Head of Venue Network & Referral Program

Always Friday is the first AI-native agency. We are not an event agency: we are the startup that will make the agency model, as it exists today, obsolete. We are a corporate event concierge built on a proprietary platform: companies use us to book venues, catering, transportation and team-building activities for everything from a business dinner to a seminar to a large annual retreat. Behind the scenes, AI and automation take care of every administrative and low-value task, so that our Event Specialists spend their time on the only thing that cannot be automated: the client.

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We were born a year and a half ago and we are moving fast. We closed a pre-seed round with top-tier VCs, revenue is growing 7x year over year, and 22 exceptionally talented people already work at Always Friday. We are closing 2026 in strong growth and opening two new markets in 2027: Spain and the United Kingdom.

The corporate events space is ripe for disruption. Companies keep increasing their event budgets, yet the industry still runs on outdated concierge models and software that hasn't evolved in decades. Always Friday is redefining that landscape: automation that streamlines planning end to end, a better experience for organisers and attendees, and financial transparency and compliance built in by default. We are not just making event management easier. We are setting a new standard for the industry.

Our supply, the network of hotels, estates, venues and vendors that powers the platform, is today our most under-used asset. A few months ago it also became a customer acquisition channel: through Bridge Referral, partner venues forward us the corporate event requests they cannot serve, and we turn them into events. Bridge is already live, has already closed its first events, and activates dozens of new venues every month with no sales effort. What is missing is the person who turns it into a machine.

The mission, with numbers. You have twelve months to make Always Friday's supply our number one customer acquisition channel throughout Europe. You report directly to the CEO and lead the supply team, one person today, growing with results.

Tasks

This is not a role to be designed on paper: the channel exists, the data exists, the first events are closed. The job is to scale it, and in the first 90 days you do it with your own hands.

In the first 90 days

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• Take us as much clients as possible through that channel, from month 1. Revenue generated from your channel will be North Star Metric for this role.
  
• Personally call and visit venues to build the Bridge activation and engagement playbook: who to call, what to say, how to get the first lead within 30 days of activation.
  
• Define the partner venue ICP (today we have hypotheses and early data, not certainties) and turn it into prospecting lists and prioritisation criteria.
  
• Take ownership of the supply funnel in Monday and of the onboarding pipeline, and set the metrics that matter: venues activated, share that forwards at least one lead, qualified leads per week, events closed through Bridge.
  

After the 90 days

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• Create and scale the entire channel: from first hires to define targets, playbook, call coaching, weekly pipeline review.
  
• Open and close framework agreements with hotel groups and chains, at head-office level rather than property by property.
  
• Design the partner programme: incentives, tiers, communication, monthly reporting to venues, and work with the product team to bring into the platform what is manual today.
  
• Build venue acquisition channels beyond our existing base: regional consortia and DMOs, industry listings, venue-to-venue referrals, trade events.
  
• Take the model you built in Italy to Spain and the UK, working with the local country managers.
  
• Own the supply numbers in front of the CEO and investors: active partners, leads, revenue generated, acquisition cost.
  

Requirements

Must have

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• Very motivated to work in a startup environment
  
• At least 3 years of commercial experience, preferably in the hospitality/travel/tech sector.
  
• You don't have problems in getting your hands dirty: this role might lead to create a huge team but, at first, it will mean cold calling family run "agriturismi" to ask for their opinion on phone. Are you willing to do this? Are you motivated enough?
  
• You run on numbers: you can read a funnel, see where it breaks and know what to change. You are comfortable with a CRM (we use Monday and HubSpot) and with outreach tools.
  
• Willing to travel regularly
  
• Fluent in Italian and English (more languages are a plus)
  
• Know how to scale a channel from the ground up
  

Nice to have

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• Hands-on experience both acquiring independent venues (by phone and on site) and negotiating with groups and chains at head-office level.
  
• You have worked in a startup or scale-up in a growth phase and know what it means to change the process every month.
  
• You know MICE: you know what a brief, a site inspection and an agency commission are.
  
• You use AI in your daily work and want to work in a company that puts it at the centre of every process.
  

This is not for you if

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• You want a role where someone else picks up the phone.
  
• You are looking for a ready-made plan to execute: here you write the plan and you correct it every month.
  

Benefits

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• Fixed Annual Compensation (RAL) between 35k and 50k
  
• Additional Huge Bonus component tied to revenue generated, active partners, qualified leads and framework agreements signed.
  
• Equity: we are still an early-stage startup and equity taken now can be worth A LOT in just a couple years.
  
• Benefits: Lunch Vouchers (Buoni Pasto) and Private Insurance Plan. This offer will grow as much as we grow as a company.
  
• Dinner Voucher for nights in the office
  
• You will work in of the hottest, fastest growing startup in Europe.
  
• 80 days where you can work remotely from wherever you want
  
• A cool office in the city center in Milan
  
• Team life you'll actually enjoy: from Friday drinks and team sports to offsites, seminars, and parties. Life at AF is full of moments to connect, unwind, and celebrate together.
  
• An AI-native company: every process, from prospecting to reporting, is built with AI tools. xysqume We don't use them to replace commercial work, we use them to remove everything that isn't relationship.
  

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