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)

"When is the audiobook coming out?"

Today I can finally say: it's here.

This was easily the most asked question since The Book on Partnerships launched.

I wrote it, recorded it, and edited the audiobook myself.

Which is surprisingly hard if you have 2 year old at home!

Every chapter, every story, every framework. 

In my voice, the way I'd tell it to you in person. 

It also comes with a companion PDF with all the graphics, sources, resources, and terminology so you get the full experience.

Available now on Audible, Spotify, and Apple Books.

If you've been waiting for this one, thank you.

I hope you enjoy it.

#partnerships #TheBookOnPartnerships #Ecosystems

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

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 and 56 other attendees

The AI Systems Integrator Handbook w/ Jay Singh @ Casper

"Sorry, my AI sent the wrong pricing" is about to become the most common sales objection handler in 2026.

Here's the thing: People care a lot less about you than you think.

Coffee stain on your shirt? Nobody notices. 

They're too busy worrying about their own stuff.

Social media is the same:

👉 3-second attention spans.
👉 Swipe, swipe, swipe..
👉 Zero appreciation for cool transitions.

Bottom line: Stop sweating the small stuff. 

Now, go make something!

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)

Yurii Filipchuk 🇺🇦 -- e/acc

Founder @ Stealth AI |TechStars AI Startup Weekend SF

I build Principle, a simulation engine that stress-tests business decisions before you commit capital.

I also run partnerships and sponsorships at Techstars Startup Weekend SF and Catalyst Bay. We're a community of 10,000 founders doing IRL events in San Francisco.

Chaotic Good is my operating system. Move fast, challenge conventional thinking, put powerful tools in more hands. I believe that's how you actually make the world better. Big believer in pay-it-forward culture. If you have an idea on how we can help you or you want to help us, reach out.

The LLMs you choose say something about you. I'm team Claude for work. NotebookLM and Gemini for research. ChatGPT and Groq for personal life questions.

Previously CEO of Party.Space. Spotify was my first client, then Google, Zapier, Grammarly, UC Berkeley. Raised $2M from top European VCs.

I advise early-stage founders on fundraising and GTM. Been on both sides of the table. Invested through CYFRD: 15 deals, 2 exits.

San Francisco. Born in Kyiv.

Community Lead: Vibes & Sponsorships | Pitching Mentor

At Techstars Startup Weekend SF AI, we're hosting a fast-paced, 3-day event where tech enthusiasts come together to bring AI startup ideas to life. My role is to create an energetic and welcoming atmosphere, build connections with important sponsors, and guide participants in making their pitches clear and impactful.

Anthropic bought a Super Bowl spot to say they won't run ads.

Read that again.

30 seconds. Biggest stage on the planet. One message -- Claude stays ad-free.

No sponsored links. No paid nudges in your conversations.

This landed the same week OpenAI started testing ads in ChatGPT's free tier. "Labeled and non-sensitive topics only" -- sure. But it's still inside the interface where people share unfiltered thinking.

The business model split is now visible. Subscriptions and enterprise deals vs attention monetization. Two different incentive structures. Two different products long-term.

For anyone running strategy or workflows on AI this matters more than model benchmarks. Ad-supported AI optimizes for session length. Subscription AI optimizes for answer quality. Pick which one you want advising your board.

The privacy angle is obvious in regulated industries -- finance and healthcare won't touch an ad-funded reasoning layer. But the deeper point is trust architecture. When your AI works for an advertiser even 2% of the time you can't treat its output as decision-grade.

Anthropic made a positioning bet on the world's biggest stage.

Will it hold as they scale? That's the real question.

Founder @ Principle | Strategic Foresight Engine | Chaotic Good

Stop asking "what ARR do I need to raise at."

It's the wrong question. Half of the Linkedin repeats it like scripture. The fact that tells you everything about how most founders think about fundraising.

SVB released their H1 2026 data. Revenue at raise for US tech companies, 2024-2025.

Median Series A: $2.5M ARR. 75th percentile: $6.5M. 25th percentile: $2.1M.
That's a 2.6× spread and nobody talks about it. Because "aim for $2-3M ARR" fits in a carousel slide. The actual distribution does not.

Seed is worse.

Median: $220K ARR. 90th percentile: $3.6M ARR.

16× spread. Sixteen. Between the middle of the pack and the top decile. But sure -- keep optimizing for some magic number you read in a thread.

