This event is brought to you by Wildfire in partnership with Elevate Rapid City. 

Hiring early employees is one of the most defining moments in a company’s life. The decisions you make now will shape your culture, momentum, and long-term success.

In this session, you’ll learn how to approach early-stage hiring with clarity and intention, so you can build a team that strengthens your company from day one.

We’ll break down how to identify the roles you actually need, define responsibilities that align with your goals, and set expectations that keep your team aligned as you grow. You’ll also dig into effective strategies for recruiting and evaluating talent, from finding candidates who fit your mission to knowing which qualities matter most in those foundational hires.

By the end of the session, you’ll walk away with a practical roadmap for hiring your first 10 employees with confidence, clarity, and purpose.

 About the Speaker:

 Ray Hespen

Ray Hespen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Property Meld, an entrepreneur and engineer with a deep passion for solving operational problems. After experiencing the frustrations of rental maintenance firsthand, he and co-founder David Kingman launched Property Meld in 2015 to transform how property managers, vendors, and residents coordinate maintenance. What began as a response to a simple pain point has since grown into a rapidly scaling company rooted in efficiency, data, and customer experience. Property Meld is the leading the nation with a software platform that manages maintenance for over 800,000+ rentals that handles over $1 billion in repairs annually between 1.5 million renters and 60,000 vendors. 

Ray continues to lead with that same problem-solving mindset—using data-driven insights to streamline operations, improve team workflows, and create meaningful value for both customers and employees. His experience building Property Meld from a small founding team into a growing organization gives him a unique and practical perspective on early hiring, defining core roles, and shaping company culture from the ground up. He has combined this operational knowledge with technology to start one of the largest, and fastest-growing real estate maintenance software companies in the United States.

Be sure to sign up for the Entrepreneur Happy Hour following this event!

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