Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Matt O'Leary - How to Hire the Best Partnerships Talent
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Matt O’Leary, Head of M&A and Strategic Partnerships at 1Password, to explore what it takes to hire, build, and scale successful partnerships. With experience at Shopify, entrepreneurship, and product management, Matt shares why skills alone aren’t enough energy, curiosity, and adaptability are the real drivers of success.
Key insights from this episode:
- Why “philosophical partnerships” working with people who share your values create the best business outcomes
- Why hiring for vibes and adaptability beats hiring for experience alone
- The downside of relying on partner Rolodexes instead of fresh perspectives
- How partnerships, channel, and alliances teams can align for maximum impact
- Why ecosystem thinking is becoming a must-have strategy for hyper-scaling companies
If you’re looking for practical insights on how to hire and develop a world-class partnerships team, this episode is packed with takeaways you won’t want to miss!
Connect with Matt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-o-leary-88251516/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, matt. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:I am great, Alex. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm excited for this one. Lisa Campbell was the person that referred us into you and we had a great recording with her, so you've got a tough act to follow. But maybe for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Yes, so Matt O'Leary, I lead M&A and strategic partnerships at 1Password. Prior to joining 1Password, I was at Shopify for a few years. Password Prior to joining 1Password, I was at Shopify for a few years, and before that I was actually an entrepreneur and prior to that I worked in product management. I started my career as a lobbyist. I've done a whole bunch of things that are not just the job that I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:Product management, entrepreneur, partnerships leader, m&a and lobbyist is quite the Venn diagram. Yes, I can imagine there's some key lessons that you've sort of pulled right through that through tail, and hopefully we can get into some of those today, looking forward to it. Awesome. Lisa gave us one of the quotes that I think I now talk about internally and really claim as my own, but I understand that you were fairly instrumental in creating it, which is philosophical partnerships finding not just a business opportunity but like-minded folk to do business with. Talk to me about where this concept came from and how it's influenced your success.
Speaker 1:I think that this whole idea about why people get into partnerships in the first place is that you want to do something that's fundamentally creative. Right, you don't want to be. I think a lot of us, probably at some point in our careers, have done some version of sales, and that's a valuable skill in and of itself. A lot of it is much more, I think, repeatable than what we do, and everything that we do is about putting things together. I despise this phrase, but I will say it anyway. To make a one plus one equals three, and I think that that is something that can only come from being aligned with the people that you're doing partnerships with. Do you work well with these people that you're doing partnerships with is uh, do you work well with these people? Do you share the same values? Uh, do you think about things in the same way? Are you equally as ambitious? I think that's the crux of the whole idea 100.
Speaker 2:I think, uh, the paradox that I always sort of argue is, uh, the difference between discipline and enjoyment. And I think, especially in that sort of business, partnership, city world, I want to get as far away from discipline as possible and into that sort of enjoyment area, because we're building cool stuff with cool people, because this is going to be fun and complicated and it's just yeah. If I find that I'm getting extremely excited about breaking through these problems with other people, that's when I know greatness follows is that how lisa described it?
Speaker 2:no, that's how I described it. I might have completely cannibalized it. You might, you might completely disagree, be like. That's definitely not what I meant at all no, I think we're.
Speaker 2:I think we're circling around the same thing um, one of the other practices that I think is fundamentally important when it comes to partnership, people and building out a team is you've got to hire the right talent, which I think is extremely complicated. I think to hire great partnership leaders, you need to hire great entrepreneurs, and that's not something that appears on a CV very often. You've spoken a lot about hiring based on vibes, which I think is a great way of putting it. Talk to me about what are the vibes and why that's so important.
Speaker 1:I really do think that the job that we do in partnerships, whether you're in channel, if you're on the product side I think M&A has a bit more technical skill related to it, but it really is about energy and are you bringing a kind of enthusiasm to your role and a desire to get things done that, in my experience, has been the biggest predictor of people's success. I don't think this is a job you can do if you just want to be told what to do. If you want to sit at a desk and dial it in. You really need to have an ability to build relationships with people, not just externally to a company, but also within your own company, and get people excited about ideas, and so I guess vibes is a word for that.
Speaker 2:That's your word, I think, not technically mine, but that's really the, the, the kind of and vibe sort of flies counter to what I think a lot of you know big enterprise companies look for, because they're looking for a little black book and a rolodex full of names and lots of tangible cv experience. I often think that means you end up hiring the same sorts of people from the same sorts of businesses and maybe producing the same sorts of decision-making criteria. Why does that not align with some of the strategy and direction that you look to build?
