Director, Strategy & Partnerships (Fractional) at Civilization Labs
Company: Civilization Labs
Location: Remote, US time zones preferred | Occasional travel | NYC optional
Time Commitment: Fractional, 20–25 hours/week
Initial 90-day engagement with a clear path to grow
Reports to: CEO, working closely with the Managing Director and senior leadership team
Civilization Labs
Most important decisions are still made with a mix of instinct, politics, incomplete evidence, and rationalization. Civilization Labs exists to change that. We're building decision-grade validation tools and systems that help teams pressure-test important choices with clarity, evidence, and explicit uncertainty, not narrative or false confidence. Our aim is simple to say and hard to build: turn consequential decisions into auditable outputs people can actually use and stand behind.
The Opportunity
We are creating a new category, and we're looking for the person who will help us find its market. This role is equal parts strategist, partnership-builder, and product compass. You'll help decide which directions we pursue, then build the early relationships and partnerships that prove we chose right.
You think in go-to-market strategy and business development. You understand how new categories get established, how serious buyers decide, and how a first market becomes a repeatable one. Working directly with the CEO and senior team, you'll read the early signal from our first pilots, customers, and partners and turn it into a clear answer to the question that matters most right now: where do we focus, and who do we serve first? Then you'll be in the room helping make it happen.
This is a hands-on, high-judgment seat for someone who wants to help shape a company while its market is still being decided, someone who can both set the direction and do the work to prove it.
What you'll do
Shape the direction. Read the early signal from pilots, customers, and partners, and help us decide which product and market paths to pursue, sharpen, or set aside.
Open the first markets. Identify the highest-value buyers and partners, build the relationships, and personally develop the early pilots and partnerships that prove the motion.
Design the business model. Shape how we package, price, and bring the product to market, and turn what works into a repeatable commercial playbook.
Make the category legible. Help our target buyers instantly understand what we do and why it matters, without jargon or hype.
Turn signal into strategy. Bring the truth back from the market, what buyers value, what they'll pay for, what they don't yet believe, and shape commercial and product direction around it. This is a roll-up-your-sleeves seat: you set the direction and you do the work to prove it.
Who you are
You know go-to-market strategy and business development deeply. You understand how new categories get built and adopted, and you can tell early signal from noise.
You have personally taken something early and complex to market and built it into real, paid traction, not only managed a team that did it, but have done it yourself.
You are equally at home setting strategy and building the relationships that become revenue. You can read a market, choose a direction, then earn a serious buyer's commitment.
You have strong product, pricing, and positioning instincts, and you understand how those choices decide whether an early product takes hold.
You make new and unfamiliar ideas click for serious buyers in a few plain sentences.
You have sharp judgment under uncertainty: which opportunities are real, which directions are dead ends, and where scarce hours should go.
You are low-ego, fast-moving, and trustworthy with relationships and reputation, including the founder’s network.
You're drawn to hard, consequential problems and want your work to matter beyond the balance sheet.
Our Culture
The biggest calls people make, the strategies, plans, and decisions they can't easily walk back, still often get committed on narrative and gut feeling, and the cost lands on real people. We're here to help pressure-test that thinking before anyone commits. That belief shapes the product, and it shapes our culture: we want to do serious work with people who trust evidence over narrative, chase what's true even when it's inconvenient, and care about the consequences of what they build.
Integrity: Trust starts with honesty, transparency, and respect for reality.
Accountability: We do what we say we'll do, and we take responsibility when we miss.
Collaboration: We solve hard problems together and value clear, generous communication.
Intellectual Curiosity: We stay interested, skeptical, and eager to improve how we think.
Social Impact: We want our work to leave people, institutions, and society a little more clear-eyed than we found them, especially on the choices that matter most.
Compensation
This is an initial 90-day fractional engagement (20–25 hours/week), with a clear path to a larger, ongoing role as the motion takes hold.
Target cash compensation: $10,000–$15,000 per month, calibrated to experience and scope.
We'll structure meaningful upside for the right person, performance tied to outcomes and equity where it fits, so the people who help build the category share in it.
We're also open to a defined 90-day project structure for candidates who prefer a concrete sprint.
How to apply
Send your resume, LinkedIn, and a short note (5–10 lines): one early, complex thing you personally took to market and built into real business, and why you'd want to do it again here. Include one or two examples of past work (redacted is fine): a go-to-market or market-entry plan, a pricing/packaging memo, a partnership you structured, or a strategy artifact.
Email join@civilization-labs.com. Subject: "Director, Strategy & Partnerships – [your name]"