Prepared for the Thryv Partnerships Team — Tiana Norman & Erin Knese · July 2026 · v6

She & HER × Thryv
A Strategic Partnership, Mapped

From  Desirée Mayon, CEO and founder, She & HER Following  Our partner discussion, June 12, 2026 Runway  NYC Pride ✓ → Amsterdam (Aug) → AI Conference · NYC Tech Week · LWT (Sep–Oct) → AfroTech (Nov)
1

She & HER isn't your ICP. That's exactly why this works.

Thryv sells to local service businesses, coaches, and consultants. A sapphic dating app isn't that — so let's name it up front. The value here was never She & HER as a customer. It's that Desirée has standing access to 50,000+ founders and operators on confirmed 2026 stages — small businesses that are your ICP, in communities your acquisition engine can't reach efficiently — and she routes them to you. In exchange, Thryv's platform powers She & HER's own launch, making her your proof case, not just a referral source. It's a two-way trade, drawn across all three of your existing partner lanes and modeled on a program the category's biggest player has already validated at 35,000-startup scale: HubSpot for Startups.

Existing

Referral / Affiliate

Recurring commission for sending small businesses to Thryv or Keap. Built for volume.

Existing

Reseller

Agencies and consultants packaging Thryv into their own client services.

Existing

Developer

Integrations, plug-ins, and API connections into the Thryv + Keap marketplace.

Proposed

Strategic Partner

One partner operating across all three lanes — ICP-aligned customer pipeline, platform-adoption support, agency networks, and co-built demand gen — measured the only way that counts: net-new Thryv customers.

How we built this proposal

Around one question — the one a platform your size actually rewards: can this partner bring us customers? Not press for its own sake, not reach for its own sake. Every section below rolls up to net-new Thryv + Keap accounts and the retention that follows. If a line doesn't move that number, it isn't in here.

2

The play HubSpot already runs — and the one She & HER is already in.

This isn't a pitch that Thryv's program is the cheapest or the most lucrative — that's not the argument. It's that HubSpot turned a discount ladder into a 35,000-startup customer pipeline, fed by 4,000+ partner organizations. She & HER qualifies through exactly that mechanism today. The ask: pilot the same structure, with She & HER as cohort one and as the ecosystem partner that feeds it.

90%
Year One
50%
Year Two
25%
Year Three

HubSpot for Startups discount ladder for pre-seed through Series A companies (publicly published terms). Proposed as the parity structure for Thryv + Keap.

35,000+
startups inside HubSpot's program today
4,000+
partner orgs that feed its pipeline — that's the role She & HER plays here
3
of those program types already back She & HER: NVIDIA Inception, AWS Activate, Google for Startups

“It's not about my reach. It's about the spaces I'm already in — full of small businesses that need exactly what Thryv sells, and don't yet know it.”

3

Who She & HER is

She & HER is a community-based dating app for the sapphic community — women who love women — built on a simple thesis: teach people how to date before you match them. We launched at NYC Pride on June 28 — the only brand carrying the official NYC Pride logo — and the runway builds from there: World Pride Amsterdam in August; The AI Conference, NYC Tech Week, and the Lesbians Who Tech conference across September–October; and our primary launch anchor, AfroTech, in November 2026, with national press along the way.

Founder-built technology

Desirée Mayon is a data scientist with 15+ years in ML across Google, Microsoft/Xbox, Etsy, and Nordstrom. The platform is engineered in-house — which is why our technology partnerships run deeper than discounts.

Backed infrastructure

Active partner in NVIDIA Inception, AWS Activate, and Google for Startups Cloud — the same class of startup programs HubSpot uses to verify eligibility for its 90% tier.

Lean by design

A ~10-person team with an external brand and marketing studio. We are exactly the customer Thryv was built for — big reach, lean headcount, tools doing the work of departments — which is exactly why we can prove the stack from the inside.

4

Two roles, one structure

The structure we discussed on July 10 is a hybrid — strategic partner + consultant. Desirée comes in as a consultant — advising on net-new acquisition, the conversion method, and the customer she knows better than anyone — and as a partner who routes qualified small businesses into your funnel. In exchange, full access to the platform. Toggle to see each direction.

