Director, Partnerships (6-month fixed-term)

Kindred is a members-only home swapping platform that unlocks the ability to live a travel-rich lifestyle through the power of community. By exchanging primary residences with trusted peers, renters and owners alike can match with Kindred spirits and explore new destinations without breaking the bank. Kindred is revolutionizing the “third option” of travel accommodation, compared to short-term rentals and hotels. Since launching in 2022, Kindred has grown to a global community of 300,000 members across 150+ cities and puts home swapping on the map as a radically more affordable, responsible, and connected way to travel. To support that momentum, Kindred has raised over $150M in capital from some of the most credible investors in Silicon Valley, including Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, Caffeinated Capital, Elad Gil, and founders of companies like Opendoor, Figma, ClassPass, and more. Kindred’s co-founders are proven leaders from the early team at Opendoor ($15B+ exit), who have each built and scaled products that today generate $1B+ annual revenue combined. We’re looking for the world’s top builders, executors, and believers to help us make travel more meaningful. You can learn more about us in Forbes and The New York Times .

At Kindred, every member is both host and traveler, with hosting being the vehicle for earning credits towards travel. This makes hosting our hardest and most important growth lever: rather than recruiting a separate supply side, we're asking our own members to take the harder, higher-trust step of opening their home. That's a behavior best unlocked through trust—people are far more willing to open their home to, and swap with, others they already share a real bond with: an alma mater, an employer, a sport, a cause, a professional community. The goal of this Founding Partnerships leader is to define and build a partnerships function for the business—setting the strategy, defining success metrics, and validating the operating model for scale via direct partnership execution during the 6-month contract period. You'll take ownership of our active inbound partnership pipeline, build out a systematic outbound strategy, and structure deals engineered to contribute meaningful supply growth to the platform. This is a lean team, and we're looking for someone adept at shifting between both strategy and execution: sourcing, pitching, negotiating, and closing deals yourself from day one, while defining the operating model, metrics, and organizational roadmap for the function to scale. We're structuring this as a contract-to-hire engagement, with the goal of at least 2 signed, meaningful partnerships by the close of the 6 months. You Will Own and close Kindred's inbound partnership pipeline: Evaluate, prioritize, and drive to signature a set of active inbound partnership leads from organizations and communities with large, pre-established member bases. Build Kindred's outbound partnerships strategy: Define priority verticals (e.g., sports and fitness communities, professional and alumni networks, large employers, social clubs, mission-aligned associations, etc.), build a target account list, and codify a repeatable, vertical-specific partnership offering and pitch. Design deals that bottom-line impact: Strategically structure partnerships with terms calibrated towards high-trust behaviors within in the funnel to unlock marketplace liquidity Lead full-cycle deal execution: Source, pitch, negotiate, and close partnerships end-to-end, then manage the relationship through launch and into ongoing performance management. Shape Circles strategy alongside partnership strategy: Leverage Circles (Kindred’s recently launched in-product sub-communities) as a way in to relevant organizations; additionally, support tentpole Circles launches with partnerships channel support to drive Circles acquisition and activation goals Build Kindred’s