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Raylu AI

AI-powered platform for private-market deals

Head of Market Development & Partnerships - Private Equity

Full-TimePosted on 10/21/2026
$200k - $300k/yr
Expert
New York, NY, USA
In Person
Sales & Account ManagementBusiness Development & Partnerships

About the job

Requirements
  • Experience building strategic alliances, commercial partnerships, or industry programs that produced qualified pipeline and revenue.
  • Familiarity with private equity buyers and the advisors, service providers, and communities they trust, including how to earn access to senior investment professionals.
  • A record of originating relationships, negotiating commercial terms, and getting both sides to follow through.
  • Experience running programs such as partner campaigns, executive events, referral channels, or joint selling initiatives.
  • Strong judgment about messaging, including recognizing a compelling customer story and explaining why it matters to another fund.
  • Ability to set direction and execute details independently, including recruiting dinner guests, preparing a partner pitch, and following up on an introduction.
  • Commercial discipline, including explaining which activities generated opportunities, what those opportunities were worth, and what changed when a program underperformed.
  • Comfort using AI tools in day-to-day research, planning, and execution.
Responsibilities
  • Build strategic alliances with consulting firms, expert networks, fund service providers, industry associations, and other organizations connected to private equity decision-makers; identify where recommending or selling Raylu creates value for those organizations and their clients.
  • Structure referral, reseller, and joint-selling agreements; equip partners to introduce Raylu, help their teams identify prospects, and support the relationships until they consistently produce opportunities.
  • Decide which conferences to attend or sponsor and where the team should speak; plan each investment, including target contacts, outreach, and follow-up.
  • Create and run executive dinners, roundtables, and smaller gatherings for private equity investors; build prospective-customer relationships and help existing customers introduce Raylu to peers.
  • Own the content agenda for private equity buyers in collaboration with leadership, Marketing, and customers; turn customer results and perspectives on deal sourcing into shareable stories and ensure content reaches prospective customers.
  • Work with Sales on target funds, introductions, and follow-up; ensure partner programs and events have clear ownership and a path to substantive sales conversations.
  • Set priorities and budgets, track commercial results, expand successful programs, and be accountable for the quality and value of the pipeline created and its conversion to revenue.
  • Learn the product, join sales calls, and speak with customers to understand buyers, relevant events, and what prompts them to consider Raylu.
  • Agree on qualified pipeline targets with Sales and leadership, then prioritize relationships and programs likely to deliver.
  • Open conversations with priority partners, develop commercial proposals, establish event and content plans, secure initial opportunities, and invite prospects into conversations with Raylu.
  • Launch partner programs and industry activities, demonstrate early qualified opportunities, assess their quality with Sales, and use the results to determine future investment.
Desired Qualifications
  • An existing network in private equity or businesses that serve it.
  • A background in alliances, business development, or industry marketing at a company selling to investment firms, or a commercial role within a private markets advisory or services business.

About the company

Raylu AI offers a subscription-based SaaS platform for private market investors to automate deal sourcing, due diligence, and investment decisions. The cloud platform uses AI models trained on private market data to analyze documents, run thesis-first searches, generate market maps, and automate diligence reports, with CRM integration and on-demand data-room and transcript analysis. Raylu differentiates itself by focusing on private markets, using a thesis-driven search and automated diligence tailored to deal sourcing, backed by a team with private equity and AI research experience. Its goal is to help investment teams rapidly source, analyze, and validate opportunities, reducing data-gathering time and speeding up confident investments.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Series A

Total Funding

$12M

Headquarters

New York City, New York

Founded

2022

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • By September 2026, Raylu served 45 funds representing over $500B AUM.
  • The September 2026 Affinity integration expands distribution across thousands of investment firms.
  • Raylu's September 2026 site claims 3.2x pipeline lift and 3x founder meetings.

What critics are saying

  • Affinity, Salesforce, and DealCloud can bundle similar workflows by 2027.
  • Raylu's $12M total funding limits sales, compliance, and model training versus incumbents.
  • Hallucinated diligence outputs can destroy trust fast, killing renewals after one bad recommendation.

What makes Raylu AI unique

  • Raylu combines sourcing, research, outreach, and CRM sync inside one investor workflow.
  • HighlandX bought first, then led Raylu's $8M Series A in 2025.
  • Raylu targets private-market investors with thesis-first market maps and founder outreach automation.

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Benefits

  • Health Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • Unlimited Paid Time Off
  • Wellness Program

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

-20%

1 year growth

-20%

2 year growth

-39%
Microsoft
Dec 3rd, 2025
Three Harvard roommates raise $8M for AI startup with a beer pact to protect their friendship

Raylu, an AI startup building agents for private-market investors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding, bringing total funding to $12 million. The round was led by HighlandX, an early customer that became an investor after using the product. The company was founded in 2022 by three friends: Ali Dastjerdi and Nathan Ondracek, who were Harvard roommates, and Samuel Ilkka, who met Ondracek at AWS. The trio, all 28, now employ 11 people and plan to expand to 20 by January. The founders maintain an unusual tradition: a single unopened beer in their office fridge, reserved for the day the company collapses. The ritual symbolises their commitment to preserving their friendship regardless of business outcomes. They credit their success to deep trust, quick conflict resolution, and understanding each other's strengths.

