58: Navigating Big-Fish Small-Fish Partnerships - Juraj Pal

Juraj Pal, a former employee of Slido and Cisco, shares his experience in navigating partnerships as a small fish in a big pod. He emphasizes the importance of aligning partnerships with long-term product strategies and not forcing partnerships for the sake of a big name. 

He also highlights the value of building relationships and embedding partners into the customer journey. Juraj advises regular check-ins and vulnerability to foster trust and collaboration. 

He says if you want to drive partnerships, you need structure. He encourages giving partnership updates, even before a formal agreement, to demonstrate commitment and build trust. 

**Key Takeaways:**

- Don't force partnerships with big companies just for the sake of a cool logo or brand association.
- Align partnerships with long-term product strategy and roadmap.
- Build relationships across the entire customer journey to foster trust and engagement.
- Focus on adoption in product partnerships to ensure the partnership is driving value for users.

**Quotes:**

- "Not every company should partner with the big fish. It's important to think about how you fit into the ecosystem and leverage it for growth." - Juraj Pal
- "Don't invest in partnerships just because of a cool-sounding name. Focus on how it aligns with your product strategy and goals." - Juraj Pal

******************Chapters:******************

00:00:00 Introduction to the podcast and topic of partnerships

00:01:26 Introduction to the guest and his experience in partnerships

00:03:05 Discussion about the unexpected acquisition of Slido by Cisco

00:05:11 Importance of partnerships in Slido's growth strategy

00:06:01 Perspective for organizations when engaging with bigger players

00:08:28 Importance of working backwards from product strategy in partnerships

00:09:49 Focus on strategic partnerships based on product pillars

00:10:30 Planning exercise for identifying target partners

00:10:50 Discussion on Slido's initial product market fit

00:10:50 Go-to-market strategy for launching a new business segment

00:11:18 The need for product integration with big players like Google.

00:12:09 Importance of fitting into the partner's long-term strategy.

00:13:19 Challenges of gaining attention from larger partner's field teams.

00:15:24 Error of partnering for the sake of a cool logo.

00:17:45 Should smaller companies aim to become big players or leverage ecosystems?

00:18:38 The value of being part of an ecosystem and customer workflows.

00:20:01 Co-marketing activities can have significant impact in partnerships.

00:20:57 Not forcing partnerships that don't make sense.

00:21:42 Importance of thinking through adoption in product partnerships.

00:22:18 Users actually using the product is crucial for success.

00:22:02 Importance of users actually using the product for success

Transcript

Will Taylor: 0:05

Howdy partners and welcome to another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast, where we give you tactical insights so that you can perform in your role better. Today we are joined with someone who has been on both sides of the big fish and the small fish type interaction, and we're going to be diving into that topic exactly. Before we dive in though, Ben, how's it going? It's been a bit since you and I chatted. How are you, Ben?

Ben Wright: 0:31

It's been a while, mate. Yeah, not bad. I think busy as always, mate. Salt Lake is cold already. We've already got some snow in the mountains, which is interesting. So definitely got the heat in on trying to keep warm. But apart from that, mate, no no complaints on my end.

Will Taylor: 0:44

Nice. Yeah, it's no snow for me yet, so you beat me to it. But it is getting colder and I keep thinking, where am I going to leave to, because I don't want the cold dark winter anymore. I have too many sun lamps in my home. I need that vitamin D. So I, well, today we're joined with Juraj, and Jiraj, you've worked, like I mentioned, on both sides of the big fish and the small fish in the interaction of partnerships. Tell us about your experience in partnerships, where you've worked and the kind of interactions that you've been in. And then we'll kick off the topic.

Juraj Pal: 1:19

Yeah. Good to, good to be here. Thanks for having me guys. I for, for quick intro. I spent about the past eight years Helping companies with Slido, Cisco, and most recently OnDeck scale and grow through this notion of product-led partnerships. I joined Slido as, as one of the early hires back in 2016. Slido is a audience interaction platform doing q and a polling for events and, and, and virtual stuff. I had no idea what partnerships is at that point and that it's gonna be my role for, for years to come. But spent about six, seven years there. I. One, building our partnership org from scratch and sort of moving through the changes as we're focusing on on different products and different strategy. And they also been a, a part of the journey also as head of product. So, so really in silo's case, the product and partnership works are really, really closely integrated. We got acquired by Cisco back in 2021 after which I joined WebEx's partnerships team and, and collaboration business unit team to help them sort of merge the two worlds of product and partnerships, but also launch their new platform which was sort of. Playing a bit of a catch up game with Zoom and, and, and Microsoft teams at that point, and everyone who was doing it extending their video conferencing platform to third party developers. But that's what we were doing there. And yeah, was recently, I, I actually took a bit of a break from work, became a fodders. I'm getting used to that new role and, and mostly spending my time on currently doing more fractional work and, and, and part-time projects both in partnerships and product site.

