Head – Founder & Speaker Relations

Inc42 is India's #1 media and intelligence platform on the startup economy, covering journalism, Datalabs (India's largest free startup database, with 75,000+ companies), our flagship editorial IPs (AI Summit, D2C & Retail Summit, FAST42, D2C Retreat, CTO Summit, MoneyX Dialogues), and Griffin, India's most curated private founder club.
Our rooms are curated. The people in them are the product. This role owns the relationships that make the rooms.
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### Why this role exists
Over ten years Inc42 has put thousands of founders, investors and operators on its stages and in its rooms. We know almost everyone. We do not yet own the relationship with them in the way that matters: where a call from us gets a yes, where a founder tells us what they are working on before it is public, where the right person is in the right room because someone here thought of them first.
Today those relationships are held by the founders of the company and worked, edition by edition, by a speaker desk and a delegate desk that are very good at outreach and are not senior enough to own the room. We are hiring the person who will own it: the full-year view of who should be in which room, the relationships with the people who matter most, and the team that does the reaching.
This is not a speaker-acquisition seat with a bigger title. Knowing people and owning the relationship are different things, and we are hiring for the second.
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What you'll own

- The relationship universe: founders, CXOs, investors and, over time, policy and international leaders. Who they are, what they are building, what they want from a room, when they last heard from us and what they said. One company-owned record, kept true.
- The full-year lineup across every IP: editorial tentpoles, custom programmes, private dinners and retreats. No repetition, no clashes, no founder reached by three of our people in one week for three different rooms.
- The senior tier yourself: the marquee founders and investors whose presence defines a room. You reach them, you brief them, you host them, you keep the relationship warm between editions. You will travel for it.
- The team: a speaker desk and a delegate desk, a small team, who do the outreach, the confirmations, the contracting, the briefings and the green room. You set the standard, sit with them daily, and grow the people in it.
- Judgment on who is in the room: the composition bar, held with the editorial team. Selection is never sold at Inc42; you are one of the people who makes sure of it.
- Field intelligence: what the ecosystem is saying, who is moving, what themes are real. Fed back into agenda and programme planning, and into the newsroom when it is a story.
- A growing remit: the seat starts with the editorial IPs and grows through the custom programmes into government, investor and international relationships, and into conceiving new rooms with the founders.

Who you are

- You own relationships, you do not collect them. People pick up when you call. You can name them, and you can say what you have done for them.
- You have substance. You can hold a conversation with the founder of a large company about their business and be worth their time. You read, you think, you have opinions about the ecosystem.
- You have composure and energy at the same time. You are presentable in any room, comfortable with senior people, and you actually enjoy being out there. Introverts will not enjoy this seat; neither will people who mistake volume for depth.
- Your background is editorial, PR or communications: an editor or senior journalist, a senior person from a top PR or communications firm, a former anchor or communications head who has spent a career being trusted by senior people. Sales and business-development backgrounds have generally not worked for this kind of seat.
- You have led a team, ideally one that does outreach at volume, and you have made them better.
- You are discreet by instinct. Much of what you will hear is not for publication.
- You can contribute to an agenda, not just fill one, and you would like to help conceive the next rooms we build.

What we offer

- The relationship seat at the centre of India's startup ecosystem, with the standing that Inc42's rooms already carry.
- A clear line of growth from the editorial IPs into custom programmes, government, investor and international relationships, and new-room conception, with the criteria written into your offer.
- A small, senior team; decisions in the room; direct work with the founders.
- Senior compensation, plus meaningful ESOPs.
- Delhi-based, in-person, with travel for editions and for the relationships themselves.