Director of Business Development

This is a perfect fit if you would rather land one relationship that produces ten clients than chase ten clients one at a time. You think in portfolios, you are comfortable in a room with a partner at a fund, and you understand that the sell to an investor is different from the sell to an operator.

Onward is a growth marketing and data agency. We build the data infrastructure that tells a brand what actually worked, and we run the media that drives the growth. Most agencies do one or the other. We do both, on a flat monthly fee tied to neither spend nor revenue.

That model is unusually easy to underwrite from an investor's seat. A fund putting capital into a portfolio company wants that capital deployed into paid media efficiently, and wants to know what the spend actually produced. That is the conversation you will be having.

You own the partnership channel. Not outbound, not inbound, not closing individual accounts. Relationships with funds and platforms that produce a repeatable flow of qualified portfolio companies.

The distinction matters. Our direct sales motion already exists and is owned by someone else. Your job is the layer above it, where one relationship compounds instead of one deal closing.

This is an individual contributor role reporting directly to the CEO. You will not be managing a team, and you will not be waiting on one either. You own the channel and you have the autonomy to build it your way.

• Build and own relationships with VC and PE firms whose portfolios fit our ICP: DTC and B2B companies between $1M and $50M in revenue
• Get on operating partner and platform team radars, since that is who routes agency recommendations inside a fund
• Structure the partnership itself, whether that is a preferred vendor arrangement, referral economics, or a portfolio-wide diagnostic offer
• Build partnerships with complementary firms where the fit is real: creative shops, retention agencies, fractional CFO and CMO firms, and platforms
• Represent Onward at investor and industry events, with meetings booked before you get on the plane
• Work with the founders on the pitch and positioning for an investor audience, which is a different pitch than the operator one
• Hand off qualified opportunities cleanly to the sales team, and stay close enough to know whether what you sourced actually stuck

• A live network of VC and PE relationships you can activate, not a list you would have to build from zero
• A track record of sourcing revenue through partnerships rather than direct outbound
• Fluency in how funds actually work: fund structure, portfolio support models, and who inside a firm makes vendor recommendations and who does not
• Enough command of growth marketing and measurement to hold a substantive conversation with a portfolio company's CEO without a founder in the room
• Comfort with a long sales cycle, and the discipline to keep a relationship warm for a year before it produces anything

• Agency-side or professional services business development experience
• Experience selling into a vertical we already serve: beauty, apparel, or B2B software
• Prior work at a fund, an accelerator, or a portfolio operations team

Base plus commission, with real upside on the partnerships you land. We will be direct about the numbers in the first conversation rather than making you ask three times. If you are the kind of person who wants most of their comp tied to what they produce, we can build it that way.

People who are hungry. Our clients are moving fast and so are we. You will have real autonomy over how you build this channel and real accountability for what it produces.

If that is you, we want to talk.