Networking has long been crucial in tech, an industry where so-called warm intros, founder dinners and alumni communities are central to the culture (and to deal making).
But lately, start-ups and venture capital firms have been sharpening their focus on human connection, by hiring people for “ecosystem” jobs. Such roles, which have titles like “start-up ecosystem lead” or “ecosystem growth manager,” focus on building or maintaining relationships among various parties on a company’s behalf. In this way, the people ushering in the artificial intelligence revolution are doubling down on in-person ties.
The workers in such roles often spend their days planning events, orchestrating partnerships, supporting clients and leading trainings. Are the tasks new? Not really. But the framing is.
“When companies talk about ecosystem, they are talking about trying to cultivate and tend to an extended network — not just of customers but also of partners, distribution channels, supporters and advocates,” said Yoni Rechtman, a partner at Slow Ventures, a venture capital firm.
The venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz defined ecosystem as “the bottom-up vector of trust in venture,” and the firm’s “ecosystem lead” explained his role as “focused on expanding and reinforcing the multitude of networks spanning our firm.”
Ecosystem roles exist on various teams, including marketing, partnerships and sales, and the job’s specifics vary from company to company, said Natalie Sportelli, who since January has held the title “start-up ecosystem” at Clay, an A.I. sales tool start-up. In recent months, her projects have included putting together product demonstrations for a partner’s portfolio companies, coordinating product coaching sessions with customers and collaborating with other start-up program leaders for a panel in London about building A.I.-native sales organizations.
“We’re not just trying to sell — we’re trying to create programming that makes start-ups successful,” she said.
Though the role is still niche, the rate of job titles with “ecosystem” in them quadrupled on LinkedIn from 2010 to 2025, according to Nick Bloom and Gideon Slocum Moore, researchers at Stanford who have analyzed job-title data on the platform. (Only a small share of new “ecosystem” roles in recent years, they noted, appear related to the field of ecology.)
People in tech have dropped the phrase ecosystem for as long as Mr. Rechtman can remember — referring to the “tech ecosystem” and the “start-up ecosystem” — but its presence in job titles is a more recent development, he said. Ms. Sportelli, too, has noticed an uptick in such roles in the past year, which she attributes partly to a hunger for connection brought on by the rise of A.I. Lately, there is a “premium on in-person,” including events, she said.
The bet is that people beget interest from other people.
“It’s very difficult to stand out in a sloppified feed and a sloppified inbox,” Mr. Rechtman said, referring to A.I. slop. In a world where companies can easily blast potential customers with A.I.-generated content all day, he added, “getting attention is much harder, and you need to be more creative in how you meet people and build relationships with them.”
A wave of new A.I. tools also means a wave of new stakeholders and relationships to manage.
“People now have a ton of vendors, and those vendors all need to work together — and the relationships between them are more complicated,” Mr. Rechtman said.
The A.I. era has spawned a number of new job functions — with trendy new titles to go with them.
“There are some roles that come into vogue because they sound cool or because you feel like you’re investing in the right things by hiring for them,” Ms. Sportelli said. “Start-up and venture people love a good branding moment when it comes to job titles.”
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