Companies at the 10th percentile raise with zero revenue. Zero. Meanwhile founders with $400K ARR are in Slack groups asking "am I ready" like there's a permission slip somewhere.

There isn't.

VCs don't fund a number on a dashboard. They fund velocity. Team. Timing. Defensibility. Four things that don't fit in a benchmark table -- which is why nobody posts about them.

One more thing the data shows. The multipliers compress as you go up. Seed to Series A is an 11.3× jump at median. Series A to B is 2.4×. 

Early stage rewards outliers. Growth stage rewards consistency.

So no -- there's no correct ARR to raise at. There's only whether what you're building compounds. And if you need a LinkedIn post to tell you that, you're already behind.

The state of GenAI video no longer surprises me🤖

So we started making our own. Episode 1 of "LockedIn" is out. Who else gets frustrated receiving AWS/GCP bills?

Where should we channel the creative energy next -- something more satirical or slightly educational?

P.S. Those worms are adorable and they deserve their own show. Someone talk us out of it.

literally me when I missed a day of OpenClaw madness

We act like AI showed up yesterday.

1951 - Christopher Strachey wrote a checkers program on the Ferranti Mark 1. A room-sized machine playing board games. That was the first AI.

1966 - MIT built ELIZA. A chatbot pretending to be a psychotherapist. People got emotionally attached to it. 58 years before ChatGPT.

1972 - MYCIN diagnosed blood infections better than most doctors. An AI system. In the seventies.

By the 1980s, companies were spending millions on expert systems that mimicked specialist knowledge. Then the hype died. Funding dried up. They called it the "AI winter."

We've been through this cycle before.

When was the first time you used a product and thought "wait, is this AI?"

early ai cases 

Everyone says legacy tech companies can't reinvent themselves. IBM didn't reinvent itself – it executed self-destruction while it still had the cash to survive it.

IBM's market value has tripled since Arvind Krishna became CEO in 2020. Wall Street called it a turnaround.

Wrong.

This was controlled demolition followed by industrial-scale reconstruction.

What's actually happening?

Most legacy CEOs manage decline gracefully. Krishna did the opposite. During the pandemic, while competitors froze, IBM borrowed massive cash, spun out a third of its revenue and staff, launched aggressive M&A, and added $3B annually to R&D.

The common narrative: "IBM is cutting costs to survive."

Actual reality: IBM was reallocating capital from legacy cash cows to future growth engines while volatility provided cover.

This is the volatility catalyst.

Krishna understood what others missed: Volatility doesn't slow tech adoption – it accelerates it. When capital gets expensive, technology stops being "nice to have" and becomes survival-critical.

Most CEOs spread painful changes across years. Krishna bunched them together during maximum chaos.

Two paths for legacy companies:

Path A (Traditional): Cut 5% staff per year for 6 years. Slow bleeding. Culture dies. Arrive weak.

Path B (Krishna): Cut 33% in one volatile year. Market expects chaos anyway. Use cover to add $3B to R&D. Arrive lean and funded.

Path B has 4x higher survival probability.

IBM deployed Gen AI to 8,000 of their 40,000 developers. Result: 45% productivity increase.

The lazy analysis: "They'll cut 4,000 jobs."

What actually happened: They served markets that were previously too expensive to address. AI doesn't shrink companies – it expands what they can profitably do.

Most legacy CEOs ask: "How do I protect what we have?"

Krishna asked: "How do I disrupt ourselves before someone else does – while we still have the cash flow to survive it?"

Legacy companies don't die from lack of innovation. 

They die from innovating too slowly while managing decline.

What's your excuse for not moving forward?

Dropping a new episode of LockedIn. Inspired by a real story this time!

Hamudi Naanaa and Volodymyr Panchenko hit Anthropic's Tier 4 token limit mid-hypergrowth. 4 users to 1,400 in 3 days. 2b tokens a day! 

Their words: "A two-day response cycle doesn't match the speed we're operating at -- for us, it's 1–2 hours."

They switched to Gemini overnight. A constraint forced it.

What's the ceiling your team hasn't hit yet -- but will?

taplio

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Franz-Josef Schrepf (FJS)

Yurii Filipchuk 🇺🇦 -- e/acc

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The Battle

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Yurii Filipchuk 🇺🇦 -- e/acc

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Likes

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