Appetise has gone through a strong period of growth, with a product suite FMCG brands genuinely love and a team that has punched well above its weight.
The next chapter needs something we have never had: one person who owns the whole commercial engine. Sales and customer success, the systems underneath them, and the number at the end of it.
We are taking ANZ from $3-4M to $10M and opening the US. This is the role that makes the first part happen.
If you are currently one of several commercial leaders inside a large business, this is the job where you build the entire thing instead.
We help FMCG brands sell more.
Around 80% of new product launches die within 12-18 months, mostly because brands are guessing. They have no real visibility into how people actually shop, and no system for turning that into better decisions.
We have spent four years collecting genuine behavioural shopping data, and we turn it into two things brands pay for. A performance advertising channel that only charges them when we drive an actual sale in a supermarket, which is a first in this category. And an insights product that tells them what to build next.
Nobody else in the category has both. That is the whole business.
We raised an $8M Series A in late 2025. We are around 25 people across Australia and New Zealand, and we open the US in 2027.
Our commercial growth so far has been founder-led. That is how most companies get to $3-5M. It is not how they get to $50M.
Today we have a sales team generating genuine pipeline, a customer success team our customers are loyal to, and marketers who think in unit economics. What we have never had is one person whose entire job is to bring those together, set the standard, and build the infrastructure that lets a team of eight become a team of twenty.
We are being straight with you about the stage. There is a lot to build here. No expansion playbook yet. No cross-sell/upsell motion. Reporting that needs work. Sales, CS and marketing that could talk to each other far better than they do.
That is either the reason you take this job or the reason you don't, and both answers are fine.
Sales. The number, and the function that hits it. Clear targets for every person. Enablement, coaching, pipeline discipline, and a forecast the business can rely on. You will hire the next AE and SDR as we grow. You are building something designed to scale, not managing what already exists.
Customer success, and specifically the commercial half of it. Our CSMs have built genuinely deep relationships with our customers. The opportunity is turning that trust into growth. Renewals that are never a surprise. Customer health you can actually see. A real playbook for expansion and cross-sell, run by the team rather than by you. Our advertising product works on a wallet model where brands start at $10k and top up to $100k when it performs, so a CSM who can spot and land that moment is worth an enormous amount.
The connective tissue. You own the whole revenue surface, including the handoffs between sales, CS and marketing that currently fall between chairs.
Your own book. You will carry a quota and a set of our most important accounts. We believe a commercial leader who does not sell loses credibility with their team quickly, and we suspect you believe that too.
The team. Eight people by the end of 2027. Your first job is to understand them properly, define what great looks like in each seat, and build a plan to get everyone there. Coaching people up is the most important thing you will do.
Being a thought partner. How do we expand TAM. Where does the next pipeline source come from. What are we not seeing. You will work closely with our CEO and sit on the leadership team, and we want someone who arrives with a view rather than waiting for a brief.
We do not do 90 day plans. Ninety days is a quarter of a year and we do not have quarters to spare. Here is what we would expect by the end of week six:
The diagnostic is done. You know where deals are won and lost, where revenue leaks, and where the process breaks. Learned from sitting on live customer calls, not from reading decks about them.
Clear revenue targets exist for every person in sales and CS.
A renewal calendar is built and customer health is visible.
The first version of the expansion playbook is in CSMs' hands and being used, not sitting in a document.
The operating rhythm is running. Pipeline reviews, 1-1s, and a forecast we can trust.
Your own quota is live and being worked.
You have a clear view of the team and a plan for how you will develop each person.
A hiring plan for the next AE and SDR.
If six weeks sounds unreasonable to you, that tells us both something useful.
Commercial firepower and the ability to build. If we had to choose, we would take the builder. We already have people who can sell. We have nobody who has built a commercial function from scratch. You should be both, weighted toward the second.
FMCG fluency. You have sold data, insights or media into FMCG brands and you know how they buy, who actually signs, and what frustrates them about their current providers. This is not a hard requirement but it is a significant advantage and we will weight it heavily.
Obsession with the customer and the product. You cannot sell this well without genuinely understanding how people shop and what a brand is really trying to solve. Surface level does not survive here.
Exceptional communication. With a CSM, with the CEO, with a brand's head of innovation, with the board. Different rooms, different registers, always clear. This is the trait we weight most highly of all.
Numbers first. You cannot run a function you cannot measure, and you should be uncomfortable until the reporting is right.
Optimism. Not fake positivity. A real belief that hard things are figure-out-able, and the kind of energy that lifts a room. It matters more than almost anything else here.
Startup-wired. There is no playbook and nobody is going to hand you one. You will build the process that does not exist yet, get hands-on regardless of title, and treat this job description as a starting point rather than a boundary.
A genuine leader. People should get better because they work for you. That means coaching, high standards, and the honesty to have a difficult conversation early rather than letting something drift.
Year one is ANZ. Build the engine.
Year two, you help us build the US. That is explicit, not implied.
At 24 months, depending on where you are strongest and how we have grown, this becomes Head of GTM, CRO or ANZ Country Lead. We are not going to pretend we know which yet, and we will tell you honestly which one you are tracking toward as we go.
Your variable is tied directly to the ANZ number with accelerators above target. There is a meaningful ESOP allocation, and if we do what we think we can do it is the largest part of your upside.
Compensation:
$200k to $215k base + super, $75k to $90k variable, OTE $280k to $300k, plus ESOP
You want to lead rather than sell. You will carry a bag, and that is not negotiable.
You need a playbook, a budget and a full support function in place before you can start.
You have only operated where the systems already existed and someone else built them.
You would rather avoid a difficult conversation than have it early.
You want the CRO title now. It is genuinely on the table in two years, on merit.
You are precious about scope. Some weeks this job is strategy with the CEO. Some weeks it is building a tracker yourself because nobody else is going to.
An intro conversation, a first interview where we ask you to walk us through real work in real detail, a live scenario in our office where you spend time with the team, and a half day working alongside us as though it is your first day. Then references.
It is more demanding than most processes. That is deliberate. A role like this is a big decision for both sides and we would both rather find out in week two than month six.
In two years, Appetise should be doing $10M+ across two continents with a commercial engine that runs on its own.
If reading that makes you want to open a spreadsheet and start working out how, we should talk.