  • Full platform access — Thryv + Keap, comped for year one.Framed not as a customer discount but as enabling a partner. Desirée comes in as a strategic partner and consultant (the advisory leg below), delivering net-new pipeline, reach, and the conversion method. HubSpot's startup ladder tops out at 90% for companies buying the platform; this is a partner + consultant engagement, not a purchase — so full access to the stack is simply the tooling that makes the advisory and the case study possible. Thryv's cash cost is marginal seat capacity; the return is the pipeline, the advisory, and the case study.
  • A monthly consulting retainer for the pilot window — paid work, not a favor.A courtesy working session gets us started, but mapping the conversion play, building the simplified journey with your engineering champions, designing the activations, and running the pilot is dedicated senior work — an ex-Google/Xbox data scientist and product lead doing it hands-on. A monthly retainer across the pilot window (through the November AfroTech anchor) funds the hours to do it right, the same way you'd retain any specialist. The comped platform is the tooling; the retainer is the time. Rate scoped in the working session.
  • A working session with the partnerships owner.One conversation to pressure-test the pilot structure — what eligibility looks like, what a qualified referral means, what cohort two could be.
  • A product demo plus access to your product and engineering champions.The gap here isn't social media — it's net-new demand generation: the marketing fundamentals, brand reach, and conversion method your direct floor was built to farm, not hunt (your words on July 10). Seeing the stack up close, with your champions in the room, is what lets me map the conversion play in the advisory leg to your actual product surface.
  • A timeline that meets the moment.Our activation runway is already in motion — NYC Pride is done (June 28, only brand with the logo), World Pride Amsterdam in August, then The AI Conference plus NYC Tech Week (Uber + NYC Pride) and Lesbians Who Tech across September–October, then AfroTech in November. Sooner is better — right is best; we move quickly once terms are aligned.
  • A named SMB referral pipeline — companies, not clicks.Our partner network is a working roster of small businesses: event production companies, venues and bars, creative agencies, and LGBTQ+-owned SMBs across NYC, Houston, Atlanta, Oakland, and Chicago. Qualified, founder-to-founder introductions into Thryv's funnel begin when terms are signed. Section 6 maps each source to the Thryv product it buys.
  • The flagship case study your net-new motion is missing: a lean team winning on the full stack.We run top-of-funnel on Marketing Center and nurture on Keap, and document the whole play as an off-the-shelf, repeatable proof — the "here's a business like yours winning with Thryv" story your sales floor can hand any prospect. It's the credibility that turns a cold net-new pitch into a close. (And a customer who adopts the full platform is one who stays.)
  • Event-sourced demand from the most founder-dense rooms in the country.Speaking slots at AfroTech (40,000+ attendees), Lesbians Who Tech (5,000+ summit, 110,000-member community), and The AI Conference (5,500+ builders and founders) are the access mechanism — structured referral capture routes founders and operators from those rooms into the program as qualified leads.
  • A big-tech alumni network that founds companies.Fifteen-plus years across Google, Microsoft/Xbox, Etsy, and Nordstrom puts Desirée inside the FAANG alumni circles — Xoogler and ex-Microsoft founder communities — where operators leave to start companies. Those alumni-founded startups are precisely the cohort the startup channel exists to capture, and the introduction comes founder-to-founder.
  • A proven net-new conversion method — behavioral economics, not just reach.Desirée is a 15-year ML engineer and HubSpot technology partner who worked on converting xCloud users freemium→paid across emerging markets at Xbox. That method — reading culture and feeling, not just funnel data — is pointed at your net-new problem, delivered through your product/engineering champions plus a pre-scoped Apollo integration for smaller markets. The Advisory leg has the full how.
  • Scalable events, education, and demand generation — co-built.Beyond speaker slots: co-hosted "launch playbook" workshops and webinars teaching SMBs and founders how to run GTM on the Thryv + Keap stack. Education that doubles as demand gen, repeatable on an annual event calendar.
  • A co-announcement produced by our brand studio.Our marketing team drafts and produces the partnership announcement — including placement inside the startup-program channels we sit in.

