Founding Strategy & Partnership Lead

Matchii is the new way to hire agencies: matched, not browsed.

Hiring an agency today is a slog: 20+ quotes, 40+ hours of vetting, and a gut-feel pick that's wrong about half the time. Matchii makes it feel like booking the perfect flight; describe what you need, the right team appears, work begins. Human, AI-native, or hybrid. We match. We back the outcome.

Behind the scenes, it's two products on one platform: a matched marketplace for the people doing the hiring and an operating system that the agencies run their whole business on. Underneath both is a data layer, the largest dataset of real services pricing and outcomes anywhere, that makes every match smarter than the last.

The timing is the whole point. The $500B+ global agency services market is old and broken, and AI just blew the supply side open: 100+ AI-native services launched in the past year alone, with no platform connecting buyers to the new shape of supply. That gap has been open for years. We're building the company that fills it.

Role summary

We're an early-stage startup looking for our founding Partnerships Lead — a high-caliber, tech-savvy operator to accelerate Matchii's ecosystem growth across North America. You'll lead the dual-sided expansion of our platform — nurturing high-value enterprise client relationships while scaling our agency partner network — and convert demand into paying clients. You'll also spearhead business development for our AI OS: identifying commercial opportunities, scouting strategic alliances, and closing complex, high-impact partnership agreements. The ideal candidate thrives at the intersection of SaaS ecosystems and AI innovation, with the commercial acumen to turn technical capability into scalable, revenue-generating alliances.

What you'll own

1 . Dual-sided ecosystem

• Agency partner network. Recruit, onboard, and manage strategic marketing and tech agencies across North America, including the recent wave of AI-native services and top boutiques, and turn them into powerful channel multipliers.

• Enterprise client retention & growth. Cultivate deep relationships with key enterprise clients, drive long-term adoption, and find up-sell/cross-sell through joint initiatives.

• Co-marketing & co-selling. Design and run joint value props, case studies, and co-marketing campaigns that keep the pipeline fueled.

2. Conversion & the sales motion

• Convert founder-network and VC-referral buyers into paying clients through the concierge phase, then build the repeatable motion behind it.

• Run mid-market direct sales to Operators tired of 60-day RFP cycles. The Benchmark Library is your wedge into procurement-grade conversations.

• Hire and lead the first SDR / BDR / AE as the motion proves out.

3. AI OS business development & alliances

• Strategic sourcing & outreach. Identify and pitch high-potential partners, AI labs, tech platforms, software vendors, to embed or integrate Matchii's AI OS.

• Deal structuring & negotiation. Lead the end-to-end lifecycle: business-case definition, financial modeling, and negotiating complex commercial terms and legal contracts.

• Ecosystem positioning. Position Matchii's AI OS as the leading infrastructure for enterprise commercial matchmaking in North America.

4. Partnerships

• Build the VC partner referral engine, investor portfolios all need design, brand, and dev help; one partner relationship is worth dozens of warm intros.

5. Cross-functional enablement

• Feedback loop. Be the bridge between external partners and our Product and Engineering teams, translating market feedback into AI OS feature requirements.

• KPI tracking. Own and report partner-sourced pipeline, contract value (ACV/TCV), and integration-adoption rates.

Who we're looking for

• 5+ years of business development or partnerships experience in B2B SaaS, Cloud, or AI, specifically targeting the North American market.

• AI acumen: a solid grasp of AI technologies (LLMs, API integrations, workflow automation) and the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business value for C-level executives.

• Deal-closing capability: you've negotiated and closed 5–6 figure commercial agreements, technology integrations, or joint-venture partnerships.

• The "player-coach" hustle: an entrepreneurial mindset that builds the partnership framework from scratch while actively picking up the phone to source and close.

• Comfortable on both sides of our market: selling trust to Series A founders, and selling distribution to AI-native agencies.

• You've hired or managed SDR/BDR/AE, or you're ready to, fast.

• Communication mastery: native or near-native English, with exceptional presentation and storytelling tailored to North American business culture.

Why this, why now

There's no layer between you and the revenue. You'll talk to customers and partners daily, feed what you learn straight into the product, and watch the motion and alliances you build become the thing the company runs on, early enough that the whole function is yours to define.

How we hire

1. Intro call (30 min).

2. Founder call: the market and what you've closed.

3. Assessment.

4. References & offer.