Asher Mathew

CEO at Partnership Leaders | Helping partnership and business leaders build modern businesses through partnerships

Join Partnership Leaders at www.partnershipleaders.com

Co-Founder & CEO

Joined full time in Feb 2023

Partnership Leaders is a private network built to elevate the role of partner teams in their companies. Partnership Leaders is the only organization designed exclusively to enable the success of 1,500+ of the world’s top partner professionals.

Apply at www.partnershipleaders.com

Another new high for Chief Partner Officer roles.

1187 on Feb 1.
1220 today.

The title is rising fast.

But a title does not create a Chief Partner Officer. Mandate does.

Two things determine whether the role is real or symbolic:

Budget.

You need direct ownership of capital.
Not borrowed dollars.
Not discretionary scraps.
Not marketing leftovers.

If you do not control budget, you do not control outcomes.

Authority.

Authority means the power to prioritize.
The power to decline.
The power to protect focus.

If you cannot say no, you are not leading. You are reacting.

Without budget and authority, the CPO is a coordinator with executive branding.

With them, the CPO becomes a growth operator.

The role rests on four pillars.

Build.
Market.
Sell.
Serve.

If partnerships do not drive all four, they are not embedded in the business model.

Titles are expanding.
Mandate must follow.

Something interesting is happening in deals right now.

In the past week I spoke with four services companies.

Each told me the same thing.

Customers are asking for the partner manager to join deal calls.

Why?

Because the deal no longer involves just one vendor.

There are multiple companies delivering the outcome:
• The platform
• The services partner
• The software (think app) partner
• Sometimes even the data or AI provider

Customers want someone coordinating the ecosystem.

Not just selling the product.

That role is increasingly falling to the partnerships team.

If this trend continues, it changes how we think about partnerships.

Partner managers are no longer behind the scenes.

They are becoming the orchestrators of multi-party deals. (I know James Hodgkinson will love this one). 

I am curious if others are seeing this too.

Are customers asking for partnerships teams to be present in complex deals? Pre-Close? Post-Sale?

Am I the only one thinking when will Anthropic launch Claude for #Partnerships?

anyone else?

Hire a Chief Partner Officer...Demo to Satya!

Way to go Marcel!

A new marketplace player enters the market!

Something interesting is happening.

Events are back.

Our London Summit is already at capacity, and NYC and SF are close behind.

What is different this year is who is showing up.

Catalyst is expanding beyond software to include leaders from services and hardware companies.

The conversations around ecosystems and partnerships are getting bigger.

If you plan to attend one of our Summits or the Catalyst Conference, register soon.

More info: join catalyst dot com

One way I think about Catalyst is this:

It’s the premier conference to recruit, re-engage, and retain partners.

Not just network.
Not just content.
Actual ecosystem building.

This year, we’re leaning into Services companies that unlock the enterprise.

Think SIs, agencies, and management consulting firms.
The partners you need in your mix if you want to tap into the $6.15T global IT spend.

We’ll still have strong content for early and mid career partnership leaders. That foundation matters.

But the next unlock is CPO readiness.

What does it take to move from running motions to owning ecosystem strategy?
From supporting revenue to shaping company direction?

That’s the conversation.

Catalyst is for the companies and leaders preparing to shape the next wave of tech through partnerships.

If you’re serious about building a modern partner ecosystem, this is where you should be.

Grab your ticket, early bird ends tomorrow!

Build. Market. Sell. Serve.

Partnerships summed up in 4 words.

Enterprise growth does not break because you lack features.

It breaks because you are not invited into the room where decisions get made.

And those rooms are crowded.

CIOs do not wake up looking for new vendors.
They listen to the firms already embedded in their transformation.

The SI running the cloud migration.
The consultancy redesigning the operating model.
The agency modernizing digital experience.

If you are not inside that orbit, you are fighting uphill.

That is the real partnership conversation.

Not badges.
Not tiers.
Not “ecosystem” as a buzzword.

Access.

Catalyst this year is centered on the companies that control that access.

Services firms that influence how the $6.15T in global IT spend actually gets deployed.

Because here is the uncomfortable truth:

You can build a great product and still lose
if the people shaping the enterprise narrative are not aligned with you.