What this is — a two-way exchange

Value moves both directions. Thryv's platform becomes the growth engine behind She & HER — and She & HER becomes Thryv's flagship use case: living proof the stack can build a real pipeline for a founder running a 10-person team with no marketing department. In return, Desirée gives Thryv two things you can't buy off a media plan — her reach, the communities and rooms your acquisition engine can't get into, and the small-business user journey through a founder's lens, watched in real time as she actually runs the full stack. That's net-new reach that converts and go-to-market strategy from inside the customer's seat — the two inputs that actually move units. It is not an influencer or affiliate arrangement — no sponsored posts, no consumer promotion, no payment for reach. The short version: you power the stack; I deliver net-new conversions in the markets you can't reach — plus the strategy and the case study to repeat them at scale.

5

What we owe you — line by line

Six criteria define a strategic partner worth the name. Here's how we answer each one.

6

Where the customers come from — and what each segment buys

Every source below is quantified, matched to your ICP, and mapped to the Thryv product it's most likely to buy. These are the net-new accounts, segment by segment. Tap each to expand.

Partner Network — Active Now

On signing+
ReachFive metro markets — NYC, Houston, Atlanta, Oakland, Chicago — a roster of partner venues, event producers, and agencies collectively running 50+ events a year, each with its own local customer base.
AudienceA working roster of small businesses She & HER already partners with: event production companies running 50+ events a year, venues and bars, creative agencies, and LGBTQ+-owned SMBs across five metro markets.
ICP fitLocal service and events businesses — Thryv's core ICP, most with no marketing stack at all.
Product fitMarketing Center (social, listings, reputation) + Thryv Leads for venues and event brands; Keap Max for agencies nurturing client rosters.

NYC Pride Launch + National Press

June 28 · Done+
Reach2M+ attendees, 75,000 marchers, 60 floats — NYC Pride is North America's largest Pride — and She & HER holds the event's full CRM and audience data.
AudienceShe & HER launched at NYC Pride on June 28 as the only brand carrying the official NYC Pride logo, with national press and the event's full CRM and audience data now in hand. Around the parade sits an ecosystem of hundreds of LGBTQ+-owned vendors and event businesses — access already secured.
ICP fitVendors, food and beverage operators, merch businesses, event services — seasonal-revenue SMBs that need year-round lead flow.
Product fitMarketing Center + bundled entry plans; the case-study clock starts here.

AfroTech — 40,000+ Attendees

November+
Reach40,000+ in-person attendees (2025 actuals) and ~3M+ interactions across the weekend — the largest Black tech gathering in the country.
Audience40,000+ attendees in Houston (2025 actuals); She & HER is a direct partner and Desirée holds a primary speaker slot. Thryv has no AfroTech presence today.
ICP fitThe densest gathering of Black founders, operators, and early-stage companies in the country — heavy entrepreneurship and SMB programming.
Product fitKeap Max and bundles for funded startups; Marketing Center + SEO for boutique firms and solo founders. Structured referral capture routes interested founders into the program.

Lesbians Who Tech — 110K Community

October · Speaking+
Reach110,000-member global community; 5,000+ at the in-person summit — the largest LGBTQ+ professional event in the world.
Audience5,000+ at the in-person summit — the largest LGBTQ+ professional event in the world — atop a 110,000-member global community. Desirée is a primary speaker.
ICP fitQueer founders, consultants, and startup operators — many running lean companies that mirror She & HER's profile.
Product fitBundled Thryv + Keap for early-stage teams; Thryv Leads for consultancies and service businesses.

The AI Conference — 5,500+ Builders

Fall+
Reach5,500+ engineers, researchers, and founders in San Francisco.
Audience5,500+ engineers, researchers, and founders in San Francisco; Desirée speaks on production ML.
ICP fitTechnical founders building early-stage companies — strong product, no GTM stack. The exact profile the startup channel exists to capture.
Product fitKeap Max for sales automation; bundled solutions for first GTM hires.

FAANG Alumni Networks

Ongoing+
ReachTens of thousands of big-tech alumni founders across Xoogler and ex-Microsoft/Xbox communities — concentrated in exactly the pre-seed and seed segment.
AudienceDesirée's 15+ years at Google, Microsoft/Xbox, Etsy, and Nordstrom place her inside alumni founder communities — networks like Xoogler that exist specifically to launch and fund startups built by big-tech alumni.
ICP fitPre-seed and seed founders fresh out of big tech: strong product instincts, enterprise habits, zero GTM stack — and used to evaluating tools on the merits.
Product fitKeap Max and bundled Thryv + Keap as the first GTM stack; founder-to-founder referrals carry unusually high close rates because the trust arrives with the introduction.