Raylu
Dec 3rd, 2025
Raylu Raises $8M Series A to Redefine Deal Sourcing in Private Markets

Raylu raises $8M Series A to redefine deal sourcing in private markets. Today Raylu, Inc. is announcing an $8M Series A to build the platform for Deal Engineering in private markets - led by HighlandX. Raylu, Inc. is also sharing its previously unannounced $4M Seed, led by Conversion Capital and Unusual Ventures, with angels including Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Diego Oppenheimer (Algorithmia/DataRobot), and Trent Hedge (Pylon). Founded in 2022 by Ali Dastjerdi (CEO, ex-Insight Partners) and former AWS engineers Nathan Ondracek (CTO) and Sam Ilkka (COO), Raylu is an AI-native sourcing platform built for private-market investors. Venture, growth equity, private equity, and corporate development teams use Raylu to go from thesis to booked founder meetings in minutes instead of weeks. Today, more than 45 private-investment funds representing over $500 billion in AUM use Raylu as their AI sourcing engine. Why Deal Engineering. LLMs changed what's possible, but reliable origination demands more than models. Deal Engineering is the discipline of turning non-deterministic AI into repeatable sourcing outcomes - the craft that moves investors from thesis | market map | qualified outreach | meetings with rigor and speed. Traditional deal sourcing was far too manual. Analysts stitched together lists, Google searches, email hunting, and CRM updates by hand. Raylu was built to change that: instead of spreadsheets and browser tabs, investors use agents and workflows that instrument, evaluate, and integrate every step of origination. Agents are easy to prototype and hard to operationalize; inputs drift, outcomes branch, and reliability suffers. Deal Engineering solves that with instrumentation, evaluation, and deep integration across the investor workflow. Raylu, Inc. is building the platform for Deal Engineering becase sourcong deals involves more than just sourcing. What's in the raylu platform. Raylu's agents act as the sourcing infrastructure for private-market investors, handling the work that used to take weeks: * From thesis to market map Describe a thesis in natural language and generate a comprehensive, real-time market map in minutes, with coverage of bootstrapped and emerging companies. * 360° Company Intelligence Access concise, standardized profiles on every target: product details, GTM motion, hiring, customers, benchmarks, and competitive context - ready before the first call. * Fund-Voice Outreach Identify verified decision-makers and launch targeted, multi-touch emails written in your firm's voice - direct-to-CEO/founder outreach at scale. * Two-Way CRM Sync Sync companies, interactions, and insights directly into existing CRMs such as DealCloud, Affinity, and Salesforce. Enrichment without workflow friction; notes and attachments become structured signal. * Architecture & Trust Multi-model AI tuned for investor tasks, source-backed outputs, SOC 2, and zero AI data retention - enterprise-grade security and governance for sensitive deal flow. Across customers, hours collapse into minutes, coverage expands, and time-to-thesis shrinks - with cleaner CRM hygiene and higher reply rates. The outcome isn't just more names; it's more first conversations that matter. * Grow its engineering and product teams * Strengthen its security, compliance, and enterprise capabilities * Expand go-to-market as more funds modernize their sourcing workflows with AI Its goal is simple: make Raylu the default sourcing engine for private-market investors. About raylu. Raylu is an AI-native sourcing platform built for private-market investors. Founded by former Insight Partners investor Ali Dastjerdi (CEO) and ex-AWS engineers Nathan Ondracek (CTO) and Sam Ilkka (COO), Raylu helps funds accelerate proprietary deal flow by using AI agents to find, research, and engage companies that match their investment theses. Raylu is used by more than 45 private-investment funds representing over $500 billion in AUM. For more information, visit raylu.ai. About HighlandX. HighlandX, based in Boston and Menlo Park, is a venture firm dedicated to partnering with founders who are redefining the frontier of their categories. With a focused, hands-on approach, the firm identifies, supports, and accelerates high-growth companies with outlier metrics and market momentum. Join Raylu, Inc.. * See it live: [Book a demo link] * Raylu, Inc. is hiring: Help build the future of Deal Engineering. Thank you to its investors, customers, and partners for pushing Raylu, Inc. to raise the bar. The space moves fast - so do Raylu, Inc..

Raylu
Sep 22nd, 2025
Raylu Launches Official Affinity Integration to Bring AI-Powered Sourcing to Private Market Investors

With Raylu's AI-powered market mapping, company research, and outreach automation integrated with Affinity's industry-leading CRM, investors can now: