A Day in the Life: AE at V7 Labs

Take us back to August 2021. What was V7 then, and what made you want to join?

I was a newly graduated aerospace engineer who'd been working on computer vision technology. V7 was one of the only computer vision organisations in London hiring junior salespeople. I was quite talkative but also quite technical—I thought engineering was a bit too in the weeds for me, and I wanted something more communicative.

The office was tiny. We were crammed into a small Fora space like sardines. It was very hands-on. The whole company joined all-hands every week, I sat next to the CEO and Head of Engineering, and things moved very quickly. We had a few million dollars of ARR, and the entire business was contained within one small group.

You've gone from BDR to Growth AE to Enterprise AE. Walk us through that progression.

I spent a year doing business development, outbounding for prospective clients in computer vision. There were four of us working together, many of whom still work here at V7. After a year, we were growing so fast we needed more people closing deals, so myself and a few counterparts got promoted to Growth AE.

The nice thing about V7 is that we don't do geographical blocking. One day I'd be working in the US, the next day Singapore, the next day Europe. One day, healthcare imaging, next day drones delivering vaccines, next day fraud detection in US supermarkets. The diversity kept it exciting.

After that, I moved into a standard AE role with more focus on enterprises. To succeed in enterprise sales, you have to deal with the boring parts, like procurement and legal. That takes time to get used to. For the last couple of years, I've been working on large deals across multinational organisations. Sometimes they take upwards of a year to close.

How has the conversation with buyers changed from 2021 to today?

In the past, with V7 Darwin, we sold into a specific vertical. The product owner was always the same type: computer vision AI leads, deep learning leads.

Now with V7 Go, you're not selling into the same niche any day of the week. The thing that makes someone successful is that you have to be like a professional student. Selling features isn't enough; people want you to know their industry inside out.

One day you're learning UK tax law, tomorrow private equity due diligence, the next day invoice pricing for litigation. If you're the sort of person who randomly wakes up thinking "I need to look something up on Wikipedia," you'll find this fulfilling.

There's no future for out-of-the-box solutions. You have to be in the weeds with what your counterparts are actually doing.

Why are customers choosing V7 over the alternatives?

We've built software that makes it easy to map a human workflow into something you can look at and understand. You can turn what a human does in professional services—reviewing lease documents from various perspectives—into something that looks like an Excel document. We turn workflows into software very easily.

Customers appreciate that they can see something coming to life that actually looks and feels like what they do and who they are.

The definition of success is who can mimic human workflows the best, and then supersede them while keeping that authenticity. Other companies haven't quite captured that essence. We're seeing businesses churn away from other AI organisations because they haven't lived up to their promises.

I'm also lucky to have probably the best solution engineering team supporting me on deals, giving customers trust that V7 can deliver.

How hands-on technically do you need to be as an Enterprise AE?

You have to be half solution engineer, half sales. A CTO with 30 years of experience will ask whether V7 should be the system of record for AI-generated data, or if it's better to move to a CRM or Azure data lake. If you don't understand product and technology stacks, you'll struggle.

You're talking to technical leads, so you can't just follow traditional sales patterns. If you're not technically minded, it's difficult to come across as knowledgeable. You also have to context switch between clients in different verticals while staying sharp on technical know-how.

For example, if someone asks why OCR doesn't work for a specific process, you need to know why OCR might work or not, and why specific AI models are better or worse at tasks. You can pick these things up, but familiarity with AI systems and cloud infrastructure is a good starting point.

Even more important is systems thinking. You'll be presented with challenges you've never seen before, in industries you don't understand. If you can quickly take a customer's idea and map it into an agent system design (on the call or immediately after) you'll win that customer. Being a systems thinker is critical.

Looking forward – what are you genuinely excited about?

In the UK and Europe, we're a bit disconnected from the global tech center in the US, but we have huge wealth in professional services knowledge. London maintains its status as one of the best financial hubs in the world.

What we get to do now is closely interact with industries that would have been gated away if you weren't an accountant, lawyer, or banker. Technology isn't just supporting these industries like an ERP would, it's actually delivering work for clients.

I'm consistently excited about upskilling my knowledge across different workflow practices. The product evolves quickly, but I'm more excited about the general change in the working world. As an AI practitioner, you'll be at the centre stage of innovations in basically every professional services industry you can think of.

Want to join Will and build your career in AI sales? V7 Labs is hiring Account Executives who are curious, technical, and excited to become professional students of industries they've never worked in before.