Entrepreneur in Residence - Travel & Hotels

Always Friday; Lombardia; Hybrid; EUR 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Lunch vouchers

Private insurance plan

Dinner vouchers

Office in Milan

Remote work days

Team events

Job summary

Always Friday, an AI-native agency, is seeking a high-ownership supply/channel leader in Europe. You will drive the Bridge channel from Italy to scale across Spain and the UK, owning partner acquisition, activation and revenue. You will visit venues, test pitches, and build repeatable processes to turn prospects into closed events.

You will work from our Milan office with substantial remote days, reporting to the CEO and building a small, fast-moving team as we expand across Europe.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in startups, scale-ups, consulting, or similarly high-ownership environments.

Responsibilities

• Take us as many clients as possible through the Bridge channel, from month 1; revenue through channel is the North Star.
• Test different pitches, incentives, onboarding flows and activation strategies.
• Own the funnel end to end: partner acquisition, activation, lead generation, qualification and revenue.
• Personally call and visit venues to build the Bridge activation and engagement playbook: who to call, what to say, how to get the first lead within 30 days.
• Define the partner venue ICP and turn it into prospecting lists and prioritisation criteria.
• Build the first repeatable playbook for taking a venue from prospect → partner → first lead → first closed event.
• Hire and lead the first people dedicated to the channel.
• Define targets, incentives, pipeline reviews and operating cadence.
• Build framework partnerships with hotel groups, chains and other hospitality networks.
• Build venue acquisition channels beyond the existing base: regional consortia and DMOs, venue-to-venue referrals, trade events.
• Take the model you built in Italy to Spain and the UK, working with the local country managers.
• Own the supply numbers in front of the CEO and investors: active partners, leads, revenue generated, acquisition cost.

Skills

Sales

GTM skills

Cold calling

Negotiation

Closing deals

Analytical thinking

Hands-on attitude

Job description

Always Friday is the first AI-native agency. We are not an event agency: we are the startup that will make the agency model, as it exists today, obsolete. We are a corporate event concierge built on a proprietary platform: companies use us to book venues, catering, transportation and team-building activities for everything from a business dinner to a seminar to a large annual retreat. Behind the scenes, AI and automation take care of every administrative and low-value task, so that our Event Specialists spend their time on the only thing that cannot be automated: the client.

We were born a year and a half ago and we are moving fast. We closed a pre-seed round with top-tier VCs, revenue is growing 7x year over year, and 22 exceptionally talented people already work at Always Friday. We are closing 2026 in strong growth and opening two new markets in 2027: Spain and the United Kingdom.

The corporate events space is ripe for disruption. Companies keep increasing their event budgets, yet the industry still runs on outdated concierge models and software that hasn't evolved in decades. Always Friday is redefining that landscape: automation that streamlines planning end to end, a better experience for organisers and attendees, and financial transparency and compliance built in by default. We are not just making event management easier. We are setting a new standard for the industry.

Our supply, the network of hotels, estates, venues and vendors that powers the platform, is today our most under-used asset. A few months ago it also became a customer acquisition channel: through Bridge Referral, partner venues forward us the corporate event requests they cannot serve, and we turn them into events. Bridge is already live, has already closed its first events, and activates dozens of new venues every month with no sales effort. What is missing is the person who turns it into a machine.

The mission, with numbers. You have twelve months to make Always Friday's supply our number one customer acquisition channel throughout Europe. You report directly to the CEO and lead the supply team, one person today, growing with results.

Tasks

You will own the journey from 0 → 1 → scale.

At the beginning, there will be no large team, no perfect playbook and no ready-made answers. You will have hypotheses, early traction, access to thousands of potential partners and the resources of Always Friday behind you. Everything else is yours to build.

In the first 90 days

Your priority is traction.

• Take us as many clients as possible through that channel, from month 1. Revenue generated from your channel will be North Star Metric for this role.

• Test different pitches, incentives, onboarding flows and activation strategies.

• Own the funnel end to end: partner acquisition, activation, lead generation, qualification and revenue.

• Personally call and visit venues to build the Bridge activation and engagement playbook: who to call, what to say, how to get the first lead within 30 days of activation.

• Define the partner venue ICP (today we have hypotheses and early data, not certainties) and turn it into prospecting lists and prioritisation criteria.

After the 90 days

• Build the first repeatable playbook for taking a venue from prospect → partner → first lead → first closed event.

• Hire and lead the first people dedicated to the channel.

• Define targets, incentives, pipeline reviews and operating cadence.

• Build framework partnerships with hotel groups, chains and other hospitality networks.

• Build venue acquisition channels beyond our existing base: regional consortia and DMOs, industry listings, venue-to-venue referrals, trade events.

• Take the model you built in Italy to Spain and the UK, working with the local country managers.

• Own the supply numbers in front of the CEO and investors: active partners, leads, revenue generated, acquisition cost.

Requirements

Must have

• 2+ years of experience in startups, scale-ups, consulting, business development or similarly high-ownership environments.

• Strong Sales & GTM skills. You are comfortable with cold calls, outreach, demos, negotiations and closing.

• A track record of taking something from 0 to 1: a new market, product, acquisition channel, business line or commercial initiative.

• Strong analytical thinking. You understand funnels, conversion rates, CAC and unit economics and use numbers to decide what to do next.

• You don’t have problems in getting your hands dirty: this role might lead to create a huge team but, at first, it will mean cold calling family run “agriturismi” to ask for their opinion on phone. Are you willing to do this? Are you motivated enough?

• How to scale a channel from the ground up

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience both acquiring independent venues (by phone and on site) and negotiating with groups and chains at head‑office level.

• You have worked in a startup or scale-up in a growth phase and know what it means to change the process every month.

• You know MICE: you know what a brief, a site inspection and an agency commission are.

• You use AI in your daily work and want to work in a company that puts it at the centre of every process.

This is not for you if

• You want to manage an existing machine rather than build one.

• You expect someone else to define the strategy before you execute it.

• You prefer planning to testing.

• You are uncomfortable picking up the phone yourself.

• You need a large team before you can produce results.

Benefits

• RAL OTE €70,000 - €100,000 uncapped

• Equity: we are still an early-stage startup and equity taken now can be worth A LOT in just a couple years.

• Benefits: Lunch Vouchers and Private Insurance Plan. This offer will grow as much as we grow as a company.

• Dinner Voucher for nights in the office

• You will work in of the hottest, fastest growing startup in Europe.

• 80 days where you can work remotely from wherever you want

• A cool office in the city center in Milan

• Team life you'll actually enjoy: from Friday drinks and team sports to offsites, seminars, and parties. Life at AF is full of moments to connect, unwind, and celebrate together.

• An AI-native company: every process, from prospecting to reporting, is built with AI tools. We don't use them to replace commercial work, we use them to remove everything that isn't relationship.