Founding Account Executive

Why Zania Every enterprise spends millions of dollars on Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). It's one of the most critical, yet universally painful, parts of running a business. For decades, this industry has been dominated by legacy systems with notoriously low NPS scores, making it totally ripe for disruption.

Zania is building agentic AI for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) to solve this massive problem. We are on a rocketship trajectory, creating intelligent agents that automate and augment the most complex risk and compliance workflows. We have found exceptional product-market fit and are scaling our team very quickly. Some reasons to join Zania are:

Dream Customers: Our customers are the most notable enterprises in the world, including FAANG, Big 4 firms and a portfolio of top customers.
Tier 1 Backing: Funded by a leading Tier 1 venture capital fund, giving us the resources to build a generational company.
World-Class Team: Zania is hiring the best. Our team includes AI and Security leaders from Airbnb, Microsoft, Bain & Company, Deloitte, PwC, Brex, and Instacart.
Pioneering Technology: Our engineers and GRC experts work at the absolute forefront of applied AI, building the next generation of agentic systems that will define the future of compliance.
Hyper-Growth: We have seen 10x ARR growth in the last year and are rapidly expanding.
Competitive Compensation & Equity.

Role Overview As our Founding Account Executive, you will be the driving force behind our early revenue engine. You will work directly with the founders to transition from founder-led sales to a scalable Go-To-Market motion. This is a true 0-to-1 role: you won't be handed a neatly packaged pipeline. You will be responsible for full-cycle sales—from hunting and generating your own leads to navigating complex enterprise procurement processes and closing six-figure deals. If you are a builder who thrives on the thrill of the hunt and wants to shape the sales playbook of an AI rocketship, this is for you.

What You'll Do

Drive Full-Cycle Sales: Own the entire sales process from outbound prospecting and lead generation to discovery, demo, negotiation, and closing.
Generate Your Own Pipeline: Act as your own SDR by researching target accounts, executing outbound campaigns, and building a robust pipeline of enterprise prospects.
Define the Playbook: Partner with the founders to refine our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), test different messaging, and build the foundational sales playbook for future hires.
Navigate Complex Deals: Manage multi-stakeholder enterprise deals involving GRC leaders, CISOs, and IT procurement teams.
Voice of the Customer: Act as a critical feedback loop to our Product and Engineering teams, translating customer pain points into actionable product insights.

What You Have

Experience: 5+ years of B2B SaaS sales experience, with a proven track record of closing complex, six-figure enterprise deals.
Hunter Mentality: Demonstrated success in generating your own leads and building pipeline from scratch without relying heavily on inbound marketing.
Domain Knowledge: Previous experience selling into Security, Compliance, Risk, or AI domains is a massive plus.
Startup DNA: Comfortable operating in a highly ambiguous, fast-paced Series A environment where you must build the parachute on the way down.
Location: Based in (or willing to relocate to) Palo Alto, working in-person with the team five days a week.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
5+ years of B2B SaaS sales experience, with a demonstrated track record of closing six-figure enterprise deals end-to-end
Proven ability to independently generate pipeline through outbound prospecting — not solely reliant on inbound leads
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills — you will navigate multi-stakeholder enterprise deals with GRC leaders, CISOs, and IT procurement teams and must articulate complex AI concepts with credibility

Compensation And Benefits

Flexible PTO policy.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance
Meals and snacks in the office
Relocation and immigration support

Zania is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

About the company

Zania provides an AI-powered GRC platform that uses autonomous AI agents to automate security, privacy, and compliance tasks for enterprises. The platform is delivered as a B2B SaaS offering, enabling clients to subscribe and access AI agents, workflows, and dashboards that streamline risk assessments and compliance processes. The agents perform work across regulatory mapping, evidence collection, policy alignment, and security posture reviews, reducing manual effort and cutting assessment timelines from months to minutes. Zania differentiates itself with deep AI-security expertise from the founding team (including experience at major tech companies) and a focus on automating complex governance and regulatory tasks for regulated industries, rather than relying on generic automation. The main goal is to help enterprises simplify, accelerate, and maintain ongoing governance, risk, and compliance by automating tasks and workflows with AI agents.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Series A

Total Funding

$18M

Headquarters

East Palo Alto, California

Founded

2023

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

February 2026 launch promises under-one-week assessments, 90% less manual effort, and global availability.
Zania claims customers including Plaid, Stanford, Grant Thornton, and Big Four firms.
Expanding from 10% to 100% vendor coverage directly attacks a painful enterprise compliance bottleneck.

