Inflektion, a performance marketing technology company founded in 2023, has made a big splash in the short time it’s been on the scene.
In 2025, the company’s AI-powered personalisation engine took the title for most innovative technology at the US Partnership Awards (USPAs). This win was followed by a funding round led by partner marketing platform Everflow to push forward Inflektion's AI solution rollout.
Here, Haafiz Dossa, CEO of Inflektion, breaks down how the USPA win helped close deals, offers advice for submissions and shares his forecasts for what’s ahead in the industry.
Madaline Dunn: What did it mean to you to win the gold in the Most Innovative Technology category at the USPAs last year?
Haafiz Dossa: It was honestly really great, not just for me, but for the whole company, in general: the developers that worked on it, the rest of the team that all contributed ideas.
It was a good bonding moment for the team to know that we're on the right track and also get validation from our industry peers.
MD: How did you approach the submission? What did you look to prioritise?
HD: We just looked at what we were doing that was really innovative in the space and went along with the goals of what we believe as a company, which is to create technology that will empower brands and affiliate managers to be able to leverage themselves more.
There are a lot of awards in the space for teams, campaigns, and contributions, which are all super important too. But what I love about what Hello Partner has started doing is more towards the technology side of things. Even though this is a partnerships industry and therefore partnerships are foundational to that, partnerships are built on people; that’s all fundamental, the way we like to look at it is that if you can also build technology that empowers people and saves them time from doing all the nitty-gritty work, that's where you can get the real lift from time saved.
Focusing on incremental work is what makes the difference when you have all the basics covered through technology.
MD: Jumping off from that: Do you think that the win and recognition at the USPAs has changed how your work is perceived in the industry?
HD: We've had people who have come to us because of it. It’s definitely had an impact internally and externally within the industry, and then, the other part of it is just being in that environment in the room and seeing all the innovation there.
You get flooded with all the information on what's actually up and coming in the industry. It's a great way to keep tabs on all the innovations that are happening, which helps push you, which then in turn pushes the industry. So, it's a nice collaborative cycle.
MD: Have you had any business opportunities open up following the USPAs?
HD: One hundred per cent. We've definitely had business opportunities that have come from that: people we were already in contact with, that, as a result, we were able to close deals with, but also people that just came to us, because of hearing that and the publicity we got from that.
MD: With regard to submissions, do you have any top tips you’d like to share with those entering for the first time?
HD: Start early. We put a lot of work into those submissions. There were lots of revision cycles and collaboration within the team on how we wanted to present the information.
The hardest part is the length cap on the video and text submission, which really makes you distil the work done into just a few words, and that's very tough to fully convey. That level of consolidation of all that information does take time, so start early.
MD: It sounds like it's been a really exciting time, especially with the new business coming in and those connections, but what's on the horizon for you as a company?
HD: We're continuing to innovate in areas that others in the industry aren't doing. We're trying to take a different approach that sets us apart in other areas.
Our north star metric is: building technology that doubles the conversion rate of the channel and cuts out 90% of the workload. That way, the humans can do what humans do best, which is building relationships — and that's the foundation for all the growth that we see. When you have time for that, that's when things really shine.
MD: And, what about the industry more broadly? What are your forecasts for 2026?
HD: The changes in AI agents are really going to be profound in this industry because there's still so much manual work from campaign reporting, and I think agents are going to be really impactful in our industry in particular.
I would encourage people to proactively dabble in it. I'll say, in probably three years from now, if you're not knee-deep in that kind of stuff, you would probably have challenges surviving in the industry if you don't stay up to date on all that kind of stuff.
I think our industry is really well-suited for that kind of disruption because of the amount of manual work that’s often involved and the leverage if you can cut out all that kind of stuff.
