A practical guide to scaling partnerships as your startup grows.
Partnerships are one of the most powerful growth levers for startups and one of the easiest to get wrong as you scale.
Too early, and you burn time and money on a function that isn’t ready. Too late, and partnerships become reactive, messy, and impossible to untangle. The reality is that your partnership team should look very different at $500K ARR than it does at $8M or $20M.
Based on common startup growth patterns, this article walks through how partnership team structure typically evolves as a company grows - what to focus on at each stage, who to hire (or not hire), and how responsibilities shift over time.
Team structure:
At this stage, partnerships are not a function - they’re experiments.
Most startups under $1M ARR should not hire for partnerships. The founder (or a very early leader) handles everything: inbound introductions, early integrations, co-marketing tests, and the occasional strategic deal.
Why? Because partnerships at this stage are about learning, not scale.
Your goals here:
Anything more formal than this is usually premature. There’s no playbook yet and hiring before you have one often leads to vague roles and unclear ROI.
Team structure:
As traction increases, partnerships start to feel “important” but not yet “hire a team” important.
This is where many startups externalize partnerships:
The upside is speed and flexibility. You get execution without long-term commitment, and you can test different partnership motions without locking yourself into a full-time hire.
However, this stage still requires strong founder involvement. External partners can execute, but they can’t define strategy for a product they didn’t build.
Key focus areas:
If partnerships feel promising but inconsistent, you’re probably right on track.
Team structure:
This is the inflection point and the one highlighted in your framework as “We are here.”
At this stage, partnerships are no longer just experiments. They’re producing meaningful revenue, pipeline, or product leverage and they need ownership.
Most companies hire a Partnerships Manager here, often someone who:
Early direct reports might include:
This role is still very execution-heavy. The manager is closing deals, managing partners, refining messaging, and building early process often all at once.
The goal of this stage:
It’s also where partnerships shift from “nice to have” to something sales, product, and marketing must actively collaborate on.
Team structure:
Once you cross into this range, partnerships stop being a single role and become a real function.
The Head of Partnerships is now responsible for:
Direct reports often include:
The key shift here is leverage. The Head of Partnerships should no longer be personally closing every deal. Instead, they focus on:
At this stage, structure matters. Without clear ownership and goals, partnerships can quickly become fragmented with different teams pulling in different directions.
Team structure:
At $10M+ ARR, partnerships are a strategic pillar of the business.
The Director of Partnerships oversees a broad ecosystem that may include:
This role is deeply cross-functional and externally facing. It’s less about execution and more about:
At this level, partnerships influence product roadmap, go-to-market strategy, and even M&A conversations. Measurement becomes more sophisticated, and success is tied directly to company-level outcomes.
There’s no “one-size-fits-all” partnership org but there is a clear pattern.
The biggest mistake startups make is skipping steps - either hiring too early without clarity, or waiting too long and creating chaos.
If you align your partnership team structure with your stage of growth, partnerships stop being a question mark and start becoming a durable advantage.
And in 2026, that advantage compounds fast.