Remote, hybrid, or in-office: what works for your team, and why?
We're a fully remote team, and tools like Slack and GitHub help us stay connected and aligned. What makes it work, though, is less about the tools and more about how we operate: autonomy and trust have always been core to how we work together.
Describe your typical day
My day usually starts with checking in on priorities across product, content, and partnerships. A good part of it goes into translating customer feedback into product improvements, working with the team on what to build or adjust next. The rest is a mix of content and GEO work, partnership coordination, and keeping things moving across whatever sits at the intersection of marketing, product, and partnerships that day. No two days look exactly the same, which is part of what keeps the role interesting.
What principles guide how you build?
We build around three ideas: product is for people, focus on the customer, and results over process. If something's hard to use or hard to find, it isn't a "solution". We work to keep functionality simple even as we add capability. We're successful when our customers are successful, which means focusing on what actually moves the needle for them. And when it comes to support, we don't say no, we say let's solve this together.
What's your pricing philosophy?
Our pricing follows the same philosophy as our product: keep it simple. No complex tables, no gated features that force you to guess which plan actually covers what you need. We'd rather have straightforward plans that scale with you than make people work to figure out what they're paying for.
What does a partnership program actually kill when it works—what internal motion does it quietly replace?
When a partnership program works well, it replaces a lot of the manual chasing that growth and marketing teams normally do, cold outreach, one off deals, spreadsheets to track who gets paid what. It turns partner growth into something that mostly runs on its own, with tracking, payouts, and communication built in, so the team can spend time on strategy instead of admin.
When a company's first partner program fails, what did they almost always get wrong about the first thirty days?
First attempts fail because the first thirty days focus on signing partners up rather than actually activating them, sending a welcome email and hoping people figure it out from there. Partners need clear next steps, easy access to assets, and a reason to make their first move quickly, or momentum disappears fast. Programs that succeed early treat onboarding as seriously as recruitment itself.
SaaS companies increasingly want one platform for affiliates, influencers, and referral—what breaks when you try to serve all three with the same logic?
Affiliates, influencers, and referral programs look similar on the surface but the logic underneath is different, affiliates are usually driven by commission structures, referrals depend on existing customer relationships, and influencer programs need different tracking like coupon codes or clickless attribution. We built Partnero to support each type properly instead of bending one model to fit everything.
What's the conversation you keep having with CFOs who see partner programs as a cost center rather than a revenue line?
It usually comes down to showing that partner programs only look like a cost when they aren't tracked properly. With clear attribution and transparent payouts, partner revenue becomes just as measurable as any other channel, often at a lower cost per acquisition than paid ads.
Most affiliate platforms treat every partner the same until someone proves otherwise—why has that default survived so long?
A lot of affiliate platforms were built around simple, flat commission structures because that's easier to build and easier to explain to new partners. Treating everyone the same by default has stuck around because differentiating partners properly takes more flexible tooling than most platforms offer. That's part of what we've tried to change, letting businesses set individual terms without needing a developer involved.
What does a mature partner ecosystem look like that a brand-new program manager genuinely cannot picture yet?
A mature ecosystem has partners at very different stages, and the program treats them differently instead of running one playbook for everyone. Most of the day to day, tracking, payouts, communication, runs without much manual work, so the team can focus on relationships and strategy instead of operations.
What do buyers most often misunderstand about what you do?
A lot of people think launching an affiliate program is the finish line, but that's really where the work starts. Unless you already have a well known product, affiliates don't just show up on their own, you have to recruit them, give them a reason to promote you, and keep them engaged. The programs that actually work treat launch as day one, not day done.