Speaker 1:there. What does that quote?
Speaker 2:uh, you know the insanity one, if I'm guessing correct.
Speaker 1:Yes that is the one. Do you have it? Do you have?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah uh insanity. Definition of insanity is doing uh the same thing and expecting a different outcome. I think that's Albert Einstein.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that version of this I think across anything. One of the reasons that I got into technology as a sector is how quickly everything changes. I think for some people, that is likely stressful. For others I think both of us included that's the reason to get into this business. In general, Things change so much. You constantly have to be growing your knowledge, who you are as a person, how you approach the work that you do, and this idea of just hiring someone for a Rolodex or for information that has a shelf life of six months to a year I just don't know how you're going to get the best outcomes, and so I think the flip side of that is hiring really smart generalists, people who have an ability to learn quickly and a desire to do that. They can take a number of different concepts and disciplines and apply those in their job. I've found that to be much more valuable than someone who's going to come in and tell me that they have all the answers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think rate of change right. I think rate of change within our industry is getting faster, especially when we look at how the rate of change when it comes to AI and how that's going to influence all go-to markets, all product development, all data management, that shelf life gets shorter and shorter and shorter. So you speak about hiring great generalists. What is something outside of obviously excellent vibes? How do you quantify a great generalist?
Speaker 1:I think, for the stage that we're at at 1Password, which I can speak to specifically people who've had cross-functional careers, have they worked in things that are not just a go-to-market partnerships role or a product partnerships role? Do they have something interesting on their CV that shows that they have an ability to be flexible, that they can thrive in an ambiguous environment, that they have different experiences that they'll be able to bring to their role and a lateral way of thinking? Those are the things that I would really look for. With our current team, nobody would be a career partnerships professional. Everybody's done something different. We have a banker on our team, a consultant, a product manager, someone who was a CTO at another company Actually, no one within my existing group someone who was a buyer at a fashion company. No one in our existing team has come up through the traditional channel of partnerships and I think that's a massive benefit.
Speaker 2:I can certainly see the upside right. Once you drive the alignment between all those sort of disparate backgrounds, disparate thought processes, you're going to get some maybe greater level of creativity and flexibility. When you've got those things, there's got to be a downside right and, in terms of ramp time and baselining people on on processes and settings, how do you, how do you find the balance between bringing those disparate people from disparate backgrounds together while ensuring sort of speed and and efficiency?
Speaker 1:I think downside, alex, you're way more positive than to say downside very negative complexity. Yeah, I, I don't. I wouldn't look at it as a uh, a downside. I would say that it depends, I think, at the stage that the company you're at is in uh, and you always want to be looking at what kind of expertise or what do you need in general within your company at that certain stage to help you get to those next ones, and I do think that there is benefit. I don't want to say that this is the only way People who have worked in partnerships or who do have a specific expertise in a very narrow niche. That is a lot of value and I think that's something that can, particularly where we're at, where just having someone with a playbook, someone who's seen this before, that can be really valuable, specifically for a growth stage company like 1Password.
Speaker 2:Awesome. One of the things that I think is particularly interesting about how the sort of core function of partnerships is knitting together different go-to-market strategies, and very often partnerships and channel strategies and tech alliances all fall under some sort of umbrella, but maybe it turns out to be three wildly different umbrellas. How do you go about ensuring that these functions actually align and are effective and efficient together, right?
Speaker 1:It's hard. It's really hard. I don't know, in your experience of 150 interviews, if you've had someone that had the answer to this. If you do, please send them my way. I would love to know.
Speaker 1:That were in technology is that every company and every product needs to work well with other products. Everything needs to start from an understanding that customers are not going to only use your product in their stack, even if you are just a point solution. They are going to want to know that investments that they have made in other software will be additive with what you're bringing to the table. And so I think an integration or anything that will help to give that confidence to customers that your product works with investments they've already made. That to me is always a starting point, and then everything grows from there.
Speaker 1:Once you have that foundation of the products that you are discussing working together, that's really when the creativity can start. I think that can look like a number of different things. That can be basic co-sell or co-marketing initiatives, that can be co-product development. I think that's where the partnerships role gets really interesting, when you're looking at building net new things together. But really to me the foundation of it is can we make sure that our products at a very base level work well together and then go after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the best answer I can give from some of the conversations that I've had is building value props per individual. And so that's a value prop for each alliance, that's a value prop for each go-to-market. It's a value prop for each alliance, that's a value prop for each go-to-market. It's a value prop for each user, each customer, each buying persona.
