According to VentureBeat, Structured, an AI-native partner marketing automation platform, has appointed enterprise software veteran Stacey Epstein as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. She replaces founder Daniel Nissan, who will stay on as an active advisor during the transition. The company, which counts IBM, Google, Zoom, Dell, and ServiceNow as customers, is preparing to launch its next-generation AI-native platform in Q1 of 2026. This move coincides with securing additional growth capital from majority owner Invictus Growth Partners, a firm with over $1 billion in assets under management. Epstein’s background includes key roles at Oracle, SuccessFactors, ServiceMax, Freshworks, and Veeva, where she helped guide companies through major acquisitions and a $1 billion IPO.
What this CEO change really means
Founder-CEO transitions are always a big deal, and this one is no exception. Daniel Nissan built Structured into a recognized leader in partner marketing automation, which is no small feat. But here’s the thing: bringing in Stacey Epstein isn’t just a routine change. It’s a signal. It tells you the board and investors at Invictus Growth believe the company is moving from a “build it” phase to a “scale it globally” phase. Epstein’s entire resume screams “scale.” She helped take SuccessFactors from $10 million to a $3.4 billion sale, was CMO at Freshworks for its IPO, and has deep channel roots from Oracle. This isn’t a product visionary hire; it’s a go-to-market and operational execution hire. The founder built the engine. Now they’ve brought in a seasoned pilot to fly it into heavier traffic.
The big AI platform bet
The press release heavily leans on the “AI-native” label for its Q1 platform launch. Everyone’s doing that, of course. But for a partner marketing platform, it actually makes a ton of sense. Think about the problem: giant enterprises like IBM have thousands of partners, all needing personalized marketing materials, compliance checks, and performance tracking. Doing that manually is a nightmare. Using “agentic and generative AI” to automate campaign creation and hyper-personalize content isn’t just a buzzword here—it’s potentially the only way to make such a complex ecosystem function profitably. If Structured’s new platform can truly turn partner data into automated, optimized actions, that’s a compelling value proposition. But, and it’s a big but, the market is getting crowded. Can their AI truly deliver “measurable ROI” better than the next guy? That’s the billion-dollar question they’ll need to answer in 2026.
Broader trends and the road ahead
This move fits perfectly into a couple of major software trends we’re seeing. First, there’s the massive, ongoing focus on monetizing every possible business ecosystem—partners, channels, affiliates. Second, AI is becoming the default layer for managing complexity at scale. Structured is sitting right at the intersection of those two trends. Epstein’s mention of “operational focus” and “relentless execution” also hints at the pressure to perform. With fresh capital from Invictus, who notably touts its own AI platform called DIANE for sales conversions, the expectations for growth are clearly set high. The playbook seems clear: use the new AI platform as a wedge to land more enterprise giants, then expand globally. It’s a classic SaaS scale-up story, but this time with the entire narrative built around AI-driven partner ecosystems. The execution, as always, is everything.
