Founding Customer Development Lead

About Bento

Bento is financial organization and cash planning for business operators, built to work directly from messy, real-world documents with no setup or configuration.

We are preparing to bring Bento to an initial group of lighthouse customers. We are looking for someone who can identify the right users, get them into the product, help them become active, and bring clear customer feedback back to the team.

This is not a conventional sales role. There is no established playbook, mature funnel, or large inbound pipeline. The work is hands-on, iterative, and close to the founders and product team.

The Role

You will be responsible for recruiting and onboarding Bento’s first group of lighthouse customers.

You will identify qualified prospects, conduct direct outreach, explain the product, enroll customers in a free pilot, support them through onboarding, and maintain enough contact to understand whether Bento is solving a real problem for them.

Your objective is not simply to generate leads or create trial accounts. It is to produce a small group of engaged users who are using Bento with real business data and providing useful feedback.

Responsibilities

• Identify and build targeted prospect lists within Bento’s initial customer segments
• Conduct personalized outbound outreach by email, LinkedIn, phone, and other appropriate channels
• Qualify prospects based on their financial-document volume, operational complexity, and current workflow
• Recruit qualified businesses into a structured lighthouse-customer program
• Conduct product demonstrations and explain Bento’s value clearly
• Personally support customers through setup, account connection, document upload, and initial product use
• Maintain regular contact with pilot customers and keep them engaged
• Conduct structured customer interviews and capture specific product feedback
• Identify common objections, onboarding friction, product gaps, and moments of value
• Report weekly on outreach, conversion, activation, usage, feedback, and blockers
• Work directly with the founders and product team to improve positioning, onboarding, and the early customer experience

Who You Are

You are likely a strong fit if you:

• Have experience in outbound sales, customer development, customer success, or early-stage growth
• Have sold or supported software used by small or midsize businesses
• Are comfortable working without an established sales process
• Can move easily between prospecting, selling, onboarding, support, and customer research
• Are persistent without being mechanical or overly aggressive
• Communicate clearly and credibly with business owners and operators
• Are organized and rigorous about follow-up
• Can distinguish a sales objection from a product problem
• Are comfortable delivering candid customer feedback to the product team

Experience in fintech, accounting software, expense management, payroll, business banking, vertical SaaS, or SMB software is especially relevant.

This Role Is Probably Not for You If

• You require a mature product, established territory, or substantial inbound lead flow
• You are primarily interested in managing a sales team
• You prefer high-volume automated outreach over targeted customer development
• You consider the job complete once a prospect creates an account
• You are uncomfortable doing hands-on onboarding and support
• You want to advise on go-to-market strategy rather than personally recruit customers

Engagement Structure

This will begin as a paid hourly 8–12 week engagement with clear activity, customer-recruitment, onboarding, and activation goals.

Compensation will include a fixed component and milestone-based incentives tied to qualified customers who complete onboarding and actively use the product.

The engagement may become a full-time role based on performance, company needs, and mutual fit.