Founding Partnerships Leader

Waniwani; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Waniwani seeks a Senior Operator to lead enterprise partnerships and business development from New York. You will turn marquee relationships into revenue, define how we work with partners, and accelerate distribution with a repeatable playbook.

You will sit with Fortune 500 leaders, shaping deals and building a scalable partnership engine that drives pipeline and growth for the company.

Qualifications

• Proven track record in building partnerships with large enterprises.
• Experience turning marquee logos into repeatable revenue streams.
• Strong ability to design and negotiate win-win partnerships.

Responsibilities

• Write the Partnership Playbook defining ideal partners and win-wins.
• Own partner relationships and drive joint offerings and pipeline.
• Find the best partners whose leverage accelerates distribution.
• Define and standardize the working model for co-sell and partnerships.
• Accelerate from a few to a portfolio of partnerships with measurable metrics.

Skills

Partnerships

Business Development

Enterprise deals

Stakeholder management

Strategic thinking

Job description

Waniwani is building the AI distribution infrastructure for the $10T services economy. We enable service vendors to sell quote-based services (insurance, financing, wealth, software and more) directly inside LLMs like ChatGPT, where buying decisions are moving, and built the Agent to Agent commerce future.

Our first product generated its own type of SaaSpocalypse. We launched the world's first insurance app unlocking quotes in ChatGPT. It triggered a $79B market crash for the world's largest brokers. The press called it "the industry's ChatGPT moment." Now thousands of companies want to deploy their own AI-native storefronts through our infrastructure.

We are global from day one: US, Australia, Middle East, Korea, Europe. Our team is small, the ambition is not.

The role

We've already signed partnerships with the most renowned industry players, including Deloitte and WTW, and proven that the biggest names in the industry want to build the AI distribution future with us. But signed logos are not a playbook. As founding partnerships, your job is to turn those marquee relationships into a repeatable engine: find the right partners, define how we work together, and accelerate every deal into real distribution, pipeline, and revenue.

You'll operate as the founders' peer on the relationships that shape the company. This is a senior, high-trust role for someone who can sit across the table from a Fortune 500 partner and walk out with a working model.

What you'll do:

Write the Partnership Playbook: Define what a great partner looks like, how we design the win-win, how we sign them and how we turn a signature into launched, revenue-generating distribution.

Own the Partner Relationships: Be the person they call. Turn boardroom enthusiasm into shipped joint offerings and pipeline we can count.

Find the Best Partners: Find the leverage. Some partners push our distribution, some make our product better - map where AI distribution creates the most value and go win the few that move the needle, not the many that don't.

Define the Working Model: Co-sell, joint marketing, product partnership - design the commercial and operating model that compounds, then standardize it so the next ten partnerships take a fraction of the effort.

Accelerate: Move us from a handful of hero partnerships to a portfolio. Build the pipeline, set the metrics, and hire the team behind you as the motion proves out.

You:

Senior Operator: You've owned high-stakes partnerships or business development in enterprise, complex environments, and closed deals that other people said were too big to close.

Closer & Builder: You can carry a C-suite relationship yourself and, in the same week, write the process that makes it repeatable.

Structured Thinker: You turn a messy, opportunistic relationship into a clear working model - terms, incentives, and a plan both sides actually execute.

Credible in the Room: Fortune 500 executives, global consultancies, and regulated enterprises take you seriously. You know when to push and when to let the partner win.

0-to-1: You've built a partnerships or BD function from nothing before, and you'd rather write the first playbook than inherit someone else's.