Director, Programs & Partnerships
Primary Venture Partners, New York, NY, United States
About the Company
Primary is the largest early stage venture firm in the world, with $1 billion in assets under management and a staff of 50 working alongside founders to build unicorns like Alloy, Chief, Electric, K Health, Slice, Vestwell, and many more.
The firm takes a low-volume, high-conviction approach—and devotes unreasonable resources toward making sure founders can succeed. With an Impact team that outnumbers investors 2:1, operational experts spend 100% of their time making hires, signing customers, and enabling future fundraising to supercharge growth. This partnership with top‑tier founders makes companies in Primary’s portfolio 2× more likely to raise a Series A and 19× more likely to reach a billion‑plus valuation—a third of Fund I companies are unicorns, less than a decade out.
About the Role Primary’s programming is only as good as the people in the room, the partners behind it, and the systems that make it run. This role owns all three: who we convene, who we bring along as partners, and how the operational infrastructure holds it together. It sits at the intersection of relationship management, production discipline, and network curation. You’ll build the programs that manage our relationships with sponsors, vendors, and partners, and build the operational systems that keep everything running cleanly in between.
Summit Event production. Own end-to-end production of Primary’s annual Summit: timeline ownership, vendor management, run‑of‑show, day‑of decisions, and post‑event wrap. There are established vendor relationships and playbooks, but you’ll be the one driving it.
Intimate programming. Run 25–30 curated dinners, roundtables, and small convenings per year. Design and execute them with the same rigor you bring to a large event, and understand that the guest list is the product.
Sponsor relationships. Manage partner relationships day‑to‑day: deliverable tracking, check‑ins, issue resolution, and ongoing communication that turns a one‑year sponsor into a multi‑year partner.
Vendor and partner management. Own key vendor relationships: AV, venue, catering, production, print. Negotiate, hold accountability, maintain relationships, and know when to bring in a new vendor vs deepen an existing one.
CRM and network operations. Own operational layer: data hygiene, contact organization, pipeline tracking. Build guest lists, track conversions, and build relationships that ladder up into Primary’s broader strategy.
Budget and resource tracking. Track spend across programming, think proactively about optimizations, and establish new formats for covering costs.
About You You’ve probably never had a job title that fully captured what you do. You figure out how to make things work wherever you’ve been, even close to big, high‑stakes programs. You’ve sat across from a sponsor with a problem and handled it, built a process that someone else inherited and used, and you’re not looking for a role where you execute someone else’s plan. You want to shape, own, and constantly improve, while bringing real experiences and relationships to life.
Core qualifications 6+ years of experience across event production, experiential, partnerships, or program management. Specific industry background matters less than demonstrated range across scale, format, and relationship ownership.
AI fluency: actively experimenting and building your process around new tools, integrated into how you plan, produce, and operate, with examples in practice.
Managed programs at real scale: run large‑scale activations, multi‑day conferences, or high‑stakes experiential programs where logistics were genuinely hard and stakes real.
Run both big and intimate: can handle 25‑person dinners and 1,000‑person conferences with the right instincts.
Hold relationships with sponsors, partners, vendors: manage logistics and communication, know when to bring in outside support and enforce standards.
Build systems: created timelines, trackers, and workflows that others could follow and that outlasted you, with framework for tools used.
Independent doer: figure things out, proactive about flagging problems before crises, and not wait to be told what to do.
Calm under pressure: clear‑headed, making decisions under pressure.
All candidates must be available to work at least 3 days a week at Primary’s office in NYC.
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The firm takes a low-volume, high-conviction approach—and devotes unreasonable resources toward making sure founders can succeed. With an Impact team that outnumbers investors 2:1, operational experts spend 100% of their time making hires, signing customers, and enabling future fundraising to supercharge growth. This partnership with top‑tier founders makes companies in Primary’s portfolio 2× more likely to raise a Series A and 19× more likely to reach a billion‑plus valuation—a third of Fund I companies are unicorns, less than a decade out.
About the Role Primary’s programming is only as good as the people in the room, the partners behind it, and the systems that make it run. This role owns all three: who we convene, who we bring along as partners, and how the operational infrastructure holds it together. It sits at the intersection of relationship management, production discipline, and network curation. You’ll build the programs that manage our relationships with sponsors, vendors, and partners, and build the operational systems that keep everything running cleanly in between.
Summit Event production. Own end-to-end production of Primary’s annual Summit: timeline ownership, vendor management, run‑of‑show, day‑of decisions, and post‑event wrap. There are established vendor relationships and playbooks, but you’ll be the one driving it.
Intimate programming. Run 25–30 curated dinners, roundtables, and small convenings per year. Design and execute them with the same rigor you bring to a large event, and understand that the guest list is the product.
Sponsor relationships. Manage partner relationships day‑to‑day: deliverable tracking, check‑ins, issue resolution, and ongoing communication that turns a one‑year sponsor into a multi‑year partner.
Vendor and partner management. Own key vendor relationships: AV, venue, catering, production, print. Negotiate, hold accountability, maintain relationships, and know when to bring in a new vendor vs deepen an existing one.
CRM and network operations. Own operational layer: data hygiene, contact organization, pipeline tracking. Build guest lists, track conversions, and build relationships that ladder up into Primary’s broader strategy.
Budget and resource tracking. Track spend across programming, think proactively about optimizations, and establish new formats for covering costs.
About You You’ve probably never had a job title that fully captured what you do. You figure out how to make things work wherever you’ve been, even close to big, high‑stakes programs. You’ve sat across from a sponsor with a problem and handled it, built a process that someone else inherited and used, and you’re not looking for a role where you execute someone else’s plan. You want to shape, own, and constantly improve, while bringing real experiences and relationships to life.
Core qualifications 6+ years of experience across event production, experiential, partnerships, or program management. Specific industry background matters less than demonstrated range across scale, format, and relationship ownership.
AI fluency: actively experimenting and building your process around new tools, integrated into how you plan, produce, and operate, with examples in practice.
Managed programs at real scale: run large‑scale activations, multi‑day conferences, or high‑stakes experiential programs where logistics were genuinely hard and stakes real.
Run both big and intimate: can handle 25‑person dinners and 1,000‑person conferences with the right instincts.
Hold relationships with sponsors, partners, vendors: manage logistics and communication, know when to bring in outside support and enforce standards.
Build systems: created timelines, trackers, and workflows that others could follow and that outlasted you, with framework for tools used.
Independent doer: figure things out, proactive about flagging problems before crises, and not wait to be told what to do.
Calm under pressure: clear‑headed, making decisions under pressure.
All candidates must be available to work at least 3 days a week at Primary’s office in NYC.
#J-18808-Ljbffr