Jurija Metovic on Building Partner Credibility Before You Have Brand Recognition

What happens when you’re asked to build a partner motion for a company nobody’s heard of—inside one of the fastest-moving markets in tech? In this episode, Jurija Metovic from SurePath AI breaks down what startup partner marketing actually looks like when there’s no inherited brand credibility, no repeatable playbook, and no time to wait for perfect.

Jurija shares why early-stage partner marketing is less about scale and more about signal: getting into the right conversations, placing smart bets on a handful of strategic partners, and building trust before pipeline even exists. The conversation dives into how AI is reshaping modern marketing teams, why partner incentives have shifted away from flashy rewards toward true collaboration, and what startup operators get wrong when they try to “build the whole program” too early.

There’s also an honest discussion about mentorship, community, startup pressure, and the very human side of building in public while AI changes the rules in real time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, I'm Rick Courier, and this is Never Go to Market Alone. More than a show, it's a community where tech, marketing, and the human connection come together. You're not just a listener, you're a GTM friend. And friends don't let friends go to market alone. Let's go. Hey everyone, thanks for joining. Today I'm joined by Judia Medivik, partner marketer at a startup SurePath AI. This was a fun conversation and a really personal one for me, because I'm also living the startup lifestyle. We're growing fast at Partner Vista. We're hiring contractors, bringing on new sales reps, building out our customer onboarding experience. We're doing all of the things. And that's exactly what startup partner marketing feels like too. Doing the job of five people all at once. So in this episode, Yu Dia and I talk about what it really takes to succeed in a startup environment, especially for marketers coming from big enterprise companies for the first time. We get into why relationships matter more than programs early on, why spiffs and flashy incentives don't really move partners anymore, how chasing perfect can actually slow you down, and how AI is helping lean teams move faster, but without replacing strategy or human judgment. It's a super honest conversation about building from scratch, staying close to the customer, and figuring out what actually drives momentum when resources are tight. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. And do me a favor, give us a like, review, or subscribe to our podcast, and please share with someone else because remember, friends don't let friends go to market alone. Cheers. Well, Yudie, I think this is actually a good way to start. We're just giggling over names. Great.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Wonderful. My name is Yeah, try and pronounce your name. No, thank you for asking me. Okay. There are people who they don't ask, and then there's people who take educated guesses, and then there's the people who just outright guess. Yeah. And so I'm I'm all sorts of things. I'm Georgia, I'm Julia, I'm Judy. For the littles in my life, I'm beauty, and I'm much that's my favorite one. Beauty anytime, any that's but Yu Dia.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I got that right. I I get the guessing thing because I'm a Richard, I go by Ricky, my corporate name is Rick. But every now and then someone will call me Rich or Richie. And I'm like, where did you get that from? I'm not a Rich or Richie. And I just go with it. I'm like, okay. Sounds good. Sounds good. Well, why don't we do a proper introduction? Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about who you are, where you work, what you do?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Thanks, Ricky. Yes. So my name is Judia Metavic. I uh currently lead marketing and go-to-market strategy for SurePath AI. SurePath AI is a AI security and governance platform. Uh, really simply put, it's been fun, but we're born out of the kind of block or allow generative AI era. So when Chat GPT really came on the scene, um, we came out and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a risky thingy people are using. You know, bad things can happen. We didn't really understand those bad things. We don't understand how to protect those bad things and enter Sharp Path AI. So about three years in go to market, maybe two years realistically, as I'm coming up on my two years there.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Wow. So, so three years that still startup world. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Super startup world. Um, what does it look like? Oh my god, it doesn't look like the way it was before. So I actually came up through B2C sales and customer success. And I really learned how buyers bought. I moved into B2B tech maybe coming up on a decade. Um, and so that's where I really started to experience startups being marketing higher number one, being marketing higher number one again. Um and it what it looks like then versus what it looks like now, worlds apart. And can you guess what I'm about to say why? Why do you think it doesn't look at all like it looked three years ago or 13 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I mean, scale, you tell me, or AI or both.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

AI.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

I'm now a team of five, but I'm really one human. Um so it's the the the field has just changed incredibly and more so more than I ever could have seen coming in the past two, three years.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