We will still invest in rising partner leaders. Craft matters.

But the next unlock is bigger.

How do you move from running partner plays
to understanding enterprise power structures?

How do you stop thinking about partner sourced revenue
and start thinking about who shapes demand before the RFP exists?

That is the conversation.

Catalyst is not about partnerships as a department.

It is about partnerships as leverage.

If you want to play inside the enterprise,
you need to understand who already owns the room.

See you in NYC!

Strategic Partnerships @ StreamYard | Captain @ The Partner Ship 🚢

Franz Schrepf is the Head of Strategic Partnerships at OpusClip, the #1 AI video editing tool used by 10M+ creators and businesses around the world. 

Before Opus he was the #16 employee at Hopin and StreamYard, a virtual events and live streaming company which Sifted called "Europe's fastest growing startup of all time." 
 
His new book, "The Book on Partnerships: How Startups Work With Partners To Sell More, Add Features, And Get Acquired.", is a foundational guide full of stories and insights from 50+ industry experts that explain the power of partnerships in the most basic terms.  

Franz is also a frequent contributor and speaker on the topic of partnerships on podcasts, blogs, events, and conferences as well as the host of one of the most popular partnership podcasts, The Partner Ship 🚢.

Originally from Germany, Franz lives with his wife and daughter in San Francisco, where he organizes monthly partnerships meetups together with the Partnerships Leaders community.

Franz-Josef Schrepf (FJS)

Jay Singh is the co-founder and CEO of Casper Studios, a bootstrapped AI product studio that, among many other things, built the Stranger Things × Netflix voice AI activation (400K+ calls). 

In this episode, we dig into:

- How he uses Claude Code + Cursor + MCP to automate BD from LinkedIn connections to qualified pipeline
- The "singles and doubles" framework: modular AI builds that cut hedge fund Q&A prep by 80%
- Why he chose deterministic AI over generative for a Netflix brand activation and what that tells us about AI's real edge
- The role of System Integrators in today's ever-changing AI landscape.

Whether you're a founder wondering how to actually use Claude Code beyond coding, or a partnerships leader thinking about AI-powered BD, this conversation will change how you think about building an AI-native business.

#partnerships #AI #systemsintegrator

Franz-Josef Schrepf

Revenue & Partnerships @ OpusClip | Author of ‘The Book on Partnerships’ | Captain @ The Partner Ship 🚢 | Pavilion’s Top 50 Partnership Execs to Watch in 2025

Franz-Josef Schrepf and 56 other attendees

The AI Systems Integrator Handbook w/ Jay Singh @ Casper

For every $1 Salesforce makes, their ecosystem makes $7 

For every $1 an AI company makes, the ecosystem will earn $20. Or $100.

I've dug deep into the data, my own experience, and an important clue Anthropic's CEO left in a recent podcast. 

We are entering the golden age of implementation.

The SaaSpocalypse is in full swing. An eye-watering $1 trillion was wiped off of SaaS stocks in the first week of February 2026. HubSpot's stock is do

Open article: The Age of the Systems Integrator by Franz-Josef Schrepf • 4 min read

Scott Pollack spent 20 years building partnerships at giants like American Express and WeWork. Then he noticed something: the partnerships professionals he worked with had no profession, no training, no certifications, no community. So he built one.                                                                                          

Scott is the CEO and co-founder of Firneo, the leading learning community for partnerships professionals, and heads member programs at Pavilion. In this episode, we dig into:

- How 20 years in partnerships led him to build the community infrastructure the profession was missing
- Why the average partner manager has 30 portals, 30 Slack groups, and 30 newsletters, and nobody looks at any of them
- What separates a community people actually show up to from one that gets ignored
- What changes when you stop managing a partner program and start managing a community
- Why community might be the only distribution strategy that cuts through the noise

Whether you're an ecosystem leader sitting on 500 active partners or a partnerships professional wondering what comes next, this conversation will change how you think about your partner program.

Franz-Josef Schrepf and 11 other attendees

Manage Your Ecosystem Like A Community w/ Scott Pollack (Wework, Firneo)

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The Battle

Asher Mathew

Franz-Josef Schrepf (FJS)

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Asher Mathew's LinkedIn Performance

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