Founding Business Development Manager

About Flagright: Flagright is an AI operating system for financial crime compliance used globally by Fortune 500 companies, large banks, fintechs, and fast growing startups. Flagright enables real-time risk detection, automated investigations, and intelligent decisioning, helping compliance teams operate at their full potential in the fight against financial crime. We operate as a lean, high-performance team with high individual ownership and direct access to leadership. The Role This is a founding leadership role. You'll take ownership of our global business development function, managing a geo-distributed team with a mandate to scale it in the near term. This role requires regular in-office presence to build team knowledge, strengthen collaboration, and support the ongoing development of the BDR team. Being together in person will be key to coaching, knowledge-sharing, onboarding, and creating a strong sales excellence culture. This is a pure team manager role where you will be responsible for performance management, coaching, talent development, hiring/firing, dispute resolution, process enforcement and success metrics. People who thrive at Flagright: Have been knocked down before and gotten back up Are resourceful—they figure things out with whatever tools are available Have strong opinions and can defend them Learn fast because they're hungry Want to work with no-BS people building something important People who struggle here: Need extensive hand-holding View high expectations as “unreasonable” Expect strict 9 to 6 boundaries Can’t handle ambiguity or rejection Prefer consistent routine over fast-changing priorities Key Responsibilities: Lead, coach, and develop a distributed team of 4 BDRs across multiple regions, with day-to-day accountability for activity, conversion, and pipeline targets Scale the team: own hiring end-to-end, from profile definition and sourcing through interviewing, onboarding, and ramp Support the outbound playbook — ICP and account segmentation, multi-channel sequences, messaging by persona and region, and qualification standards Design territory and vertical coverage so a global team operates as one coordinated engine, not silos Run forecasting and reporting on pipeline generation; present performance and insights directly to founders Partner closely with Sales and Marketing to align on handoffs, SLAs, campaign follow-up, and feedback loops from the front line to product and positioning Set the bar on culture: instill the habits, standards, and energy of a high-performing outbound team from day one Who we are looking for: 5+ years in business development / sales development in B2B SaaS, including 2+ years managing BDR/SDR teams Background at a Start/Scale-up (sub 200 employees) Experience managing remote or geo-distributed teams across time zones — you know how to keep distributed people aligned, motivated, and accountable A track record of hiring and ramping BDRs quickly; you've grown a team before, ideally in an early-stage or scale-up environment Strong command of modern outbound: multi-channel prospecting, sales engagement platforms, CRM (e.g., HubSpot), and data-driven pipeline management Builder's mindset — comfortable with ambiguity, first-principles thinking, and shipping process before it's perfect Willing and able to sell yourself: you lead from the front and stay close to the conversations Excellent written and spoken English; additional languages a plus given the global remit Nice to Have: Experience selling into regulated industries (e.g., fintech, compliance, FS) Prior "founding" or first-manager role at a startup Experience opening new geographic markets What we offer: Leadership position with direct influence on Flagright’s global sales strategy Report directly to the CEO Product with clear, real-world differentiation High-bar environment focused on execution, learning, and continuous improvement Get equity from day 1 at a Y Combinator startup Work alongside a highly competent, top-tier team, including professionals from Y Combinator, ex AWS, and Palantir Enjoy a low-bureaucracy environment, minimal meetings, and an asynchronous communications culture