It sounds like the startup world kept pulling you back in even before AI. So why? What's what's been the attraction with the startup world for you?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Building. Cliche, classic comment, but building. Uh, when you walk into a startup, you're not inheriting anything. There's nothing for you to inherit. When you're marketing hire number one, when you're uh the founder go-to-market right hand, you're not, you're there's nothing for you to inherit. It's you're going to build a process, you're going to build a team, you're going to build a solution, you're going to build a story, you're going to build a partner program, you're going to build whatever you're going to do, you're going to build. Uh, so that was the biggest thing. And for me, I operate best when something is working, but there's no system. And I get to come kind of apply these, I guess, guardrails. Maybe I say that too much in my current marketing card. I get to like apply guardrails to what we're doing and what we're building. And then something I recently learned to articulate really well is you are so close to the customer, to the revenue and to real ownership at a startup. You're not degrees away from it. Like you are literally next to them all the time.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, I think that's so important because I've worked, obviously, I'm partner VIS is a small startup right now, but I've worked at $100 million organizations. And I and I've seen what happens when people are multiple degrees away from a customer. I was talking to a CRO the other day about this and how much he was struggling because just because people are not in sales doesn't mean they shouldn't understand what the customer's going through, the challenges, how this impacts product and and all the challenges he's now dealing with as a CRO because people are so many degrees away from the customer. Now he's trying to undo all of that. So I've seen both sides. Let me ask you, in terms of being a partner marketer at a startup, you know, maybe limited budget, limited brand, you got to build everything from the ground up. Where do you start? How do you prioritize? What are the things that you focus on at the very beginning?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Well, going back to what I was saying, I mean, there's no, there's no program, there's no system, you're not inheriting anything. And when you ask that question, and even when I get it now, people ask me like that, how what do you do? Right? Nobody knows who you are. No, you don't have a system. Um, let me give you an example of something that we did. So recently, and I'm gonna use, I'll use my current share path as uh the example. Um, nobody knows who we are. We're in this new space, AI, new tech, right? This isn't firewalls, this isn't your keyboard, whatever. Um, so we took a big bet. We said, okay, well, we don't really have a program, but let's take some bets on some key partners that we think have the relationships, have the authority in the space. And what we did is we showed up at a partner SCO. We were a seed company and we said, we're gonna go, and you know, whoever's listening, watching, or is going, like you know it's not cheap and it's not nothing to walk in and say, we're gonna show up at a place where nobody knows who we are, to go and position ourselves as a partner for them, as our partner. We don't have closed one deals yet, but we just have conviction and we want to go build that relationship. Like we we place that bet. And that's that was not an easy sell. Like, let me be very clear. That's not an easy sell. That's not a cheap sell. Um, but how I was able to position that is to say, okay, let's look at the market. If it's our priority is go to market to lead in partner and channels, right? In the ecosystem, who out there already has our buyers' interest, their trust, who has the logos on the site, who have we worked with as a group, right? We're we're we're strong professionals. What partners have we worked with before? Let's bring them forward. And then how do we get into real conversations fast? It's okay if they say we don't know what we're doing in AI. It's okay if they say we don't have a solution, we don't have a budget. How can we just get into the conversation? And so I think coupling that for us was like where we needed to place a bet and say, we're well, we'd like to build from deals, they're not, they're not necessarily there when you're first starting out, right? Or they don't look maybe the way that they're gonna look today. They don't look the same way they did three years ago that they do today. And so um, we're not looking at deals, repeatable motion program. We're like, okay, no, no, like what how do can we flip-flop that around? Can we repiece it? And so that's what we did.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Interesting. It almost sounds like you need very, very well aligned, or I should say executive alignment to pull that off, right? So did you have to start there too in terms of like just making it sounds like you had to do a lot of internal selling, right? To do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