World Pride Amsterdam + London + WNBA

August 2026+
Reach1M+ visitors over the two-week WorldPride programme (July 25–Aug 8, 2026); 500,000–750,000 at the Aug 1 Canal Parade — a global small-business-owner audience — with London Pride and the WNBA season running alongside.
AudienceWorld Pride Amsterdam (July 25–Aug 8) draws small-business owners from around the world, with a queer-app launch on the ground; London Pride overlaps the same window; WNBA season runs alongside.
ICP fitInternational and global SMB owners — net-new reach in markets Thryv doesn't touch today — plus brand-moment amplification for the case study.
Product fitInternational SMB referrals; case-study reach; co-announcement placements.

Every number above is the floor — not the reach

A conference isn't 40,000 impressions — it's 40,000 trusted nodes. In high-trust, culturally-aligned communities, each person carries their network, and their network watches them. This is the behavioral economics of reach: the room is where it starts, and a peer referral is the single highest-converting acquisition mechanism there is.

92%
trust a recommendation from someone they know — above every other form of advertising (Nielsen)
more likely to buy when a peer refers them; word of mouth drives 5× the sales of a paid impression
~150
close ties per person (Dunbar's number) — the 50,000+ founder nodes carry a second-degree network in the millions

Why this isn't a media buy

These are tastemaker communities — Black founders, queer operators, technical builders — the people other small businesses watch and follow. When a founder in that room says "I run on Thryv," it doesn't spend an impression; it sets a cultural default. That's social proof and in-group trust doing the work — the same behavioral-economics levers that move conversion 42%→82% in Section 8, now operating across a network in the millions instead of one funnel. It's reach you can't buy, converting the way only trust converts — and it compounds every time a referred customer refers the next one.

7

The gap your own reviews already name

Thryv's ratings tell two different stories — and the space between them is the exact problem this partnership is built to close. This isn't a knock on the product. It's where the upside is.

Where Thryv wins — the assisted start

4.3–4.6 / 5 on G2 across ~2,000 reviews, ~90% from small businesses, with repeat "Leader" and "Easiest to Use" awards. Reviewers single out one thing again and again: the hands-on help during initial setup. When a Thryv person is in the room, customers love it.

Where Thryv bleeds — after the rep steps away

2.3 / 5 on Trustpilot · 300+ BBB complaints in 12 months. The theme isn't the software — it's the journey once onboarding ends: unclear billing, hard-to-cancel contracts, "I paid and got no results," support that goes quiet. Happy while guided; gone once alone.

The diagnosis — and why it's mine to close

That split is a user-journey gap, not a product gap — and it's the back half of the only number that matters: retention. It's also the half of this exchange a media plan can't deliver. As a founder running the full stack solo — no rep holding my hand — Desirée documents the journey from inside the customer's seat: where it breaks, where a lean team gets stuck, what turns a trial into a renewal. The case study becomes the proof those reviews are missing — a real business that got results without the hand-holding. Every gap closed is a customer who renews instead of writing the next one-star review.

8

The how has a name: behavioral economics

Net-new acquisition is your #1 priority — you said so on July 10 — and it's the thing your direct floor, built to farm the existing base, isn't built to hunt. The advisory leg is the engine that produces it. Every platform reads the funnel data; none of them layer behavioral economics on top — asking about affordability and fit conversationally, in a way that reads culture and feeling, not just numbers. That's what converts free and curious into paid, in markets your competitors can't reach.

Proof it works — the method, at Xbox scale

At Xbox, Desirée worked on converting Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) users from free trials into paid Game Pass across emerging markets — the same regions Microsoft pushed cloud gaming into (India, Latin America, and beyond) specifically to remove the $300–500 console barrier. The lever wasn't discounting; it was rewriting the onboarding questions with cultural and behavioral context so people converted willingly. The response from Xbox leadership was, essentially — "I didn't think of it like that." Same method, now pointed at Thryv's net-new problem.

The evidence: how you ask moves the number

This isn't a hunch. Decades of behavioral-economics research show that reframing the ask — not the offer — is one of the largest levers on conversion there is. It's the difference between a plumber closing the tab and a plumber becoming a paying unit.

