About Disrupt and this role
Disrupt.com is a bootstrapped, AI-native venture builder headquartered in UAE, with teams selling and operating across global markets. Our venture building engine co-founds and scales category-defining AI-native companies, and Disrupt Capital, our strategic investment arm, backs high-conviction opportunities across funds, growth-stage startups and private market secondaries. Our core venture clusters span cybersecurity, Web 3 / tokenisation, AI platforms, Product/Growth, consumer brands, automotive and AI-enabled private equity. What sets us apart is our operator-first model. We don't just write cheques – we build, operate and compound value alongside our founders, taking meaningful equity and engaging deeply across strategy, governance, operations, talent and go-to-market. Backed by the track record of our founding partners – including the $350mn exit of Cloudways to DigitalOcean – Disrupt today is widely regarded as one of the most successful ventures building platforms from MENA globally. We are building a portfolio of AI-native ventures, running a growing book of global investments, and partnering with platforms like AWS and Anthropic as well as government programs/ecosystem enablers like Hub71, DET and The Terminal to unlock scale. Partnerships are how we give every one of those ventures an unfair advantage: faster market entry, cheaper infrastructure, warmer investor access and a steady flow of exceptional founders. Over the last quarter alone we have signed or advanced partnerships with Hub71, Dubai Economy & Tourism, Terminal Istanbul, AWS, Anthropic, World Summit AI and Reuters NEXT Gulf, and taken our Builder Meetups from Riyadh to London, Berlin and Istanbul.
The opening is momentum without an owner. Our pipeline of partners is growing faster than our capacity to turn MoUs into outcomes.
We are hiring an Associate, Strategy & Partnerships to make sure every relationship we sign produces something measurable: customers, credits, capital, founders or brand. The role is partnerships-first. Alongside it, you'll support the SVP on strategic initiatives at the centre and inside portfolio ventures, which is where you'll see how the partnerships you build translate into enterprise value. This is not a coordinator role. You'll work directly with the SVP to build the partnerships function proactively: owning a book of partnerships from first conversation to signed terms to measured value, and deciding which ones deserve our time. Just as important, you'll help every Disrupt venture get full value from the partnerships we already have. You'll work directly with the EC, venture founders and senior people at governments, platforms and funds.
What you'll own
Partnerships is the core of the role: five pillars, each with a clear value test. If a partnership doesn't move one of these outcomes, you'll say so and redeploy the time. A sixth strand, roughly a fifth of your time, is strategy support to the SVP.
1. Ecosystem and market access, for Disrupt and our ventures
- Manage and grow our ecosystem partners, including Hub71, Dubai Economy & Tourism (Dubai Founders HQ), Terminal Istanbul, DIFC, in5 and the KSA ecosystem.
- Turn signed MoUs into activation plans with named owners, dates and outcomes: licences, grants, soft-landing programmes, customer intros and co-created ventures.
- Map market-entry routes for ventures moving into KSA, Türkiye, the UK and the US, and broker the right introductions.
- Channel partner benefits (access programmes, perks, pilot customers) directly to the ventures that can use them.
2. Platform partnerships for new tools, models and cost efficiency
- Own relationships with AWS, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Stripe and the wider AI and SaaS stack.
- Secure credits, startup and venture-partner programmes, early model and product access, and technical enablement for every venture.
- Build and run the cost-savings programme with Finance: map every group-wide spend category above $150K a year and negotiate a targeted 15–25%+ savings on cloud, tools, travel, event spaces and services.
- Track what we save, per venture and per category, and report it.
3. Investment relationships and VC partnerships
- Build and maintain relationships with VCs, family offices, accelerators and co-investors across MENA, Europe and the US (e.g. BECO, Shorooq, Global Ventures, Antler, Techstars, Endeavor).
- Keep the Disrupt investor CRM current, and arrange warm intros for ventures raising capital.
- Build fund partnerships that give our ventures distribution, such as placing ventures on VC portfolio perks portals.
- Work alongside the Investments team on investor mapping and event-based investor meetings. You won't lead fundraising.
4. Events: hosting and participation, globally
- Own our partnership strategy for events: which to attend, sponsor, speak at or co-host, and what each must return.
- Secure venue, community, media and sponsor partners for our Builder Meetups and founder events (recent partners include Colabs, World Summit AI, Slush'D, Terminal Istanbul and Roland Berger).
