Here is a question that is generating real debate in the startup world right now: should the person running your partnerships function have a seat at the executive table?
Not a VP title tucked three levels below the CEO. A proper C-suite seat. A Chief Partnerships Officer (or Chief Partner Officer), Chief Ecosystem Officer, depending on who you ask - with direct access to the board, a voice in strategic decisions, and the authority to shape the direction of the company, not just execute within it.
The honest answer is: it depends. But the more interesting question is, what does it depend on, and how do you know when you have crossed the threshold?
The argument starts with the numbers. Leading SaaS platforms like Microsoft and Salesforce have established truly partner-centric organizations, with Microsoft generating 95% and Salesforce 75% of their revenue through partners.
These are not companies that treat partnerships as a supporting function. They treat it as the primary go-to-market motion and their organizational structure reflects that.
For earlier-stage startups, the revenue contribution of partnerships is growing fast. In 2024, partners drove over half a billion dollars of revenue through the PartnerStack ecosystem, representing a 9% increase in total annual partner-driven revenue.
Across the SaaS industry, 75% of business leaders now acknowledge ecosystem partnerships as a key driver of growth strategy. This is not a trend on the horizon. It is already here.
The structural argument for elevating partnerships to the C-suite is made clearly by Asher Mathew, CEO at Partnership Leaders, in a recent Nearbound podcast. His case rests on the build, buy, or partner decision one of the most consequential strategic choices a technology company makes, one that directly determines how fast and how efficiently it grows. If the person accountable for that decision is sitting below the C-suite, they do not have the authority or the visibility to execute it properly. As Mathew puts it: "That decision can literally change the trajectory of companies. And if we have more senior executives that want to lead that conversation and the execution of it, I believe we can have CPOs."
Forrester published a Role Profile for the Chief Partner Officer in 2025, describing it as a critical C-suite position driven by the strategic value of partnerships and the growing complexity of business ecosystems. That a firm like Forrester is documenting the role at all signals that the conversation has moved well beyond theoretical.
Part of the confusion around whether a CPO belongs in the C-suite stems from ambiguity about what the role actually entails at that level.
A VP of Partnerships or Head of Partnerships is a highly strategic role but it is fundamentally an execution role. You build the program, manage the relationships, hit the quarterly OKRs, and report up. The Crossbeam hiring guide on partnership roles describes VPs as focused on long-term partnerships strategy that aligns with overall business strategy; influential, but not necessarily setting it.
A Chief Partner Officer operates at a different layer. According to Partnership Leaders' CPO Blueprint, the role involves ecosystem mapping and strategic evaluation of potential partners, innovation and co-creation with partners including joint product development, internal stakeholder alignment across GTM functions, and regulatory and risk management within the ecosystem. These are not execution tasks. They are strategic and governance responsibilities that require C-suite authority to execute well.
Dominique Airey, who joined carbon removal startup CUR8 as Partnerships Director at C-suite level, articulates this clearly in her Sifted interview on hiring a partnerships lead into the C-suite: "The partnership person is your front line. The insights they bring back from conversations with partners and potential partners will inform the commercial, product and sales strategy of the company." If that is true (and it is), then the information that person carries is too important to be filtered through multiple layers before it reaches the CEO.
The case against a CPO in the C-suite is not simply resistance to change. There are legitimate structural reasons why most startups should not create this role immediately.
First, at early stages, the volume and complexity of partnerships does not yet justify a dedicated C-suite position. A single VP of Partnerships or Head of Partnerships who reports directly to the CEO can carry both the strategic and execution weight without the overhead of a separate C-suite hire.
Second, the C-suite exists to own the primary levers of the business. For most early-stage SaaS companies, partnerships are not yet the primary revenue channel but are one of several. Elevating partnerships before it has earned that status can create misaligned priorities and a function that is over-resourced relative to its current contribution.
Third, there is a real risk of confusing title with impact. A VP of Partnerships with genuine CEO buy-in and direct access to the executive team may have more effective influence than a nominal CPO who lacks either. As Mekaela Davis, CPO at Trintech, discussed in the Unlearn podcast, CEO buy-in for partnerships is not a consequence of having a CPO but a prerequisite for the role to be effective at all.
Three conditions tend to indicate that a startup is ready to consider elevating partnerships to the C-suite.
When partnerships drives 20-30% or more of revenue. At this level, the function becomes a primary channel. The person running it needs the authority to make strategic decisions at the same level as the CMO or CRO.
When the build, buy, or partner decision is genuinely on the table. If your company is evaluating whether to build a capability in-house, acquire a company, or partner your way into the market, you need someone in the room who owns that decision and has the relationships to execute on it. That person cannot be two levels below the CEO.
When the partnerships function spans product, sales, and marketing simultaneously. A partner program that touches integrations, co-selling, and co-marketing is now a cross-functional strategic layer that requires C-suite authority to coordinate effectively.
For most startups reading this, the right move is not to immediately create a Chief Partnerships Officer. The right move is to build the foundations that would eventually justify the role: a defined partner ICP, a structured introduction workflow, measurable pipeline attribution, and a growing ecosystem of active partners.
Scayul is designed for exactly this stage. It is a partner ecosystem platform that helps startup founders and partnership managers find the right partners systematically, manage warm introductions end-to-end, and track partner activity without yet needing a dedicated partnerships hire or a C-suite title to run it. Getting the function to a point where it demonstrably drives revenue is what earns the seat at the table.
The CPO debate is ultimately not about hierarchy. It is about whether partnerships has become consequential enough to your business that treating it as anything less than a strategic priority is leaving growth on the table. For the fastest-growing SaaS companies, the evidence increasingly suggests the answer is yes.