Stripes Chief Business Officer Billy Alvarado is one of the folks that I've learned a lot from in my time. He's very much looking for something that is mutually beneficial to both parties whether it works out or not. A woman who was the SVP of product at the BBC and I was doing a partnership deal to get BBC's content into the Pulse app, she just had a very organized way of thinking. She pushed marketing to say okay here's what you're gonna do and even followed up with an email that I still have to this day because I forwarded it to my personal email. So think about people on the other side regardless of what role they have who do something
Today’s episode is with Cristina Cordova, Notion’s Head of Platform & Partnerships. Previously, she was the 28th employee and the first partnerships hire at Stripe, where she cultivated partnerships with companies like Shopify, Squarespace and Apple, built out the BD org, and led their new Corporate Card effort.
After a decade in partnerships, Cristina has bagged big deals, honed her negotiation skills, built out teams — and made plenty of mistakes she hopes others can learn from. In today’s conversation, Cristina pulls from across her career to share the inside scoop on deals that had an unexpected outsized impact — as well as the ones that went sideways.
She also shares her playbook for being a startup’s first partnership hire, including the three critical areas to focus on first, and the common traps to avoid. It’s also full of actionable tactics on everything from dealing with partners trying to push you around, to how to hire for partnerships roles and structure the org chart.
Today’s conversation is a must-listen of course for folks currently in or hoping to break into partnerships, platform or BD roles, but Cristina also shares great tactics for getting better at negotiating, as well as some fascinating stories of how Stripe and Notion scaled — meaning there’s tons to learn here for everyone.
You can follow Cristina on Twitter at @cjc.
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