Sam Blond

Back to building: Monaco

Sam Blond is co-founder and chief executive of Monaco, an AI-native sales platform for early-stage startups. Monaco came out of stealth on February 11, 2026 with a public beta and $35 million in total funding: a $10 million seed and a $25 million Series A, both led by Founders Fund with Human Capital participating. Angels include Patrick and John Collison, Garry Tan and Neil Mehta. TechCrunch reported about 40 employees at the time.^[1][2]

In May 2026 Monaco announced a $50 million Series B led by Benchmark, with Founders Fund and Human Capital also participating, bringing total funding above $85 million. The company said it had signed hundreds of customers during the public beta, with general availability expected soon.^[3]

What Monaco sells

Monaco positions itself as the first revenue engine for startups, aiming to replace a patchwork of CRM software and sales point tools with one system that covers prospecting, demand generation, pipeline management and deal conversion. Its product builds and scores a company's total addressable market, recommends buyers using signals such as mutual connections and job changes, and drafts outreach campaigns. Agents research accounts, capture calls and emails, and update deals.^[2][6]

The company pairs software with people. TechCrunch described a human-in-the-loop model in which experienced salespeople monitor the AI, train it and run customer meetings, and Monaco's site says each customer gets a forward-deployed sales executive. Blond told TechCrunch that no startup was yet clearly winning the AI-sales category. The article names HubSpot as Monaco's main competitor, alongside Attio, Clay and AI outbound tools such as 11x and Artisan.^[1][6]

The co-founders

Blond founded Monaco with his brother Brian Blond, a partner at Human Capital who was formerly at Sutter Hill; Abishek Viswanathan, previously chief product officer at Apollo and Qualtrics; and Malay Desai, a former senior vice president of engineering at Clari. Blond told TechCrunch that his career has been entirely in sales and that, as a non-technical founder, a sales technology company was the only kind he was suited to start.^[1][2]

Zenefits and Brex

GTMnow's profile of a podcast conversation credits Blond with growing revenue at Zenefits, where he was VP of Sales, from about $1 million to $70 million in roughly two years, and with serving as chief revenue officer of Brex, scaling revenue from about $1 million to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue. The summary lists lessons he draws from Zenefits: investing too late in revenue operations, deprioritizing customer experience and hiring too fast.^[4]

Founders Fund

PEI reported on September 1, 2022 that Brex's chief revenue officer Blond was joining Founders Fund as a partner. TechCrunch says he left the firm roughly 18 months after joining, saying he was done with venture investing and wanted to return to operating.^[5][1]

How he thinks about go-to-market

In the GTMnow episode summary, Blond argues for investing in sales operations and revenue operations early, for generating demand through creative campaigns using a concentric-circles approach that works outward from a company's core audience, and for prioritizing pipeline-building over squeezing conversion rates. He cautions against scaling sales teams quickly on flawed hiring models and sees enthusiastic customers and customer marketing as an early acquisition channel. Monaco targets seed and Series A founders, per TechCrunch.^[4][1]

Why he matters

Blond is among the best-known operators who scaled revenue at two of the most-watched startups of the last decade and who then tested the investor side. Monaco is now one of the more heavily funded attempts to rebuild the sales stack around AI agents, and the speed of its early rounds suggests investors back his thesis that startups need senior sales help earlier than they can hire it.^[1][3][4]

On The Executive List

Sam Blond is ranked No. 8 on The Executive List (October 2026) in the Chief Revenue Officers discipline. The ranking reflects The Executive Review's own editorial Trending Score; it is not an outside award, and placement on the list is never sold. View the October 2026 edition.