Startup Partnerships Lead

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 215,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Join Anthropic as the Startup Partnerships Lead in San Francisco. In this pivotal role, you'll enhance our wide-reaching strategy by building and managing impactful partnerships within the startup ecosystem, driving awareness and adoption of our advanced AI technology.

We're looking for someone with strong communication skills and a knack for relationship building, aiming to innovate within the AI landscape. Your strategic vision will contribute significantly to scaling our mission as we work towards creating beneficial AI systems.

Qualifications

• Experience sourcing, negotiating, and managing partnerships in tech.
• Working knowledge of startup ecosystem dynamics.
• Experience executing complex go-to-market programs.

Responsibilities

• Develop and lead partnerships strategy with startups.
• Build relationships with key accelerators and communities.
• Plan and execute startup-focused events and initiatives.

Skills

Partnership management

Communication skills

CRM tools proficiency

Relationship building

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

As the Startup Partnerships Lead at Anthropic, you will drive transformative growth and strategic alignment by forging and managing high-impact startup partnerships. You will drive the adoption of Anthropic's cutting‑edge AI capabilities within the startup ecosystem. In this role, you will design and execute innovative programs that enable startups to easily access and utilize Anthropic's advanced AI models. Your goal will be to scale our reach and impact by engaging with startups directly and through the accelerator ecosystem.

This is an individual contributor role with broad ownership — you'll operate with high autonomy, partnering closely with sales, marketing, and product teams to build and run our startup partnerships motion.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and lead Anthropic's startup partnerships strategy, leveraging our AI technology and industry partnerships
• Build relationships with key accelerators, and entrepreneurial communities
• Create compelling startup-focused offerings, programs, and growth initiatives
• Cultivate strong relationships with current and new accelerator partnerships; build out relationship models, own touchpoints, and drive outcomes such that accelerator portfolio companies are choosing to build on Claude.
• Plan and execute startup-focused events, campaigns, and promotions to drive awareness and adoption
• Gather product feedback and represent the needs of the startup community to inform Anthropic's product roadmap
• Track and report on key metrics to measure the success and ROI of startup initiatives

Minimum qualifications

• Experience sourcing, negotiating, and managing partnerships or business development relationships in the technology industry
• Working knowledge of the startup ecosystem, including how venture firms, accelerators, and founder communities operate
• Experience designing and executing complex, cross‑functional go‑to‑market programs end to end
• Proficiency with CRM and reporting tools (e.g., Salesforce) to track pipeline and measure program performance
• Exceptional communication and relationship‑building skills with both technical and business audiences

Preferred qualifications

• Deep understanding of the AI/ML technology landscape and experience positioning LLM or API‑based products
• Experience working with cloud provider startup programs (e.g., AWS Activate, Google for Startups) or co‑sell motions
• Experience enabling sales teams and delivering training on technical productsExperience working at or closely with early‑stage startups and founders
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities in a rapidly evolving market
• Passion for the positive impact that AI can have for startups and society as a whole

Compensation

Annual salary: $215,000 - $300,000 USD

Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
• Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
• Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
• Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
• Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.