Founding Business Development Representative

AnswerThis (YC F25); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

AnswerThis is hiring a Founding Business Development Representative to design our prospecting and outbound sales system from first principles in San Francisco. You will own ICPs, account selection, lead sourcing, enrichment, scoring, outreach, and CRM hygiene to build a repeatable revenue engine.

You will bring 2+ years of hands-on prospecting and outbound experience, plus a proven ability to design and run cold-email campaigns with credible data, a quota-driven mindset, and the capacity to

Qualifications

• At least 2 years of hands-on prospecting, outbound outreach, and CRM management.
• Design and run cold-email campaigns end to end with credible reply-rate data.
• Quota-driven sales mindset with ability to create pipeline from a blank page.
• Sales engineering: translate a GTM idea into systems, automations, data flows, dashboards.
• Experience selling a real product and creating sales collateral that moves deals forward.
• Excellent organization across large lead volumes and multiple channels.
• Willingness to work in person in San Francisco and travel 10+ days per month.

Responsibilities

• Build a complete prospecting system: ICP definition, accounts, lead sourcing, enrichment, scoring, segmentation, outreach, follow-up, CRM stages, reporting, and experimentation.
• Run multichannel top-of-funnel programs across cold email, LinkedIn, conferences, partnerships, events, and paid acquisition where appropriate.
• Personally write and test sequences, value propositions, subject lines, follow-up logic, sales decks, and outbound collateral.
• Manage 100+ top-of-funnel leads without losing context or missing follow-ups, and keep the CRM trustworthy as the source of truth.
• Conduct discovery, build champions, run product conversations, and close business while listening more than you talk.
• Build technical automations around research, enrichment, routing, personalization, sequencing, follow-ups, meeting preparation, CRM hygiene, and reporting.
• Use Claude and other coding agents, automation tools, APIs, and CRM workflows to speed the sales process.
• Analyze reply rates, positive-reply rates, meetings booked, conversion by stage, pipeline velocity, deal volume, and revenue.
• Travel to relevant conferences, create pre/post-event prospecting systems, and convert in-person conversations into qualified pipeline.
• Document the winning system so it can be scaled by a larger sales team.

Skills

Prospecting

Outbound outreach

CRM management

Cold-email campaigns

Quota-driven

Sales automation

B2B SaaS

Conference travel

Job description

Founding BDR — In Person, San Francisco

Compensation: $120,000–$150,000 USD base salary, plus uncapped commission and 0.2%–0.5% equity

About AnswerThis

AnswerThis is a YC-backed AI research platform that helps researchers and R&D teams find, understand, and work with scientific literature. We are building the research infrastructure used by scientists, biotech founders, and enterprise teams to move from questions to evidence faster.

The Role

We are hiring a Founding Business Development Representative to design AnswerThis’s prospecting and outbound sales systems from first principles. This is not a standard BDR role where you inherit a playbook and execute someone else’s sequences. You will determine which ICPs to pursue, build the infrastructure for reaching them, create the messaging and sales assets, automate the operating system, and turn the winning motion into a repeatable revenue engine.

You will initially focus on early-stage biotech founders and scientific teams that struggle to collect literature and conduct literature reviews, but you must be comfortable changing the ICP as we learn. You will carry a minimum $1 million annual quota and earn commission on every deal you close.

This role is in person in San Francisco and requires the flexibility to travel to conferences for 10+ days per month.

What You’ll Own

• Build the complete prospecting system: ICP definition, account selection, lead sourcing, enrichment, scoring, segmentation, outreach, follow-up, CRM stages, reporting, and experimentation.
• Run multichannel top-of-funnel programs across cold email, LinkedIn, conferences, partnerships, events, and paid acquisition where appropriate.
• Personally write and test sequences, value propositions, subject lines, follow-up logic, sales decks, and outbound collateral.
• Manage 100+ top-of-funnel leads without losing context or missing follow-ups, and keep the CRM trustworthy enough to operate as the source of truth.
• Conduct discovery, build champions, run product conversations, and close business while listening more than you talk.
• Build technical automations around research, enrichment, routing, personalization, sequencing, follow-ups, meeting preparation, CRM hygiene, and reporting.
• Use Claude and other coding agents, automation tools, APIs, and CRM workflows to make the sales process faster and more precise.
• Analyze reply rates, positive-reply rates, meetings booked, conversion by stage, pipeline velocity, deal volume, and closed revenue.
• Travel to relevant conferences, create pre-event and post-event prospecting systems, and turn in-person conversations into qualified pipeline.
• Document the winning system so it can eventually be scaled by a larger sales team.

What We’re Looking For

• At least 2 years of hands-on experience across prospecting, outbound outreach, and CRM management.
• A track record of personally designing and running cold-email campaigns end to end, with campaign artifacts and credible reply-rate data you can show us.
• Strong sales mentality: you are competitive, resourceful, accountable to quota, and comfortable creating pipeline from a blank page.
• Sales-engineering ability: you can translate a go-to-market idea into systems, automations, data flows, dashboards, and repeatable processes.
• Experience selling a real product, building relationships with champions, and producing sales decks and collateral that move deals forward.
• Excellent organization across large lead volumes, multiple channels, and persistent follow-up.
• Comfort iterating quickly when an ICP, channel, or message is not working.
• Willingness to work in person in San Francisco and travel 10+ days per month for conferences.

Helpful, Not Required

• Experience selling B2B SaaS, AI, research software, scientific tools, or products into biotech and life-science companies.
• Existing relationships with biotech founders or scientific R&D teams.
• Experience with deliverability infrastructure, enrichment vendors, CRM administration, APIs, no-code automation, and coding agents.

Success in This Role

• You build a prospecting operating system rather than relying on ad hoc outreach.
• You create enough qualified pipeline to support a minimum $1 million annual quota.
• You can explain why each ICP, channel, campaign, and sequence exists, and improve it using evidence.
• Prospects experience a thoughtful sales process built on strong discovery and relevant follow-up.