Founding Business Development Lead

About BizPort BizPort is the AI-powered marketplace to buy and sell businesses - think software, DTC brands, and agencies. We build technology to make buying and selling businesses simple, and our mission is to bring transparency, speed, and trust to SMB acquisitions. BizPort is a bootstrapped, AI-first remote startup, and we're here to disrupt the trillion dollar M&A market. Our co-founders, Kyle and Frank, spent most of their careers in tech startups, leading M&A at OpenStore and buying and selling their own small businesses. We've led M&A transactions on both sides of the table, and we were inspired by how convoluted and painful the process is from a founder perspective. Now, we're here to change that. We're building the business development function from the ground up, and we're looking for someone who wants to be the driving force behind it. The Role As our first dedicated BD hire, you'll be responsible for identifying and engaging business owners and founders who may be ready to explore a sale. This isn't a support role — you'll be the tip of the spear on outbound, responsible for building the systems, workflows, and relationships that generate a consistent pipeline of qualified seller conversations for our senior advisors. You'll also have a direct line into how we think about deals, which verticals we're targeting, and how we position BizPort in the market. If you're the kind of person who wants to see how the full picture comes together, this is a rare chance to do that at a firm that's small enough to give you real access. What You'll Do Source and qualify potential sellers — founders and owners in staffing & recruiting, DTC, and software businesses with $1M–$50M+ in revenue Build and own our outbound motion end-to-end: ICP definition, list-building, sequencing, messaging, and iteration Stand up and manage the tooling layer (Apollo, HubSpot/CRM, LinkedIn, etc.) to support a repeatable, scalable prospecting system Track pipeline metrics, run experiments, and report on what's working Collaborate closely with advisors to refine target criteria and hand off qualified conversations cleanly What We're Looking For 3+ years in a sales development, business development, or GTM role — ideally in a founding or early sales capacity at a startup Proven ability to build outbound systems from scratch, not just execute inside a playbook someone else wrote Strong written communication skills — you know how to write an outreach message that actually gets a response Comfortable with ambiguity; you figure things out and don't wait to be told what to do Familiarity with M&A, finance, or professional services is a plus, but not required — we'll teach you what you need to know Compensation Base salary commensurate with experience Commission on sourced deal fees — when you bring in a deal that closes, you share in the outcome (we charge a 6% seller marketing fee and our average deal size is $5M - you do the math) Meaningful equity in BizPort Why BizPort Real ownership. You're not the fifth BD hire. You're building the function. Direct exposure. You'll see how deals get sourced, structured, and closed — not just the top of the funnel. Mission that matters. The founders we work with have spent 5-10+ years building their businesses. Helping them find the right buyer at the right time is meaningful work. Flexibility. We're remote-first and results-oriented. We care about output, not office hours. Equity that isn't diluted away. BizPort is fully bootstrapped and intends to stay that way. Our business model is built to sustain rapid growth without outside capital — which means your equity won't be diluted through multiple rounds of funding. What you earn, you keep.