Will Taylor: 2:50

Very cool. I feel like there's there's so many threads to go down there. One with partnering to then acquisition and then also you being in a product role as well, which is really interesting. And then of course, becoming a father. Congrats. That's something I'm looking forward to. But let's dive into the, Interaction that led to that acquisition. I would love to better understand how you as an organization engaged with this bigger fish and, you know, was that acquisition planned? What did you focus on that from the start? Was that, you know, the end goal or did it just run through such a good partnership that their team said this calls for an acquisition? Tell me more about that interaction and how you may work, you may have been intentional about navigating to that point.

Juraj Pal: 3:35

Yeah, it, it definitely wasn't planned for, for us, Slido was a bootstrap business from, from the beginning. So in a unique situation in a way there and we weren't planning to raise until about that point around 20 20, 20 21. We were thinking two past. One is either to, to raise or to partner with someone like a strategic partner to serve. Think through what the next chapter of growth would look like. It was very open though, and, and I think it was sort of opportunity meets luck situation where we met and connected with. At that point it was g to Patel who recently joined WebEx from Box as well. Great leader and, and we knew him from before.'cause Box was a customer and I think we connected and we're both really aligned on what the vision is for WebEx and Slido in this new era of. Virtual and remote and hybrid work. So that sort of checked the box, but it was still a big transformation for our team, like the, the, the culture and the people at Slido, they didn't join Slido to, to work for big corporation. They joined the booster startup. So there's a lot of sort of change management there as there is with acquisitions in general. But it was a bit of a surprise to, to most of the team. But I think it made sense in terms of the partnership and I think it goes to Sort of the, the wider strategy that we had with partnerships. We, we, as a startup, we started investing into partnership pretty early on, and it was very much like Represented in the organization. I, I reported to our c e o and, and, and met with other members of the exec team. So partnerships were always had the voice internally but we also had to be super picky in terms of who are the security partners and what are we doing with them also in terms of product, so couldn't really do many things at once. It was all about saying no to more things than, than saying yes.

Will Taylor: 5:24

So I've noticed that a lot of organizations try to partner with these big companies and then they get lost in either an old process or just a convoluted process. What do you think the perspective should be for organizations when looking at these strategic partnerships with these bigger fish? What is that, that thought process, and what did your team do to really dig in and make that partnership successful?

Juraj Pal: 5:49

Yeah, that's a good question. I am, I'm a big fan here of. Working backwards. And I think that was the case here. It was, it was very clear to us where we are going as a company and as a product. And especially as we're navigating Sort of covid as well with, with events changing and our, our focus refocusing our product strategy was changing as well, but it was clear that if we were working backwards from, Hey, we slightly needs to grow in this space of internal columns and, and empower everyone who's using what our video conferencing or whatever presentation software. To to be there and to seamlessly use Slido within that context. It was sort of becoming easier to know, okay, well to do that we need to partner on that front and we need a partner on another front. It wasn't a case of let's partner at everyone and let's go. To, to that conversation with more of a, we're a platform and we can, we can partner with any app and other app that, that, that says. So I don't think that every product or, or company is or should be a platform and it wasn't the case for us. It's different, a WebEx or different for our companies. But for us there are two pillars. One was, as I mentioned, it was the presentation software piece and the other one was video conferencing, like those two. Groups are key parts of the workflow of our customers. And this is, we've done lots of user research on this and lots of surveys and like, what is in your workflow and our customer's workflow, what tools are they using and, and where does Slido enter that? So it was easy that in those two pillars, we need to invest into partnerships and through strategic partnerships. So that's where we sort of get into a conversation of working with Googles, Microsoft's, and ultimately WebExes of the world. But it wasn't Sort of saying, Hey, Google's logo is cool. Let's work with them. Let's find a way. It was working backwards from a product strategy and product roadmap for years to come.