42% → 82%
conversion when a choice is reframed from opt-in to opt-out — same people, same offer, only the framing changed (Johnson & Goldstein, Science, 2003)
+23%
conversion lift from adding social proof — cited as the single most powerful principle in e-commerce conversion
+20%
sales lift from framing a price as "savings" rather than a discount — pure framing, same dollars

WHO — the niche no one has touched

Minority-owned SMBs (AfroTech as the proof), the dispensary market ("everybody has a dispensary now — what makes you different?"), and every undifferentiated small business competing against a big brand. Your real competitor here is GoHighLevel, not up-market HubSpot — and the niche below them is wide open. My reach is instant access to it.

CONVERT — behavioral economics as the net-new engine

The differentiator every competitor is missing: converting on feeling and culture, not just data — especially for businesses that work one-to-one with people, or anyone going up against a bigger brand. This is a freemium→paid, top-of-funnel conversion lever for net-new — not a fix for the onboarding your team already runs. It builds a subscription base people want to pay for.

BUILD — advise, your champions build

I don't touch your codebase — your engineering team does. I work with your product/engineering champions to map the conversion-focused changes; I bring the method, the reach, and a UI team; you build. Equally yoked: if I eat, you eat. A pre-scoped Apollo integration for emerging/smaller markets — something HubSpot doesn't offer — is already warming.

The on-ramp: a campaign, not a big commitment

Companies struggle to see a thing before it exists, so we start by showing it — a campaign that proves the net-new conversion play at a dated event before anyone commits at scale. AfroTech (mainstage, ~3M+ interactions, dense with minority-owned SMBs) is the natural anchor; NYC Pride is already in hand with the CRM data every partner needs; World Pride Amsterdam brings global small-business reach in August. Each is a measurable net-new window with its own conversion target — so your VP sees the units, where they came from, and exactly how they were produced.

9

The logic, in Thryv's own model: Market · Sell · Grow

Market, Sell, Grow is Thryv's own framework — it's on your homepage. Thryv is Market, Keap is Sell, and She & HER is the Grow engine. But the engine runs both ways: Thryv's platform powers She & HER's launch (the use case), and that documented result — carried into 50,000+ founder seats — feeds ICP-matched companies, reach, and user-journey insight back to Thryv. Below is exactly how we get you there — the same logic broken into five measurable moves, each one a checkpoint your VP can hold us to. Every turn of the loop is a net-new customer.

THRYV'S OWN MODEL · ONE FLYWHEEL MARKET Thryv Get found — social, listings, reputation, lead capture SELL Keap Win the customer — CRM, nurture, sales automation GROW She & HER Runs on Thryv — the use case. Returns reach, customers, insight. REACH · CUSTOMERS · USER-JOURNEY INSIGHT RETURN TO THRYV
50,000+
founders & operators across AfroTech, Lesbians Who Tech & The AI Conference — confirmed 2026 stages, all SMB-adjacent
+64% / +50%
Thryv's own published lift in Google visibility / revenue for businesses on the platform — the outcomes the case study documents
35,000
startups in the partner-fed program this is modeled on (HubSpot for Startups)

How we get you there — five measurable moves

10

From first call to the November anchor

June 12 — Done

First call

Desirée × Tiana. Strategic-partner direction set; HubSpot benchmark shared.

June 28 — Done

NYC Pride launch

Launched as the only brand carrying the official NYC Pride logo; national press, full CRM and audience data secured. The proof point already banked.

July 10 — Done

Meeting of the minds

Desirée × Erin. Immediate alignment on the shape of it — a hybrid strategic-partner + consultant relationship — and on the real problem to solve: net-new acquisition. Chemistry first; structure follows.

July 13

VP briefing

Erin briefs the VP at Monday leadership. This document is built to travel with that briefing.

Late July

Pilot scoping

Map the net-new conversion play with product + engineering champions; lock co-branding for the activation slate.

August

World Pride Amsterdam

Global small-business owners on the ground; international net-new reach in markets Thryv doesn't touch.

Sept–Oct

Fall founder stages

The AI Conference (San Francisco), NYC Tech Week (sponsored by Uber and NYC Pride), and a speaking slot at the Lesbians Who Tech conference — founder- and operator-dense stages, back-to-back.

November

AfroTech — the anchor

Mainstage; primary net-new anchor and product-launch milestone. Full-funnel Thryv + Keap case study and the conversion-pilot results delivered; review to scale.