Speaker 2:And so often we sort of assume that definition exists and I see it break down, especially when you try and pull channel strategy underneath partnerships where the end user goes great, that 1Password and WidgetX plugs in together because it's a really nice end user experience, and you go perfect, why would the partner be interested? And they go, because the end user will like it. And I go awesome, won't scale. And so it really is that continuous definition which is quite a methodical process. But I also feel from a product creation and value creation perspective, it's really powerful to get very, very specific at each level why that value is useful for each party. And when you do that white space analysis you'll immediately see where the friction is going to come from do some people not do that uh, you'd be amazed.
Speaker 2:You'd be amazed, I think. Um, you have businesses, culturally and process wise, which are focused on one vector, right? So you know google being a great example of an end-user-focused company, and then everything sort of builds from there. They have awesome channel people and tech alliance people that obviously work backwards, but I see so often people skip and then what happens is six, nine, 18 months later they go. Oh, and here's why revenue isn't ticking as fluently as it should.
Speaker 1:But I do think that that is like the ultimate goal, and I think that sometimes partnership people can get this wrong, like our stakeholders and I'm speaking specifically from a tech alliance perspective but I do think that that maps to other things too is the reason we're partnering is for the value we're creating for our joint customers, and I think sometimes that's missed. I think that in partnerships in general, there's people who want to do the hard work of thinking about that. You called it mapping value props. I think there's other people who want to go have fun at parties and go to Europe and go on the conference circuit, and I think that's the one thing that I would say to anybody in partnerships is that the end customer is the reason we're partnering. We're not partnering just for some other reason, and I think that can sometimes be lost lost.
Speaker 2:yeah, and I, you know I've spoken to some great partnership leaders who will talk to me about, you know, one with add a lot of zeros afterwards deal that they closed as a as a function of 18 months of hard work and I sort of sit there and you go, yeah, but because, first principles, you understood what the customer needed, right, and you can do as many drinks in as many lovely cities as possible, but no one with lots of zeroes deals comes off the back of it unless there's huge, huge value, and I think businesses can always afford to over-index on how do we provide even more value for the customer, the end customer, and if you do that consistently at some level, the mechanism will sort itself out. I just I see so often it it's like how do we get our marketing just right and all of that's detail that just falls behind. Is this really bloody useful?
Speaker 1:and that concept that you just described, that to me across partnerships as a whole is probably a rarer insight than it should be.
Speaker 2:Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1:I, I think that, um, it's probably because most people have a number to hit and, uh, when you have that number hanging over you and you have somebody, uh, putting your pipeline up every week and telling you and asking you where things are, it's pretty, it seems. It seems, um, it seems like a luxury to have to think about what the end customer experiences of the product, and that's why, again, I think that piece is foundational you said it really well which is that if you aren't doing that, you're never going to get the revenue anyways, and so I think that's really it. People have a number to hit that can be a hard thing to think about.
Speaker 2:Think that's really it. People have a number to hit. Uh, that can be a hard thing to think about. So one of the things that I sort of love and I I need to somehow draw this out but the thing that I'm really sort of obsessed with is, uh, partnerships are sort of venn diagrams in three dimensions, because you sort of have your horizontal partnerships, your vertical partnerships and and some sort of four-dimensional axis and. But that's because we talk about ecosystems, we talk about partnerships and everyone talks about how these things sort of stack on top of each other. Why do you think this is becoming sort of more prevalent in the language of your typical CRO?
Speaker 1:Of people just talking about ecosystems or talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I think people just A lot of people like the Venn diagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I'm on to like the Venn diagram. I was. I was at my exactly.
Speaker 2:I'm also a whiteboard person. Everyone in my company is going to start rolling their eyes, so I think it's the greatest productivity tool ever invented. But the the piece for me is we want to talk about ecosystems. People forever talking about ecosystems. I think most people don't actually understand what an ecosystem, why an ecosystem is useful. What do you think has generated that ecosystem change and how do you foresee it sort of changing over the next five, 10 years?
Speaker 1:I'm going to answer that question. And then I am wondering if there is a consensus definition of the word ecosystem across everybody that you have spoken to, because ecosystem to me is so broad of a term that I don't even know what it means anymore. I think it's used in very, very, very many places and there's no shared definition. And if you and I are talking about the ecosystem or being an ecosystem builder or being all these things that I would say that I am. Anyways, I don't think the model that I would have in my mind would be with most people, but I do think that the one thing that is likely shared when people are talking about an ecosystem is I think there's an acknowledgement of how interconnected the world is becoming, especially in technology.