Ben Wright: 7:43

Yeah, I said there's a couple of interesting points that you That you mentioned there, which I found really, really interesting, and I'd love to double down on the first was I think I've described before as a buying river, so to speak. So, like, what's up upstream from you, what's downstream from you, and then actually figuring out, okay, who are the people that are going to generate revenue, right, for us that are further upstream and then. Who are we going to deliver value to? Which are the people like further downstream? And so I'd love to understand how you went through that planning exercise with your internal teams. What were some of the things that you took into account? How did you really build out that kind of strategic view to figure out like which people to go after?

Juraj Pal: 8:23

Yeah. Yeah. So the, the first question that, that we asked there is, is, so The topic of working backgrounds is what does the end look like for us? At that point it was, it was I think 2019, so a few years in, we, we had some initial product market fit, but not originally Our product market fit was in the conferences world. So events like Sub by Southwest Web website are using Slido for their events, but that wasn't. That's how we got that initial product market fit. But it wasn't where we would, would add in terms of the product strategy. So we were about 120 people at that point. And, and we were thinking through our go-to market strategy for essentially launching a new business line, new business segment, targeting individual presenters at companies. So really leaving the external event space. From a product perspective, for us to be able to go after this market market, we needed to make sure that Slido can be seamlessly used with Google Slides, PowerPoint and other presentation software tools. So, so already there you can kind of sense that we need some sort of level of partnership or product integration with, with those big players. And that's where we sort of enter the first partner, which was Google for us at that stage. I was working backwards from, from this product strategy. And then I, then, then the second piece for me is how do we fit in? So coming to the conclusion of like, Hey, we need to build a really cool product with, with Google, which is probably a bit more than just looking at their documentation and building a Chrome extension, like how this is more of a strategic partnership, wanna be closer to their product team. How do we fit in is about talking to Google and whoever the partner is and. Kind of vulnerably asking and, and figuring out where are they heading you. And, and do we fit into that in the next six months or a year?'cause if we, if we don't, it's gonna be a forced relationship where we're, we're never gonna get anywhere. And then you sort of get into that whole notion of we're just little fish and Google does whatever they want to do. And, and we're, we're not to stay with the metaphors of an ocean, but it's just like a big wave that crashes you. I suppose so. That, that, that was a second key company. I'm not a. Big fan of like mental models and frameworks? Well, I am in a way, but I think most of the time they're sort of done retrospectively and I wanna put this out and say, Hey, follow this and, and you'll be golden. I think this is our learning that happened afterwards in, in the processing of that.

Ben Wright: 10:49

Well, the other, the other thing, like, and again, well, I know we're going to get on some additional questions, but I think fundamentally, I've been in your position as well, where we partnered with insight, like a, you know, massive bar, you know, we've got inside sales teams, they've got account, they've got, you know, thousands of people that you're trying to get in front of. And I think fundamentally, that is the hardest part as a smaller player is how do you gain attention of their field teams of their sellers? How do you make them understand our value proposition? And get, get in front of as many customers as possible. Did you, did you have any kind of strategies or techniques to. To reach more of those people at the larger partner because for me it was like pounding the pavement to be honest It was like I had to just put in the work I had to you know network on linkedin reach out. Was that your approach or did you do anything a bit more scalable?

Juraj Pal: 11:35

pretty much. And, and, and I think one maybe tactical advice there that I would say is, and, and this is similar to how I think about, you know, recurring revenue comes from recurring impact it within our organization and, and how we partner cross-functionally. I, I look at it similarly here, where it's not only about building that relationship with, with the Partner manager or, or someone on product mar partnership side, like, we need to build this integration. And that's it. It's, it's can be a year or two years in our case because with some of these larger partners, building relationships across the whole customer chain and across the whole experience, like maybe, and also on our end, maybe it was. The point of inviting them to, to, to speak at our customer meetup, like completely unrelated it would seem like. But, but all those little touch points across the customer journey were actually super helpful in one building trust and, and the relationship, which is, I think we will all agree that is, it's a big piece of, of such a transaction. But also embedding them into, into our customer's world, into our product world and, and sort of getting them warmer in a way.

