Account Manager, Light Labs

Role Overview

As an Account Manager at Light Labs, you'll build and own a book of some of the largest manufacturers and brands in CPG, helping them manage, improve, and showcase their quality to bring more transparency to the food system. Your job is to grow these accounts: expand testing programs across new products, sites, and categories, and make Light Labs indispensable to every customer you touch. We've grown from zero to a multi-million-dollar run rate in under 2 years, and you'll play a key role in scaling Light Labs to a $50M run rate in 2027.

Responsibilities

• Own and grow a large book of business. Run your book like it's your own P&L. Know every account's health, whitespace, and growth plan, and be accountable for the expansion revenue it produces.

• Drive expansion. Identify and close new testing programs, product lines, sites, and use cases within existing customers. Your quota is expansion revenue, and the biggest growth at Light Labs comes from going deeper with the customers we already have.

• Respond within minutes. Speed wins trust and deals. It's the number one reason customers work with us, and it's the standard for every email, call, and result question in your book.

• Be a true problem solver. Lead with curiosity. When a customer hits a quality issue, a failed result, or a regulatory question, get creative and drive it to resolution instead of routing it elsewhere.

• Always get on the plane. Nothing beats in-person time with customers. Visit plants and HQs, walk the floor with quality and ops teams, and run business reviews on site.

• Learn the science and how a lab operates. We work in a complex, highly technical industry. Learn what matters to customers, speak their language, and know enough of the science (methods, contaminants, specs, regulatory thresholds) to build rapport and trust with technical buyers.

• Build deep, multi-threaded relationships. Develop trust across quality, operations, regulatory, procurement, and executive stakeholders so accounts don't hinge on a single champion.

• Partner with lab operations. You're the customer's voice inside the lab and the lab's voice with the customer. Make sure we deliver on what we sold, and flag risks before they become escalations.

• Translate feedback into action. Capture insights from your accounts and feed them back into product, marketing, and operations to help shape company direction.

• Scale impact. Help drive Light Labs to a $50M run rate in 2027 by consistently retaining and expanding the largest manufacturers and brands in CPG.

Requirements

• 3-5+ years of quota-carrying experience owning and growing a book of business, ideally with enterprise or strategic accounts in a fast-paced environment.

• Demonstrated success expanding existing accounts through complex, multi-stakeholder processes.

• Relentlessly responsive. Operates with urgency and treats speed as a competitive advantage, not a courtesy.

• Excellent communicator. Skilled in discovery, storytelling, and objection handling, with a clear, persuasive writing style.

• Strategic thinker. Builds real account plans, understands the business context behind customer needs, and positions solutions accordingly.

• Entrepreneurial mindset. Operates independently, thrives in ambiguity, and builds structure where none exists.

• Fast learner. Quickly absorbs technical and scientific concepts and translates them into business value.

• Willing to travel. Regular time on the road with customers; expect meaningful travel to plants, HQs, and industry events.

• Mission-aligned. Motivated by improving transparency and integrity in the food system.

• Austin, TX (in-office 5 days per week). This role sits side-by-side with the founders and broader team as we scale Light Labs' GTM engine.

Who We Are

Light Labs is building the modern platform for lab testing, starting with consumer goods brands. We help companies test more cheaply, quickly, and enable them to use lab results to automate regulatory compliance and grow revenue.

We believe consumers deserve to know the purity and accuracy of every product that affects their families' health. Improving our food system starts with increasing transparency and creating a more informed customer. Not only are we building a lab that makes testing faster, cheaper, and easier, but also the infrastructure that allows brands to:

1. Market and highlight their lab results by making it easy to push lab data directly to product display pages. Here, brands will highlight what's in their product (active ingredients + they meet their claims) and what's not in their product (heavy metals, environmental toxins, PFAs, etc)

2. Automatically comply with regulations like Prop 65, CA AB 899, Amazon testing requirements, etc.

By integrating the full experience – from testing to the data sharing with customers – we're building a more efficient and streamlined process. Brands can now differentiate themselves and become the no-brainer choice in their category through testing and great transparency.

We're a team of experienced founders that have raised $30M+ from top VCs (8VC and Valor), with top CPG founders and strategics who participated into the round. Whether you're lab tech, engineer, sales, marketing, or customer support, you'll have a seat at the table as we work to increase transparency in the food system.

Our Mission

Almost everything people consume is becoming increasingly toxic (and bereft of nutrition) which leads to massive health dysfunction while simultaneously destroying our planet. No one knows about it because you can't see, taste, smell, or quantify the problem:

• Cinnamon Apple Puree pouches, marketed for children and labeled as preservative-free, kosher, and gluten-free, contained lead levels 200 times greater than the FDA's proposed guidelines

• Over 1300 chemicals are banned in cosmetics in the EU, while only 11 are in the United States

• The US also allows thousands of food additives which are banned in other countries

• A study of 168 baby foods revealed that 95% contained at least one heavy metal (arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium), with a quarter containing all four

• Seven out eight samples of kale contained 'disturbing' levels of PFAs, with organic kale containing higher levels of the toxic compounds

Today, even if consumer brands or manufacturers wanted to test for purity of their products, the experience is slow, cumbersome, expensive, and nearly impossible to interpret or share the lab results unless you have a PhD in the area you're testing for.

Because there is no feedback loop or standardized transparency that brands offer, there is no consumer pressure on change of practices and sourcing. If people knew what was in their food, they'd be shocked. They would shop differently.

Our mission is to bring this transparency to the food system. Allow customers to buy products and brands that are free of toxic ingredients. Transparency is the first step in creating demand for cleaner products, and ultimately a cleaner supply chain.

Founding Team

• Nick Mares: 2x founder, Kettle & Fire and Upside Financing. Kettle & Fire is a $100 million/year brand while Upside Financing exited in 2022. He's raised more than $60M across the two companies and been both in the CEO and COO roles. Nick is a Thiel Fellow.

• Vijay Manohar: growth and GTM leader. He helped Samsara scale to be one of the fastest growing B2B software companies ever to reach $1B ARR, including an IPO (NYSE: IOT). B.S. in computer engineering from UT Austin.

Values We're Looking For

• First Principles

  • We're looking for team members who can deal with ambiguity, deconstruct problems, and build the optimal solution.

  • Question every requirement → Delete any part or process you can → Simplify and optimize → Accelerate cycle time → Automate.

• Standard of Excellence

  • High standards are contagious. A+ talent attracts A+ talent.

  • There's a glut of mediocrity in the world. We're chasing after the products and people that strive for excellence.

• Bias for Action

  • Take initiative, make decisions quickly, and have a willingness to experiment and learn from failures.

  • Customer expectations are not static. They rise over time, which means we have to continuously improve every single day.

• Low Ego

  • Coachability; it's not about being right, it's about getting to the right answer.

  • Reacts calmly to criticism or negative feedback, and has a "feedback is an opportunity for information and improvement" mindset.

  • Respectfully challenges decisions when you disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable. Once a decision is made, even if you still disagree, commit wholly and move forward.