Company Overview
About PartnerHQ
PartnerHQ is a San Francisco, California-based B2B warm introduction marketplace — backed with $500,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator (Winter 2024 cohort), 1Indicator, Rebel Fund, Sancus Ventures, and Maiora Ventures — connecting B2B companies seeking introductions to decision-makers with professional network connectors who earn paid bounties ($500 average per introduction) for facilitating warm introductions that replace cold outreach. Founded in 2023 by Stanford graduates Stan Liu and Katherine Wang, PartnerHQ launched in February 2024 and within its first year signed hundreds of paying companies with 97% of growth coming from inbound and word-of-mouth channels. The platform's founding thesis was validated through the founders' prior experience managing partnerships at Brackets For Good, a nonprofit that managed 150+ sponsors and 750 organizations across 12 markets raising $12 million for charities. PartnerHQ operates with a small founding team and builds what the founders describe as a professional relationship graph to match buyer needs with connector network access.
Business Model & Competitive Advantage
PartnerHQ's warm introduction marketplace addresses the B2B cold outreach efficiency collapse: enterprise and mid-market B2B buyers receive hundreds of unsolicited cold emails, LinkedIn messages, and cold calls weekly — creating an inbox filtering behavior where cold outreach from unknown senders achieves 1-3% response rates and 0.1-0.5% conversion rates to qualified meetings. A warm introduction from a trusted mutual connection converts at 20-40% to a qualified meeting because the introducer's credibility transfers to the introduced party. PartnerHQ's marketplace model (paying connectors $500 per successful introduction through a structured bounty system) creates a financial incentive for professionals with relevant network access — advisors, investors, former executives, and industry insiders — to monetize their relationship capital by making introductions they would informally do for free anyway.
Competitive Landscape 2025–2026
In 2025, PartnerHQ competes in the B2B sales development, warm introduction, and relationship intelligence market with Intro (warm intro platform, acquired by Lunchclub), Keyplay (account targeting intelligence), and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (NASDAQ: MSFT, professional network search) for B2B enterprise sales team adoption of relationship-based pipeline generation. The YC W24 pedigree (97% inbound growth reflecting product-market fit signal) validates the warm intro marketplace concept's organic demand without paid customer acquisition. The $500 average bounty creates a unit economics model where a single closed deal (often worth $20,000-500,000 in enterprise ACV) justifies 10-50 introduction fees — making PartnerHQ's cost-per-introduction attractive versus traditional paid lead generation ($200-500 per cold lead that requires 50-100 leads per closed deal). The 2025 strategy focuses on building the relationship graph database, expanding the connector network beyond the founding team's Stanford/startup network into enterprise sales, private equity, and financial services relationship ecosystems.
The PartnerHQ Story
Founders
Company Timeline
Major milestones in PartnerHQ's journey
Leadership Team
Meet the leaders behind PartnerHQ
Katherine Wang (Kat Wang)
Katherine Wang is the CEO and co-founder of PartnerHQ. She previously co-founded Brackets For Good, a nationwide nonprofit that managed partnerships with over 150 sponsors and 750 organizations, raising more than $12 million for charities. Her experience scaling partnership operations informed the vision for PartnerHQ's marketplace approach to B2B introductions.
Stan Liu
Stan Liu is the co-founder of PartnerHQ and previously co-founded Brackets For Good alongside Katherine Wang. His experience building technology to manage large-scale partnership operations across 12 markets provided the technical foundation for PartnerHQ's platform. He participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch.
Matt
Matt serves as a strategic leader at PartnerHQ, described as the ultimate strategist who aligns big ideas, makes critical introductions, and ensures the company operates efficiently. He plays a key role in partnership strategy and operational excellence.
Open Positions
Reddit Discussions
Key Differentiators
Emerging Innovator
PartnerHQ is an emerging player bringing innovative solutions to the Marketing market.
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