Speaker 1:Just kind of to what I was speaking about earlier. You really can't get things done alone. Any company and any customer is making not an investment in a single Wotanoff product to solve a problem, and if you aren't working well with others in your space and you're not jointly trying to solve problems with other companies, I think it's going to be very hard for you to grow and really to survive. And I think everybody's acknowledging that. That that like underlying kind of concept, uh, the ways that that's applied to org structures or how companies are set up. I don't think that's anywhere near standardized. I think it's part of the fun of the job that we get to do, but I think it also creates a lot of confusion and can especially for growing companies where you have people coming from different companies, where partnerships mean something different everywhere.
Speaker 2:Do you have a theory in terms of why sort of ecosystem first is becoming um the predominant strategy? When people talk about, you know we're, we're hyperscaling. We now need to start thinking about ecosystem experience. Why? Why that's becoming the it sounds.
Speaker 1:It sounds fancy, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:you know it does.
Speaker 1:I think it was like I'm an ecosystem leader as opposed to you. You know I'm trying to create joint value with customers via partnership. I think it's an all encompassing word and I think it elevates the importance of the work that we're doing, away from the actual job itself. But I do think that, all kind of kidding aside, that word is becoming more prominent because I do think that there is an acknowledgement that the days of just going and building a product and spending two years doing that, training the field for six months on how this product will be sold, and then hitting the golf course and making your number over a number of years without having to really understand anything else, that's going on in their industry. It's just all changing so fast and there's an acknowledgement of that, I think, by everybody in the partnerships field, but also just in tech in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my sort of root cause analysis. I blame this entirely on Steve Jobs, because he created an iPhone and an app store and I think as consumers we got used to hang on one device, multi ecosystem, it all works together. I don't have to worry about anything and everything just works. And then it's so weird. I felt this when I worked at Zoom through COVID. I'd been evangelizing video conferencing for years. No one used it and then everyone went why doesn't FaceTime just sort of work at my company? And I'm like there you go. And so I just think us as businesses have now we've got to hit a threshold that us as consumers have already lived with for 10, 15 years. And suddenly every product owner in the world is going well, we can't design that. Everyone needs to come together to sort of build that unified experience that is so mandatory, and as you get into enterprise it becomes even more complicated.
Speaker 1:I think as a salesperson, I also think, building on your point, apple is a great example of starting it, but it applies to the enterprise too. Microsoft is another one. There is so much value as a business of being a platform, of being the company that the ecosystem is built on top of. Uh is built on top of, sorry, and I do think that's another reason that a lot of people, uh are using this term. There is so much value, uh, and becoming that kind of platform business that other people want to build and integrate into, becoming that source of truth, that center of it all and so I think away from just people in our role using that term. This is a valuable thing to become as a company. Are you the platform? Are you at the center of the ecosystem?
Speaker 2:So maybe pivoting into if you could give yourself some advice. And it isn't buy Amazon shares in 99, because that is definitely the best advice. That would be my advice. That is the best advice, but if you could pivot back to the early part of your partnerships career, what's the piece of advice that you wish you'd heard then, which would most positively influence your next steps, positively influence your next steps, Like, become really good at learning and understanding the product.
Speaker 1:If you're in tech, get really deep into like I don't, I don't think you'll let you. I'm not saying go learn how to code. All of that could be helpful too. But understanding how the product is built, why decisions are made, where the company is going from a roadmap perspective, being able to start to intuit those things and being able to explain them, I think for anybody in any job in tech, especially if you're on the commercial side or on the BD side, that is such a differentiator to have even a little bit of depth of product knowledge.
Speaker 2:Awesome, Matt. We like to intuit a lot on the podcast, but specifically we like to intuit who our next guest will be. So we like to cheat and ask our current guests to recommend Matt, who did you have in mind?
Speaker 1:I will recommend Brian Peters. Brian is the head of product partnerships at Shopify, a former colleague and all around great guy, also a podcast host at one point in his career, and so I think he will be an excellent guest.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, it sounds like Brian's going to hit the one criteria that I asked for when we asked for recommendations, which is not boring. So next podcast he is certainly not boring.
Speaker 1:So next podcast he is certainly not boring.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So, brian, we're coming for you. Matt, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.