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