Will Taylor: 12:43

So what do you think was maybe an error that you made in that interaction? And I imagine a lot of organizations make the same error, but what's an error that you made that your When reflecting, thinking, could have done this better or, you know, you, you mentioned that you do fractional work and some advisory. What do you see in organizations that is a common challenge and what is a potential resolution from what you've experienced?

Juraj Pal: 13:10

I think a big one, which maybe is obvious, but, but not always is, especially in this relationship when when you have bigger partner, a smaller startup or a smaller company is just doing the partnership for the sake of a cool-looking logo or cool sounding company and. That can be true. And, and, and we, we've done it ourselves. I remember one of our first product partnerships, what, what was with Slack at a point where they're, they're just launching their platform and, and everyone was talking about it, how they can extend the, the product and build bolts and apps and, and it was truly an exciting time and it brand, we even had some customers who requested that integration and, and, and. Seemed like an obvious thing to do, and it made sense on so many levels. But ultimately, and it took us way longer than it should have had maybe almost two years, but we censored the whole integration. Not the whole relationship, but, but it just didn't really go anywhere. The adoption showed us clear that this isn't hitting any, any actual meat of our customers. It's, it's really more of a nice to have. It happened to us and it happened after as well. But I would say this is the, the biggest one, and hopefully some of those questions that you can be asking like, how does this fit into our long-term strategy and roadmap and, and how do we fit into the roadmap of the partner? Those can hopefully help with, with sort of not investing into something just because it's a cool sounding thing. And of course, brand is, is a big thing, especially if you're a small startup. So maybe some deals make sense just for the Only reason that is sort of strengthening the credibility of your brand because you're partner with somewhat, somewhat bigger.

Ben Wright: 14:49

Yeah, I love it. I think I think we might have lost Will but we can forge on I I can't see him in the in the window anymore. So i'll mark this and he was struggling with his internet today so obviously we talked about like One of the things that you, you kind of, one of the challenges you faced, so to speak what's your, and I think you kind of started off the episode by explaining, like, you had a very clear goal in mind as a company, which was like, okay, we're at this stage. Do we go and raise funding or do we go out, you know, get a strategic partnership and then potentially line yourself up for acquisition, which is wonderful. What do you think for like a smaller company now, should a smaller company think, Hey, we want to become the Google, the Cisco, like these big super nodes. Or is it fine being a smaller part of that ecosystem and just leveraging all the individual parts, if that makes sense, like, do you think some do you think some companies try to get too big too quickly instead of leveraging the ecosystems around them, so to speak?

Juraj Pal: 15:42

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's. It's an interesting point and I, it sort of brings me to think about platforms and, and touched on this previously, and I'm actually, I quite like the, the Bill Gates definition of the platform that I think was in, in one of the strategy articles a while back. It really talks about that, that platform. Happens when the value of everybody that uses it exceeds the, the value of the company that created it or that build it. And you have great examples of that, like Shopify where their partner revenue is, is, is greater than, than their own revenue. But that's not gonna be feasible or even shouldn't be for, for every company out there. So I think it's, it's actually to me, pretty reasonable strategy to stay smaller and actually not become that big fish, but still think through how can you grow? Through a ecosystem led notion, how, how can you be part of that ecosystem, play an active role, and actually have that fuel some of your growth? Because I, I think the opposite of just staying sort of closed down is, is not a strategy that I would pursue, especially at this day and age. Customers, there's so many, especially in B two B size, there's so many tools out there and your typical customer will use many of those tools in their workflow. So you gotta. Have some sort of role and seat at the table as far as your customer's workflow goes.

Ben Wright: 17:05

Yeah, it's a good point. So I think I always think about some of the most impactful things you can do, especially if you are partnering with a larger, A larger ecosystem partner, which is like, just do some co marketing, right? Like there's so much value to doing these kinds of smaller activities, not trying to get too, too technical with the partnership motion, like do a few co marketing activities, help their audience. And you'll probably find a significant amount of impact through just those kinds of small, you know, small tactical steps rather than trying to get, too big too quickly, so to speak. So, yeah, I think I think I kind of like to move on to maybe the next question around, like, what was the Most valuable lesson you learned. If you had to think of like one thing, big fish, small fish dynamic, what was the kind of most valuable thing that you think you've learned through that journey? And how has it kind of set you up for success? Do you think in future partnership roles as well?

