Business Development Representative — Founder Recruitment

*IMPORTANT: The only way to apply to this position is through email; more information below*

Location: Sioux Falls, SD (in person) Type: Full-time Experience: 3–5 years

WildFire Labs is a founder accelerator and development studio based in South Dakota. We exist to prove that great companies get built in the middle of the country — not despite being here, but because of it.

We run a founder program, build software products with early-stage companies, and tell the stories of entrepreneurs who are doing it differently. Our podcast — Startup Stories from the Treehouse — has 64 episodes of conversations with founders who bootstrapped, grinded, and built without the coastal VC safety net. Our Substack newsletter has 4,800 subscribers. We’re finishing a book. We run hackathons and campus events across the state.

All of it generates real interest from people who want to build. We need someone to turn that interest into founders in the program.

This is not a cold-calling role. It’s not a marketing role. It’s a founder enrollment role that uses sales skills as the vehicle.

Your job is to take the warm interest our marketing program and events already generate — hackathon participants, newsletter readers, people who heard the podcast and reached out — and walk each of them from curiosity to a signed program agreement. You’re not selling software. You’re helping someone decide to build their company, and helping them see why WildFire Labs is where they should do it.

Some days that’s fast follow-up on twenty leads from a campus event while the energy is still hot. Some days it’s a long discovery call with someone who has a real idea and real doubts. Some days it’s the fourth check-in with a founder who wasn’t ready in March but might be in June.

This role is based in person in Sioux Falls — the state’s largest startup market. You’ll be our person on the ground there, working closely with our founding team.

• Follow up fast on every lead from our campaigns, hackathons, and campus events — while the interest is still hot. Speed to first conversation is the job.
• Build AI agents that multiply you. Lead research, follow-up sequences, pipeline hygiene — if it’s repeatable, you build an agent for it. You’ll build agents for founders too, showing them firsthand what AI-native company building looks like.
• Run discovery calls that qualify both fit and commitment — the idea, the person behind it, and whether our program is right for them. Honest fit matters more than filling seats.
• Own enrollment end to end: first conversation, program pitch, objection handling, signed agreement.
• Work our events in person — hackathons, workshops, pitch nights, campus visits — capturing interest on the spot and converting it into scheduled next steps.
• Nurture the not-yet-ready. Keep promising prospects warm with structured follow-up until timing, idea, or confidence clicks. A “not yet” is a future enrollment, not a dead lead.
• Track what’s working — lead-to-enrollment conversion, which channels produce founders who actually sign — and feed what you learn back to the marketing and program teams: the objections that come up, what founders actually want, where our messaging lands or misses.

Must-haves:

• Genuine curiosity about founders. You find these stories fascinating, you understand the weight of deciding to build something, and you can hold a credible startup conversation even if you haven’t built one yourself.
• 3–5 years converting interest into commitment. Inside sales, admissions, enrollment advising, recruiting, or founder-facing program work. You’ve owned a number.
• Relentless, organized follow-up. You run your own pipeline, and no lead falls through the cracks on your watch.
• AI curiosity with a track record of experimentation. Show us something you built or automated with AI on your own — not for a job, just because you were interested. Formal training matters less than demonstrated tinkering.
• You’re a practitioner, not just a planner. You do the work.

Nice-to-haves:

• You’ve lived the founder/startup world — worked at an early-stage company or built something yourself.
• Roots in the Sioux Falls ecosystem — you already know where founders and builders gather.
• Experience working alongside universities, student entrepreneurs, or technical talent.
• You believe the middle-America founder story is underrepresented and underestimated. That’s the thesis we’re built on.

This role is probably not right for you if:

• You need inbound handed to you in a tidy queue. The interest is real, but you’ll build the conversion motion from scratch.
• Your instinct is to close at any cost. We’d rather turn away a bad-fit founder than sign one who shouldn’t be here.
• You’re not genuinely interested in the people we serve — founders building real companies in places that don’t get enough credit.

• Salary: $55,000 base plus performance incentives tied to signed founder enrollments — on-target earnings $65,000–$70,000 (plus South Dakota’s no state income tax, worth ~$3–5K vs. most other states)
• Direct work with the founding team, and a front-row seat to every startup that comes through the program
• A marketing engine already generating interest — you’re converting momentum, not starting from zero
• A team that uses AI tools seriously — you’ll learn more about AI-augmented work here than almost anywhere else in the region
• The opportunity to build WFL’s founder enrollment function from the ground up and own what it becomes

Send us a note — not a cover letter, a note — telling us about a time you took someone from “interested” to “committed,” in any context (doesn’t have to be a sale). If you’ve done something with AI that you think is worth showing us, include that too.

mike@wildfirelabs.io

WildFire Labs is based in South Dakota. We’re serious about building the startup ecosystem in the middle of the country — and we’re looking for people who are too.