs, CDFIs, economic development organizations, incubators, and corporate foundations the tools to measure, manage, and grow their impact, replacing scattered spreadsheets with real visibility into outcomes. We operate across 35+ states and have helped facilitate over $200M in capital access for underrepresented entrepreneurs, supporting more than 100,000 small businesses along the way. We're not venture-backed, we don't chase flashy branding, and we're proud of it. What we have is a product that works, a market that's actively investing in better tools right now, and a team that operates like owners because the mission is real.

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About EIC

Economic Impact Catalyst (EIC) is a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS company in Year 8, operating across 35+ states. Our products, Catalyzer, Startup Space, and LenderImpact, serve SBDCs, CDFIs, economic development organizations, incubators, and corporate foundations. We've helped facilitate over $200M in capital access for underrepresented entrepreneurs and supported 100,000+ small businesses.

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Our CEO, David Ponraj, sits on national economic development boards and hosts the Breaking Down Barriers podcast. EIC has real credibility in this market, built over eight years through relationships, conference presence, and work that actually moves the needle for the organizations we serve. We are not venture-backed, we don't have a flashy brand, and we are not interested in pretending otherwise.

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The honest picture

David closes most of EIC's strategic deals today. The product works, the market is active, and the brand is real. What doesn't exist yet is a revenue engine that runs without the founder in the room. That's the job, and it's a build, not a maintenance assignment. You will not inherit a running revenue organization with a tested playbook and a full team already humming. You will inherit a strong foundation including David's relationships, a proven product, a loyal client base, and a clear ideal customer profile, and you will build the organization and the motion on top of it. If that sentence makes you nervous, this isn't your role. If it makes you want to start sketching a 90-day plan right now, keep reading.

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Read this part twice: it's the most important part of the job

We are hiring an owner, not an employee who executes a playbook we hand them. The single trait that matters more than any other on this list: you do not need to be told what to do. You see the gap, you decide what matters, and you move without waiting for permission, a meeting, or someone above you to bless the plan. That ownership extends to how you work, not only what you work on. This is not a 9-to-5 role, and it is not a role we will manage by watching a clock. Revenue leadership doesn't live in a tidy start/stop window. Some weeks mean an early call with a West Coast partner and a late one with someone overseas, and other weeks mean stepping away mid-afternoon for something that matters in your life, because you've already done the work that needed doing. We are not interested in tracking hours, logging activity, or asking why you were offline at 2pm on a Tuesday. We are interested in whether the revenue engine is getting built. If you need a manager checking in on your calendar to feel productive, you will not be happy here. If you're the kind of person who already runs your life this way—who treats autonomy as a responsibility rather than a perk, who would rather be measured on outcomes than hours, and who's been waiting for someone to actually mean it when they say “we trust you to own this,” then this role was built for you.

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Scope: what this role owns

• Sales — New logo acquisition, AE management, and deal strategy
• Demand generation and pipeline creation — Partner channels, referrals, ecosystem activation, outbound motions, and expansion revenue
• Customer success and expansion — NRR, retention, LenderImpact cross-sell, and client health, in partnership with CX
• Revenue operations — HubSpot, forecasting, pipeline health, and team metrics (the infrastructure that lets the org run without David in every deal)
  

This role does not own brand marketing, podcast strategy, or content marketing. Your job is the revenue architecture that runs in parallel to that and eventually stands on its own.

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What you'll do

• Build the revenue architecture. Design and execute EIC's demand generation strategy from partner development, referral activation, conference-driven pipeline, targeted outbound, expansion from existing clients.
• Lead and develop the team. Manage the Sales Manager, CX Lead, and AEs. Set direction, create accountability, develop talent, and make personnel decisions when necessary.
• Drive GTM transformation. Diagnose what isn't working in the current revenue motion, earn the existing team's trust, and build a sequenced plan to fix it without bureaucracy and without waiting to be asked.
• Build ecosystem presence. Represent EIC at industry events (IEDC, America's SBDC, OFN), build your own relationships in the ecosystem, and become a trusted voice on your own, not just an extension of David's.
  

What we're actually screening for

We are not primarily screening for years of experience or a tidy title progression. We are screening for whether you operate like an owner.

These are the signals we're looking for:

• You've transformed a revenue function before. You have a specific story about inheriting something broken or unbuilt including what you changed first, what you deliberately left alone, and how you kept the team's trust through it.
• You build pipeline without infrastructure. You know how to create a qualified pipeline without an SDR team or a paid digital budget through ecosystem relationships, partner channels, referrals, and conference presence. You can describe, specifically, how you'd double qualified pipeline in 18 months with a lean team.
• You've run more than one function. You have genuinely owned Sales, CX, and demand generation (not just collaborated with whoever did).
• You know how to operate next to a founder. You've worked alongside a founder before and extended their reach rather than competing with it or depending on it. You're confident enough in your own executive presence to represent the company on your own, and strategic enough to know when the founder's involvement closes a deal faster.
• You are self-directed by default. You manage your own time, your own priorities, and your own follow-through without someone checking in on you. You've never needed a manager to ask if you're "on track" because you already know.
  

Requirements

• 8+ years in B2B SaaS revenue roles, with at least 3 years owning a multi-function revenue team
• Demonstrated experience building or rebuilding a revenue function at a bootstrapped, early-stage, or resource-constrained SaaS company
• Proven track record growing ARR through channels other than funded outbound including referrals, partnerships, ecosystem, expansion
• Track record managing customer success and expansion, not just new logo acquisition
• Comfort operating as a lean executive without a RevOps team, marketing support, or a large budget
  

Preferred, not required

• Prior experience selling to or working within government-adjacent organizations like SBDCs, CDFIs, EDOs, workforce development, community foundations
• Existing relationships within the economic development or community finance ecosystem
• Conference presence — speaker or known participant — at IEDC, America's SBDC, OFN, or similar
• Experience working directly under a founder-CEO as a first revenue leadership hire
  

This is not the role for you if:

• Your first question is about title trajectory, org chart, or equity percentage before you've described what you'd actually build.
• You've only operated inside companies with a full RevOps team, a marketing engine, and an established pipeline already in motion.
• You want a manager who checks in regularly, sets your weekly priorities, or tells you what "on track" looks like.
• You're not comfortable with David being the primary brand and closer for now. Your job is to build something that runs independently of that over time, not to compete with it on day one.
• You're optimizing primarily for cash comp. Read the compensation section below before you apply.
  

Compensation and benefits

Base salary $110,000–$135,000, OTE $175,000–$210,000 (tied to ARR growth, NRR above 105%, and qualified pipeline created from non-David sources), plus meaningful equity participation. Health, dental, vision, 401(k), and flexible PTO, sick leave, and volunteer hours used at your own discretion, consistent with how this whole role works.

Market median for a VP Revenue at a funded SaaS company is $250,000–$350,000+ OTE. We are meaningfully below that on cash, intentionally. What we offer instead: real equity upside in a bootstrapped, profitable company with no dilution risk, direct strategic partnership with the CEO, true ownership over how you build and how you work, and the chance to build a revenue organization from scratch in a market where EIC already has genuine credibility. If your primary driver is maximizing cash comp, this is not the right role. If you want to build something you're proud of, own it completely, and be trusted to run your own life while you do it, we want to hear from you.