Head of Partnerships

About the role

Harper is an AI-native commercial insurance company in San Francisco. We're not bolting AI onto insurance - we're rebuilding the entire business as software, on a simple bet: turning expert human judgment into compute is one of the largest transitions left to make, and a trillion-dollar industry still run 90% by hand is the place to prove it. We've grown ~100x in the last year and we move at that speed - on-site, in person, long days, very high standards. Almost no one joins Harper for insurance; they join to build the company that replaces how it works.

The Role

Harper turns small-business owners into covered customers at volume, with AI doing the heavy lifting behind the human who closes. We've grown ~100x in a year. The constraint isn't demand. It's getting in front of the right business at the moment buying insurance stops being optional. That's where this role lives.

You'll build distribution at forcing mechanisms: the regulators, lenders, landlords, franchisors, and trusted advisors who make coverage non-optional for a business. Whoever owns that moment owns the highest-intent customer in the market, and your job is to plug Harper into them and turn each one into a channel that compounds.

This is the playbook behind the best distribution businesses (payments networks, commerce platforms, marketplaces): find the installed base, mandate, or transaction moment that carries a product to the customer exactly when they need it. You don't need an insurance background to see the shape of it. You need to have built distribution somewhere.

It's a founding-leader seat reporting to the CEO, in growth and biz-ops, not marketing or pure sales. You start hands-on and earn a team by proving the motion.

What You'll Do

• Close the first marquee partners yourself, structure the economics, and write the playbook from live deals.
• Decide which channels to build and in what order, and say no to the rest.
• Build the attribution, payouts, and contracts so every partner-sourced dollar is tracked.
• Route every referral to a named owner with a tracked outcome.
• Design partner economics counsel can clear before launch, and keep the regulated path fast.
• Own the scoreboard: partner-sourced conversion, revenue per partner, time-to-first-referral, reviewed weekly with the CEO.
• Hire an execution lead and build the team once the motion is proven.

Who You Are

• You think in distribution, not logos.
• You're a player-coach: you'll close deals this quarter and build the team next year.
• You're rigorous about attribution and unit economics, including thin-margin, high-volume models.
• You move cross-functional work across product, legal, compliance, and ops without owning those teams.
• You treat regulation as a design problem, not a blocker.
• You learn a new domain fast and use AI as real leverage.

Requirements

• A track record building distribution, channel, or platform partnerships that drove attributable revenue, at a payments, commerce, fintech, marketplace, or platform company (or somewhere equally complex).
• You've personally closed and structured partner deals, not just managed a team that did.
• Comfort with low-margin, high-volume unit economics.
• Based in SF or willing to relocate; on-site, with travel to partner markets.

Nice to Have

• Insurance, insurtech, or other regulated-distribution experience (useful, never required).
• Embedded or API distribution, developer/ISV ecosystems, or marketplace app stores.
• Channel or reseller program design.
• A regulated launch navigated with counsel.

The Reality

• This is a build-from-zero seat, not a big-company partnerships seat.
• No team, no pipeline, no brand opening doors.
• You are the brand, and the first quarter is you closing deals yourself.
• The deals are small and the discipline is high, so small-dollar, high-volume economics have to energize you.
• It's on-site in San Francisco, long days, Monday to Friday, with travel when the work calls for it.
• Almost no one takes this job for insurance.
• They take it because owning distribution from zero at a company growing ~100x is about as close to founding something as you can get without leaving.

Compensation

• Salary: $190,000 to $260,000 base, plus a milestone-based variable tied to partner-sourced revenue, plus meaningful equity.
• Location: On-site, San Francisco. Based here or willing to relocate.
• Schedule: Monday to Friday, long days, on-site, with travel to partner markets as needed.

Benefits

• Uber commuter benefits
• Meals provided: breakfast, lunch, and dinner
• Snacks, drinks, and coffee stocked daily
• Free gym membership
• Health, dental, and vision insurance

The Process

• Lead screen - Fit and alignment.
• Founder screen with the CEO - How you think about distribution at a forcing mechanism.
• Super day - Work a live partner pitch and present a partnership you built.

To Apply

Send your resume and one partnership or distribution channel you built yourself: who the partner was, the forcing mechanism it sat on, the economics you structured, and how you know it worked.