2 min lesson
Your top three deliverables
Work through the cases in "Your top three deliverables", pairing each signal with the move that fits.
Step 1 of 2
Your top three deliverables
The core output: SQLs an AE accepts.
Quality over raw volume - a meeting an AE rejects is worse than none.
Researched context the AE can act on.
Why this account, why now, who's in the room.
Which messaging lands, which objections recur.
You're an early hire, so this shapes the playbook.
One detail changes how you should read this whole role: it is a builder seat, not a run-the-machine seat. At a mature company an SDR inherits a tested sequence and a script. Here you help write them, which is why interviewers probe for self-starter energy rather than process-following.
Cursor frames this seat as a deliberate launchpad to Account Executive. That's not flavor text - interviewers screen for whether the AE path is a genuine goal or a throwaway answer. Treat the SDR role as the audition for the closing seat you actually want and say so plainly when asked about ambition.
When the recruiter asks what an SDR does, lead with the outcome and the boundary in one breath: “I generate qualified pipeline - booked meetings with the right engineering buyers - and hand each one to an AE with the research they need to close it.” Naming the handoff boundary signals you understand where your job ends, which is exactly the discipline an AE wants in a partner.