Startups Growth, VC Partnerships

About the role

As the founding member of Startups Growth, VC Partnerships team, you'll build our startup and VC program from a blank page. You'll decide which venture firms and accelerators we go deep with, design the portfolio offer that gets their founders building across our full product suite (from Cursor to Grok models to applications like Grok Bot), and turn our strongest founders into the people who bring us the next ones.

This is a builder role for someone who's energized by the venture and founder community. There is no playbook to inherit. You'll establish the relationships with VCs, bring on the first partners, host the first dinners/events, and pioneer the playbook as you go. If you want to be the reason the best firms tell their founders to build with us, this is the role for you.

Responsibilities

Program Architecture (0 to 1)

• Build the program from scratch: Define who it's for, what's in the offer, how founders apply, and how to best work with VCs.

• Pick partners over breadth: Build a tiering rubric for VC firms, accelerators, and founder communities, then go deep with a focused handful rather than a long list of logos.

VC & Ecosystem Relationships

• Own firm relationships end to end: Become the person VCs call when a portfolio company is figuring out how to implement AI into their business or improve their setup.

• Co-host founder events: Run a steady cadence of founder dinners, office hours, and portfolio workshops with partner firms.

• Build referral loops: Turn activated founders and partner firms into a repeatable source of new startups through warm intros and consistently reviewing VC portfolios.

Measurement & Operational Excellence

• Measure sourced pipeline: Track every startup from partner to referral to activation to revenue, starting with the very first referral.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• GTM partnership: Work closely with the Startup Events & Community, Growth, PMM, Sales, and Field Engineering teams. Hand off startups showing strong usage signals and flag when a company is ready for a deeper commercial conversation.

• Voice of the founder: Be the "eyes and ears" of the venture community. Bring what you hear from founders and investors back to Product and Marketing, from messaging and pricing to credits and feature gaps.

Basic Qualifications

• Experience in or with venture: ****You have 5 to 7 years in startup programs, ecosystem partnerships, business development, growth, or GTM, ideally at an AI, developer tools, or infrastructure company

• Has built a startup, partner, or ecosystem program from scratch (offer, first partners, and playbook)

• Has existing working relationships with VC firms, VC platform teams, or accelerators

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Builder mindset: You've built a program 0 → 1. You can go from a blank page to signed partners to measurable results quickly.

• A network you can put to work: You already have real relationships with VC firms, platform teams, or accelerators, and you know how to be genuinely useful to them.

• Commercial instincts: You can structure a partner agreement, negotiate an offer, and defend it with numbers.

• Technically credible: You understand how founders and early engineering teams build with AI, and you can talk about their stack as a peer in a room full of technical founders.

• Measurement discipline: You think in funnels and attribution, and you're comfortable forming and defending a point of view from a dashboard.

• Storytelling: Your writing is sharp, credible, and founder-native, whether it's a partner pitch, a portfolio announcement, or a follow-up email.

Additional Requirements

• Field presence: Ability to travel to partner firms, demo days, and founder events.

• This role is based in our San Francisco office and requires working in-office.