Juraj Pal: 17:54

Well, one is definitely to not force it, and I, and I touched on this before, but it, it doesn't always make sense And, and, and it, it doesn't mean that every company should partner with like the big feature or bigger partner in their, in their space. Makes sense for, for some I think it's, it's also very, Closely tie decision to your product and how you're building product. For us at Slido, as I mentioned, was it was super close, the two worlds, and we wouldn't be able to grow without investing heavily into those product integrations.'cause we, we, Slido is the type of product, we're not gonna catch all the use cases. We're not gonna big build like a big platform type product. But we're gonna rely on, on sort of connecting the, the workflows with, with other partners. So, Not forcing with, with the big partners is one for sure. And, and also another one was, which is separate to this is, is thinking through adoption, especially as, as product partnerships goes. I think it's, you know, it's, it's fairly easy to, to like, get developers interested and drop their interest and, and get them building on your platform or, or with your APIs. But they'll launch apps, they'll launch. Integrations and whatnot, but if we are not thinking through the adoption, this goes both ways. One, to the, the platform or the marketplace. But two, also for us at Slido, where we were, the, the little fish on some of these big, big ecosystem marketplaces is thinking through adoption. And, and that, that, again, that get that goes being, that goes beyond partnership, goes beyond product, touches the whole customer journey. But if the users are actually not using the, the product then it's. It's not gonna go anywhere.

Ben Wright: 19:28

Love it. Will, you're back. Go ahead, mate.

Will Taylor: 19:31

Alright, so we always leave our audience with one tactical tip. From your experience that we've talked about today, and again, those that you advise and the fractional work that you're doing, what is the one daily or weekly practice that you would say helped you be successful or is helping your Companies that you're advising be successful today? What is that thing as it pertains to the big fish and small fish interaction to move the needle? What can people do? You know, right when they're done listening to this episode?

Juraj Pal: 20:03

I think on the, on the topic of, of sort of talked a lot about how do we fit in and, and, and, and doing that check in with the big partner, something that we've done on a weekly. And monthly basis are very scale. And how in depth we went was me or, or us the, the small fish driving a, a service structure, almost like an investor update. But, but, but in the sense of a, the, the partnership or the company. And, and sending that and driving that to a partner also, even early in the days, even before we would say agree on something, even if nothing major happened, but sort of being there in their inbox or, or wherever in those regular moments. I think it was really important and it goes. Sort of matches nicely with, with me saying of like embedding them into the whole customer journey. And also us internally like, are we doing an event? Okay, let's invite them even before we have a relationship, even before we build something. It's, it's just gonna build the trust. So, so doing that check-in and it's, they didn't really come natural to me.'cause it, it feels like, why am I asking Google, what, what are they gonna be working on and building in the next six months? Like what am I but, but it actually Pays off and, and it's, it's worth doing and being a bit more vulnerable in that sense. So I would, I would invest into, in, in doing that way before you think you're ready.

Will Taylor: 21:27

Amazing that what I like about that is it shows, you know, just how intentional you are about the relationship and about the strategic partnership that you're either, you know, trying to develop or have developed. And then also it It almost to a certain degree allows you to take lead a little bit because the bigger fish probably isn't going to take lead unless if they truly see a massive opportunity with you as a smaller fish, which I would say is less likely to happen. And so if you're able to take lead, then you have a bit more control and you have more influence at that point. And like you said, you're a bit more vulnerable and so you get to kinda like show your cards. But then keep that constant communication, stay top of mind. So, I, I really enjoy that that tip and just how serious and intentional it is as well to just constantly say, yes, we're doubling down on this. We want to be a part of your ecosystem. We want to be a partner. That is a, a great tip. Raj, thank you so much for coming on the Howdy Partners podcast. Is there anything you wanna leave the audience with or is there any place that the audience can, can find you or what you're talking about these days?

Juraj Pal: 22:34

Thanks. Thanks for having me first. And yeah, happy to connect with anyone. If I can help with any way you can find me on LinkedIn, that's probably the best place. J U R E J Powell. Or I have like a very stupid, simple landing page now. My first name, last name.com, so probably no one goes there. But anyway,

Will Taylor: 22:52

Well, might as well plug it and they'll get at least one person will get value. And of course the audience listening today got value as well. Thank you so much for being on and thank you all for listening. That was another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast.