Founding Sales Development Representative

Sakura Health; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Sakura Health in San Mateo, CA, seeks an ambitious outbound sales professional to build a steady flow of qualified conversations for the founders. You will identify specialty practices and MSOs, locate the right buyers, and capture their attention with targeted emails and confident cold calls.

You will craft the account model, enrich contact data, design messaging, and develop outreach sequences using Apollo, Clay, and HubSpot.

Qualifications

• 1–3 years of outbound/SDR-type experience with verifiable outcomes.
• Excellent writing with a concise, personalized outreach.
• Effective cold calling, credible on calls with senior stakeholders.
• Resourceful handling of unfamiliar accounts and incomplete data.
• Hands-on experience with prospecting, sequencing, enrichment, and CRM tools.

Responsibilities

• Research and prioritize target accounts using specialty, ownership, and operations signals.
• Find and verify decision makers, reach gatekeepers, and secure next steps.
• Write short, personalized emails and perform confident cold calls to buyers.
• Build and maintain outbound systems with tools like Apollo, Clay, HubSpot, and LinkedIn.
• Test messaging channels, track responses and opportunities, and hand off context to founders.

Skills

Outbound prospecting

Excellent writing

Cold calling

Resourcefulness

AI-assisted research

CRM tools

Tools

Apollo

Clay

HubSpot

LinkedIn

Job description

About Sakura Health

Sakura Health builds AI agents that run front- and back-office operations for specialty practices. A referral arrives, an agent processes it; a payer needs a call, an agent makes it. Our agents work inside existing EHRs, phone systems, fax queues, and payer portals so staff can review completed work and spend more time on patients.

Our agents are running in production inside live practices across senior care, gastroenterology, and cardiology, with a growing set of customer deployments and channel partnerships underway. We are now building the commercial motion to scale them. We raised our seed round from Lightspeed, alongside angels from OpenAI, Sierra, Iterative Health, and Innovaccer.

The team

• Manish Singh, CEO: MIT PhD in AI and healthcare finance; former quant researcher at Point72/Cubist and WorldQuant; IIT Delhi.

• Shashanka Rao, COO: Harvard MBA; led BizOps and GTM at Apollo.io; ex-McKinsey; IIT Madras.

• Kapil Vaidya, CTO: MIT PhD in ML and data systems; early engineer at Parallel Web Systems; IIT Bombay.

The role

As our first dedicated outbound hire, you will build a consistent flow of qualified conversations for the founders. You will decide which specialty practices and MSOs to target, find the people who run them, and earn their attention with relevant email and confident cold calling.

You will help build the account model, contact data, messaging, and outreach sequences. A good starting point is a practice you have never heard of: work out who owns operations or revenue cycle, understand what may matter to them, find a way to reach them, and give them a reason to talk.

What you will own

• Research and prioritize accounts. Use specialty, physician count, ownership, MSO affiliation, EHR footprint, and operating signals to decide where outreach is most likely to be useful.

• Find the right people. Map local and central decision makers, verify titles and contact details, and work through incomplete records and gatekeepers to reach hard-to-find buyers.

• Write and call well. Turn research into short, personalized cold emails. Cold call administrators, physician owners, and operators; earn attention quickly, handle objections, and secure a useful next step.

• Build the outbound system. Use Apollo, Clay, HubSpot, LinkedIn, and enrichment tools to build reliable lists, manage follow-up, and keep account history and contact data usable.

• Test and qualify. Experiment with messages, signals, and channels. Track replies, held meetings, and opportunity conversion; run initial discovery and give the founders clear context for each handoff.

About you

Healthcare experience is optional. We care most about your ability to learn an unfamiliar market, find the buyer, and start a conversation. You should enjoy both the research behind a good prospect list and the daily work of reaching people.

• 1–3 years in SDR, BDR, sales, recruiting, growth, or another role with substantial outbound work. You can explain what you booked, what converted, and how you got there.

• Excellent writing. You can turn account research into a concise email with a specific reason to reach out and a clear ask.

• Effective cold calling. You sound credible with senior people, listen carefully, adapt in the moment, and stay persistent through rejection.

• Resourcefulness with unfamiliar accounts and incomplete data. You can distinguish the person using a workflow from the person who owns the problem or budget.

• Hands‑on experience with prospecting, enrichment, sequencing, and CRM tools such as Apollo, Clay, and HubSpot , or the ability to learn them quickly.

• AI‑native in how you work. You use AI to research accounts, sharpen messaging, and automate repetitive work without sacrificing judgment or personalization.

• An experimental approach to outbound. You can explain why a list, message, or channel worked and use that evidence to improve the next campaign.

• Ambition to grow into an Account Executive role and take responsibility for your own deals.

• Helpful but not required: selling to healthcare providers; familiarity with EHRs, RCM, referrals, prior authorization, or patient access; experience with provider data sources or building simple automations.

What success looks like

• First 30 days: Learn the buyer and key workflows, build a prioritized account list, and launch initial email and phone outreach with founder feedback.

• By 90 days: Consistently generate qualified conversations, run initial discovery, and show which accounts, messages, and channels produce opportunities.

• Within 6 to 9 months: Work toward running and closing selected opportunities of your own, based on readiness and results. Document the outbound process so future hires can build on it.

We will measure qualified meetings held, opportunities accepted by the founders, pipeline created, and conversion into active deals. We will agree on ramp expectations and refine targets as we learn which approaches work.

Compensation and benefits

Competitive base salary and commission, with potential equity participation. Compensation, benefits, and any equity component will be discussed during the hiring process, based on your experience and the scope of the role.