Business Development, Sales and Product Lead

ABOUT ZAHLN Zahln, by Zysygy, is building a zero-fee payment network for Germany on European banking rails. Merchants pay no transaction fees. No card networks, no hardware, just a phone. Nearly every digital payment in Germany today moves over infrastructure owned outside Europe, and a share of each one leaves the continent as fees. We are building the alternative on European rails: a fully software-based merchant POS and a consumer super-app for everyday financial life, payments, transport, utilities and government services in one place, settling account to account over SEPA Instant, with European data residency by design. Think what UPI did for India. We are doing it for Germany, on infrastructure Europe controls. EXIST FUNDING This is a founding team seat in our EXIST-Gründungsstipendium application, the German government's grant for university spin-offs. The grant funds you personally for 12 months to build the company full-time. It is subject to grant approval. Eligibility: enrolled in a Master's or PhD program at a German university, or graduated from one within the last 5 years. LOCATION Augsburg preferred, remote within Germany possible. THE ROLE You are our first business hire. You take Zahln from a working product to a growing market: who we sell to, how we reach them, and how we turn first conversations into signed agreements. There is no existing function, playbook or team. You build all three, and you bring the experience to do it without being told how. You also sit between our customers and our engineers, making sure what we build is what the market will actually sign for. WHAT YOU WILL DO **Business development and sales** Market and ICP: Research the market, define and sharpen our ideal customer profiles, and decide where we focus next.Go-to-market: Build and run the GTM plan across institutional customers, merchants and partners.From first contact to signature: Run outreach, first meetings, discovery, proposals and negotiation through to signed agreements, including longer processes with public-sector and institutional buyers.Partnerships: Identify and build partnerships that open new customer groups or channels.Sales material: Create the pitch, one-pagers and case studies that work without you in the room.Pipeline: Own the CRM and a weekly view of where every opportunity stands. **Product** Customer requirements: Own what institutions, merchants and partners need from the product, and translate it into clear, prioritised requirements for the engineering team.Roadmap input: Work with the founders and engineers on what gets built next, based on what wins deals and what blocks them.Pricing and packaging: Shape how we price and package the product for different customer groups.Launch and adoption: Plan how new features reach customers, and track whether they are actually used. WHO YOU ARE Eligible for the EXIST-Gründungsstipendium (see above).A background in BWL, Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen, Wirtschaftswissenschaften or something comparable.3+ years of full-time professional experience in B2B sales, business development or partnerships, typically after your Bachelor's and before or alongside your Master's.You have owned deals or partnerships end to end, from first contact to signature, not only supported someone else's.You can name a number you moved, such as revenue, deals closed or partners signed, and explain how you got there.You have worked closely with a product or engineering team, and you can write a requirement an engineer can build against.Experienced with long decision cycles involving several stakeholders, and persistent without being annoying.Native-level German and good English. Our customers work in German and our team works in English.You write well and are comfortable with formal correspondence, negotiation and structured follow-up.You want to build a company, not fill a position. STRONG BONUS (NOT REQUIRED) Experience selling to or working with public bodies, universities or municipalities.Startup or scale-up experience in business development or partnerships.Experience in payments, fintech or financial services.Experience in product management, product marketing or solutions consulting.You have built a sales process, playbook or CRM setup that others used after you.You use AI tooling seriously for research, outreach and drafting. HOW WE WILL MEASURE YOU Qualified conversations opened, agreements signed, and a GTM approach that works well enough for others to repeat. On the product side: requirements that engineering can act on, and features that customers actually adopt. WHAT YOU GET Real ownership. The entire business side of the company is yours from day one: market, customers, partnerships and a real say in the product. Not a territory inside someone else's plan.Something that matters. You help build European payment infrastructure that businesses and people use every day, instead of optimising a funnel for a product that already exists.Your decisions, visible fast. No layers of approval between an idea and the market. What you decide this month shows up in the company's numbers within months.A seat at the table. You work directly with the founders on strategy, pricing and commercial terms, and you are in the room when the important decisions are made.Room to grow with the company. As we grow, the function you build grows with you, and so does your role in it.A founding seat funded by the German government. The EXIST-Gründungsstipendium funds you for 12 months to build full-time.A small team that moves. People who left stable paths to build a faster, simpler way to move money in Germany. Less bureaucracy, more momentum. Connect with the Founder www.linkedin.com/in/shabbir-maimoon