- Prepare EC members for flagship events such as GITEX, LEAP, Money20/20, Reuters NEXT Gulf and Web Summit, with target meeting lists, briefs and follow-up.
- Set a signup and pipeline threshold for every partnered event, and recommend cutting events that miss it.
5. Founder search partnerships
- Build the partner network that feeds our Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Founder-in-Residence funnel: universities, founder communities, operator networks, accelerators and diaspora groups such as Paklaunch.
- Run the partner side of the Founder Search Program across target hubs (London, NYC, SF, Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, Riyadh, Istanbul).
- Keep registrant data flowing from Luma into the CRM, and track which partners bring founders who reach experiments and MVPs.
6. Strategy support to the SVP
- Support the SVP on strategic initiatives at the centre and inside portfolio ventures: research, market and competitor mapping, benchmarking, financial and commercial analysis.
- Turn working sessions into board- and EC-ready outputs: memos, decision papers, models and short decks.
- Take discrete workstreams on named venture situations (e.g. Keystone, SquatWolf, Zamanat, Ridge) and run them to a conclusion.
- Track decisions and follow-ups from EC and CLT sessions that sit with this function, so nothing stalls.
Across the role
- Venture enablement: keep a live catalogue of partner benefits (credits, programmes, perks, intros), and run regular sessions with venture teams so each one uses what we've already secured.
- Distribution partnerships: where a strategic partner can also bring distribution or customers for a venture (e.g. VC perks portals, platform marketplaces), you'll manage it until a dedicated sales and commercial function is set up.
- Own the partnerships pipeline and CRM (Attio): stage, owner, next step and value delivered for every partner.
- Draft MoUs, term sheets and partnership proposals, working with Legal on final terms.
- Publish a monthly partnerships scorecard for the EC, and run a six-monthly review of which partners to deepen, keep or exit.
Who you are
- AI-first by default. You already run your work on AI: research, partner mapping, briefs, outreach drafts, CRM hygiene, meeting follow-ups. You've built at least one workflow or agent that saves you real hours, and you can show it. You keep up with what's shipping in models and tools, and you can judge which platform deals matter for our ventures.
- Founder mentality. You've started something, or been early at a startup where there was no playbook. You're comfortable with ambiguity, act without waiting for permission, and treat Disrupt's reputation as your own. When a partnership stalls, you find another route rather than escalate.
- Commercial and value-led. You see relationships as assets to build and convert. Before any meeting you know what we want, what they want and where the trade is. You can put a number on a partnership and make the case for exiting one that isn't paying off.
- Strategic and creative. You spot non-obvious combinations, like pairing a government programme with a platform credit and a founder event to open a market. You write clearly and can turn a messy conversation into a one-page proposal the EC can approve.
Must-haves
- 1-4 years in partnerships, business development, venture building, VC or accelerator platform roles, strategy consulting, or as a founder.
- A track record of relationships you originated that produced measurable value (revenue, savings, capital or users).
- Analytical and structuring skills: you can build a market map, a simple model or a board-ready memo without being walked through it.
- A working network in Europe, US or wider MENA ecosystem: governments, free zones, accelerators, funds or platforms.
- Strong negotiation skills, with experience drafting MoUs, proposals or commercial terms.
- Excellent written and spoken English, and confidence presenting to senior executives and officials.
- Willingness to travel, including short-notice trips across the GCC, Türkiye, Europe and the US.
- Rigour with CRM and pipeline discipline. If it isn't in the system, it didn't happen.
Nice to have, and what we offer
Nice to have
- Second or third language - Arabic as one
- Hands-on with Attio or a similar CRM, Luma, Zapier or other automation tools.
- Exposure to procurement, vendor negotiation or cloud cost optimisation.
- A background in startups, cybersecurity, fintech, digital assets or AI infrastructure, which are core Disrupt clusters.
What we offer
- Immense learning - we believe in learning by doing and this role provides exposure at high speed and with high stakes.
- Direct reporting to the SVP, with regular exposure to the Disrupt leadership including EC and venture CEOs.
- A real mandate from day one: your own partner book and decision rights, with a partnerships budget held by the SVP.
- A front-row view of how ventures are built, financed and scaled across multiple industries.
- Global travel and a seat at leading ecosystem events.
- Competitive UAE package, with performance-linked upside through an LTIP equity scheme
