When should we hire our first full time partnerships person, and what do we pay them?
The trigger is workload and money, not a funding round. When partner conversations stop fitting into a founder's evenings, roughly 15 to 25 active partners or 50 partner conversations a quarter, or when partner sourced revenue is already 5 to 10% of new ARR, you are late. Pay them like a seller with a longer fuse: roughly 65 to 75% base with the rest tied to partner sourced revenue plus a program health modifier, because pure sourced comp in year one pushes them toward quick referrals and away from the integrations that pay in year two. Hire someone who has done zero to one before, not someone who inherited a mature program with a team of eight.
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The only guide we found with concrete hiring triggers (15 to 25 active partners, 5 to 10% of new ARR partner sourced) and a real comp split, plus an interview loop that filters for operators over relationship generalists.
Written by the industry body for partnership professionals, so it describes the job as practitioners actually experience it, including the reassurance that you do not need prior partnerships experience to do it well.
An investor's readiness test rather than a how to, built around three blunt questions: are you ready, which partner type, and who owns it. Useful before you say yes to a first inbound partnership.
The written answer gives you a base to variable split and a reason for it. This walks through the actual plan structures, including why pure sourced comp in year one pulls a new partnerships hire toward quick referrals.
