Karishma Kothari, Account Executive at Anthropic

Pre-Sales Pathways · Aug 16, 2026 · 41m · transcript

Fear of failure is what stops SEs becoming AEs. Karishma overcame it 7 years ago and is now an AE at the hottest company around: Anthropic.

Karishma has had such a varied career, spanning IC and leadership roles in Product, Solutions Engineering and Sales.

She’s also been an early team member at iconic companies like Box, Slack and, most recently, Anthropic.

In our conversation, we get into:

What changes when you move from SE to AE, including the 40% of the deal you never had to think about

How selling consumption (rather than seats) changes the nature of the AE and SE roles

Why chasing…