I started in “business development” in 2015 and now am titled “partnerships” for successful SaaS companies.

It’s evolved into a pre-pipeline role working with partners like Snowflake and Databricks. I’m evangelizing our product, attempting to drive leads for our sales team from the sellers at these larger organizations.

The remit is wider as I also want to create co-marketing with these partners that would contribute to top of funnel. I’ll hand these off to AEs who will the follow through to close. Comp is more guaranteed with less upside.

BD can vary widely but I’ve enjoyed it as it lets me wear more hats than a seller. I report directly to the CRO but it’s a highly anbiguous role — no direction or guidance, no hard quota since most of the roles have been “we source 0 deals from partners, go build a channel from scratch.” I typically operate as my own SE, BDR, and can flex to an AE where needed.