Role Description
The Senior Manager of Founder Memberships owns the founder lifecycle across conversion, activation, satisfaction, retention, and revenue. This is a commercial role, but not a traditional cold outbound sales role. You’ll work primarily with founders who come into Cherub’s orbit through applications, referrals, events, partnerships, and our network. Your job is to understand what they’re trying to accomplish, identify where Cherub can help, recommend the right product or service, and confidently move the relationship forward. You’ll be expected to convert members into revenue thoughtfully.
What You’ll Own
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Membership Sales & Conversion
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Own founder membership conversion across inbound leads, applications, referrals, events, and other warm channels.
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Lead membership conversations and demos, understand founder needs, and recommend the most relevant Cherub offering.
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Clearly communicate Cherub’s products, pricing, and value proposition.
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Handle objections around pricing, timing, fundraising, investor access, and ROI.
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Follow up consistently and move qualified founders from interest to paid membership.
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Partner with the Director of Partnerships to convert founders generated through events, partnerships, and ecosystem relationships.
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Product Matching & Expansion
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Become an expert on Cherub’s founder products and understand which offerings are best suited to different founder needs.
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Diagnose what a founder actually needs rather than simply selling them the first available product.
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Identify opportunities to move founders into higher-value or additional offerings when there is a clear fit.
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Surface recurring needs and unmet demand to help shape pricing, packaging, products, and future revenue opportunities.
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Activation & Member Experience
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Own the transition from prospect to active member.
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Ensure new members understand how to use Cherub and what actions will help them get value quickly.
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Monitor engagement and proactively reach out when members are inactive, confused, or underutilizing the platform.
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Help founders navigate Cherub’s platform, introductions, events, and broader network.
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Develop repeatable member touchpoints that feel personal while still scaling.
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Retention & Renewal
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Own founder retention and renewal performance.
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Build relationships throughout the membership lifecycle so renewal isn’t a last-minute conversation.
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Identify at-risk members early, understand what’s getting in the way, and intervene when possible.
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Recommend different products or ways of engaging when a founder’s needs have changed.
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Understand why founders renew, expand, downgrade, or leave and use those insights to improve the business.
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Founder Relationships & Outreach
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Develop strong relationships across Cherub’s founder community and broader startup ecosystem.
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Know our members: what they’re building, what they’re raising, and where Cherub can be useful.
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Build relationships with accelerators, venture firms, founder communities, agencies, and other trusted sources of prospective members.
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Attend or host relevant founder events, dinners, office hours, and other high-touch moments that support acquisition, engagement, and retention.
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Membership Revenue & Performance
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Own founder membership revenue across new business, renewals, retention, and expansion.
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Be accountable for clear monthly and quarterly revenue and conversion targets.
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Maintain visibility into leads, conversion, activation, engagement, churn, renewal, expansion, and revenue.
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Manage follow-ups rigorously so strong prospects and member opportunities don’t fall through the cracks.
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Use both performance data and founder feedback to identify where we can improve.
Qualifications
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4–7 years of experience in membership sales, account management, customer success, business development, partnerships, hospitality, recruiting, or another relationship-driven commercial role.
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Enjoy selling when selling starts with understanding what someone needs.
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Comfortable carrying revenue, conversion, retention, and renewal goals.
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Ability to move a conversation forward — making a recommendation, handling hesitation, following up, and asking someone to buy without making the interaction feel overly sales-driven.
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Build trust quickly and balance warmth with commercial confidence.
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Understand that great service and great sales are connected.
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Proactive, highly organized, and comfortable managing a large number of relationships and opportunities at once.
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Notice when someone hasn’t activated, when a renewal may be at risk, or when a member has a need Cherub could solve — and act on it.
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Communicate honestly and can set expectations without overpromising what fundraising or membership can deliver.
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Curious about startups, fundraising, venture capital, creators, and entrepreneurship.
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An existing network within the founder or startup ecosystem is a strong plus.
What Success Looks Like
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Consistently convert qualified founders into the right Cherub products and memberships.
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New members activate quickly and understand how to use what they purchased.
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Existing members feel known and supported, while receiving clear recommendations when another product or service could better meet their needs.
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Retention and renewal improve because founders are experiencing value throughout their membership.
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Identify expansion opportunities naturally because you understand our founders and their businesses.
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Founder membership revenue grows through a healthy mix of new member conversion, retention, renewals, and expansion.
Measures of Success
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Success will be measured across founder membership revenue, qualified lead-to-member conversion, activation, member satisfaction, retention and renewal, churn, expansion revenue, and referral-driven acquisition.
How We Work
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We move before we're told to.
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High agency isn't a perk here; it's the job. We own outcomes, not tasks, and we'd rather you try something and course-correct than wait around for a green light.
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We're craftspeople.
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We move quickly, but we care deeply about how things feel. The details matter — from the product we build to the conversations we have with members.
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We stay curious.
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Markets, technology, fundraising, and founder needs are constantly changing. The best people here pay attention, ask questions, and keep learning.
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We operate with integrity.
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Cherub is built on trust. We’re honest about what we can and cannot deliver and thoughtful about the people trusting us with their businesses.