For most of the history of software, partnerships were mostly about driving incremental revenue from resales.
Today, partnerships are likely to be crucial to staying relevant in the market, and winning and retaining business. This is because the very traits that make API-first software attractive to buyers – being relatively low-commitment and easy to integrate, enabling faster development times – also make it a lot easier to replace.
The question of how to approach partnerships depends on the life-stage of your business. How can new startups carve out the resources for a partner strategy, whilst perfecting their MVP and those early direct sales? What steps can they take to cover partnerships with resources, and how can they anticipate a fully-fledged partner operation as their business scales?
For this episode of the Martalks Podcast, I spoke to Jay McBain of Canalys. Jay has worked in the channel community for over 20 years now, including founding two companies which helped businesses drive partner sales.
Through this discussion it became clear that the partnerships you maintain, and your depth of integration with complementary systems, are now likely to be as critical to your company’s survival as the product itself. This means that partnerships must be in scope from day one of your startup. Even if the business isn’t quite yet mature enough for channel sales, anticipating that phase of growth is now a fundamental part of your go-to-market strategy (GTM).
You can listen to the 30-minute podcast here – or, if you prefer to read, there’s an article based on it here: https://bit.ly/3dPMy1o.
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