What critics are saying

ServiceNow, OneTrust, and Archer can copy AI features and bundle into existing suites.
Autonomous assessments face buyer pushback after one false negative triggers audit failures by 2027.
Small team and single-product focus create existential platform risk if TPRM adoption stalls.

What makes Zania unique

Autonomous TPRM replaces questionnaires with agent-led vendor assessments end-to-end, launched February 10, 2026.
Founded by Microsoft, Meta, and Airbnb veterans, Zania sells audit-traceable enterprise GRC automation.
NEA-backed $18 million Series A and 10x ARR growth signal early product-market fit.

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Benefits

Company Equity

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

15%

1 year growth

15%

2 year growth

10%

Business Wire

Feb 10th, 2026

Zania launches autonomous AI platform to slash third-party risk assessments from 8 weeks to under 1 week

Zania, an AI platform for governance, risk and compliance, has launched Zania Autonomous TPRM, which it claims is the first platform to shift third-party risk management from human-led processes to agent-led execution. The system autonomously executes vendor assessments from intake to final determination, including evidence collection and control evaluation. Early deployments across Fortune 500 companies and Big 4 firms report assessment timelines compressed from over eight weeks to under one week, with up to 90% reduction in manual effort and 80% lower costs per assessment. The platform enables organisations to scale coverage from 10% to 100% of vendors without additional headcount. Founded by leaders from Microsoft, Meta and Airbnb, Zania addresses a market expected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2033. The platform is now available globally.

Yahoo Finance

Feb 10th, 2026

The Vendor Questionnaire is Dead: Zania Launches Autonomous Third-Party Risk Management

The vendor questionnaire is dead: Zania launches autonomous third-party risk management. Business Wire New AI agents execute risk assessments end-to-end, enabling CISOs to achieve 100% vendor coverage without adding headcount. PALO ALTO, Calif., February 10, 2026-(BUSINESS WIRE)-Zania, the agentic AI platform for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), today announced the launch of Zania Autonomous TPRM. This is the first platform that shifts third-party risk management from human-led processes with AI assistance to agent-led execution with human oversight. Every CISO knows the math: a growing vendor ecosystem, a small risk team, and not enough hours to assess every third party. The result is a coverage gap that turns unassessed vendors into blind spots. This is exactly the kind of risk that shows up in board audit committees and post-breach investigations. Unlike AI copilots that assist humans with drafting or summarization, Zania's autonomous agents execute the assessment from intake to final determination. Agents scope vendors by business context, collect evidence from trust centers and public disclosures, coordinate vendor follow-ups, evaluate controls, and produce audit-ready output with a complete evidence trail. This enables teams to expand coverage without adding headcount. Third-party risk continues to be a primary driver of costly data breaches, with over 30% of all breaches now involving a supply chain partner [1]. As vendor ecosystems expand, GRC teams are caught in a persistent "coverage gap," able to deeply assess only their most critical vendors, leaving the rest as a growing blind spot. The global TPRM market is expected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2033 [2], yet legacy tools have failed to solve this core challenge, focusing on workflow organization rather than task execution. Early Results In early deployments across Fortune 500 enterprises and Big 4 firms, organizations using Zania report: * Assessment timelines compressed from 8+ weeks to under 1 week * Up to 90% reduction in manual assessment effort * Up to 80% lower cost per assessment * Coverage scaled from 10% to 100% of in-scope vendors without increasing headcount From the CEO "For years, 'AI in GRC' has meant a better autocomplete, such as drafting a response, summarizing a report, or helping with a single task. That's not what enterprises need. They need the assessment done, defensibly, at scale, without tripling headcount." "We built Autonomous TPRM to execute the work end to end. It is grounded in evidence, aligned to how risk teams actually operate, and traceable enough to survive an audit. The question isn't whether AI can help with GRC. It's whether your AI can do the job." - Shruti Gupta, Founder & CEO, Zania

FinSMEs

Sep 30th, 2025

Zania Closes $18M Series A Funding

Zania closes $18M Series A funding.

Morningstar

Sep 30th, 2025

Zania Secures $18M to Transform Compliance

Zania, an AI company for security governance, risk, and compliance, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by NEA. The funding will help Zania expand its engineering and go-to-market teams and accelerate its AI platform. Zania's AI agents automate complex compliance tasks, achieving results up to 30× faster and at 90% lower cost. The company has seen 10x ARR growth in six months and secured clients like Plaid and Stanford University.

Business Wire

Sep 30th, 2025

Zania Raises $18M Series A Led by NEA to Reinvent Enterprise Risk & Compliance with AI Agents

Zania raises $18M Series A led by NEA to reinvent Enterprise risk & compliance with AI agents.

Zania

Founding Account Executive

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