No, I'm fortunate that this the team I've got or the team that we're with, um, they it this is a very partner-first group. Like we can't a lot of us have worked together. So I'm a little, I'm I'm treated, you know, it's like a gift. Um, because I've worked with some of these people before and and we knew that we need to focus on the relationships to turn it into real deals. That wasn't something that was surprising. I think there was some friction and there was some pain points that we had to overcome because, like in any company, you'll get people who come from startups, you'll get people who come from big companies, the way that they think, the way they operate, what they bring to the table. Some of that had to be challenged and unpacked because this was a startup and we weren't building a program for us. We were taking those relationships, like I said. So I don't know that I had to sell as much, but I think I did have to sell on how the how operations would look different than maybe what we had experienced before.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I want to ask you a little bit more about people coming from big corporations into this startup world. I'm seeing it a lot today, especially with with number large organizations cutting down with the use of AI. A lot of people are going to startups for the very first time. From your experience, you know, what do people get wrong when they're coming from the big corporate world into these little startup partner marketing environments?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Okay. Yeah, that's a good question. Thanks. Um brand credibility doesn't exist. When you come from a big company, right? You you have the weight of the brand. And I say this a lot. And this is that I mean this is hard for me too. I go to conferences and I see these big, beautiful booths. And these these booths that are just um like you see everybody at them. And I'm just like, wow, right? Like they're the solution and they have all the customers and their brand credibility is so strong. That's something people get wrong when they come to startups. They think that they assume that brand credibility exists. It doesn't. You're trying to build it. And you can't optimize necessarily for scale as much as trying to be relevant, which goes back to the relationship thing, getting into conversations with people, partnering. Um, and the other big thing I I'll be honest that I see, and I I've seen this in a few of the startups that I've been with, is people will come in and they'll build, and I've been, okay, I shouldn't even say they, because I'm part of this. Like I'm part of this challenge to um building decks and one pagers and going and talking to um partner portal companies, right? Like we gotta buy it. We gotta build all this stuff, we gotta buy it, we gotta build the sales training, we gotta build the partner program with the spiffs. Um, credibility is there. So, like we go do all this. And it's like, you don't have signal. You have no credibility, you have no signal, um, you're not relevant. And that that's painful, right? When it's like you're coming in, you're you have this baby and you're trying to build around this baby and keep this baby alive. That those are those are brutal things to say out loud. But I think if you can recognize those up front, you're better for it. You start building the signal faster. You get with the right partners, you're building the relevant the relevance, excuse me, and you're building the credibility. And so I think then that's when you start to see that scale motion move a lot faster.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

I want to ask you a little bit about partner incentives. You know, you mentioned making big bets, going to SCOs, whatever cost is. Spiffs, are they still working? If not, like what's working today in terms of get helping partners, you know, carry your story forward.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

I love that you asked me that. I just had a call with one of our partner reps the other day. And I said, Hey, as a friend, just be a pal. Does like this spiff work? Because we we launched a spiff. And he was like, I'm gonna be honest with you, no. Like, I don't care about your e-bike and your cash incentive. I'm like, well, that well, well, why not? Like, you could be riding on a new e-bike this summer. It's the perfect time. And he was like, it's just not the way that we think anymore, right? And so the old model, and I remember this myself. I remember I was at um I was at a VAR when I first came into the B2B space. And I remember a partner was giving, this is gonna say a lot about me, but a partner was giving a trip at the very top. It was like, all expense paid Hawaii, blah, blah, blah. And like the next one was a Louis Vuitton back. And I was like, I'm gonna get Louis Vuitton back and be part of this. Um, the old model was that. I think that was the old model. It was luxury, it was swag, it was trips. I think that died, and it died a lot. I saw the pivot with COVID. We're at home, we have our phones, we can access whatever, we can buy whatever. The economy might be even giving you, you know, there was a time the economy was like, hey, here's a thousand dollar check for some of you lucky winners. Like, go buy something, stimulate the economy. And so today, what we have is as society, access to everything already. And so that's specific if you think about partner ups, right? They have access to everything. And so our my job is how do I make it easier for them now to hit quota? How do I make it easier for them to look smarter and solve problems? Because that relationship thing is what's binding everybody. And so I think the motivation is just help me do my job, do it well, hit quota. Um, I don't need you to buy me a purse. I don't need you to send me to Hawaii. I can do that myself. Or my company's doing it for me already, right? Because you help me hit quota. And so I think for me, it's just helping them hit or exceed their number.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So, like true collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

True collaboration, really value, true partnership, true relationship. And everyone's not for everyone, right? And so going back to the point of I just asked a partner rep, like, do you even care about this e-bike? The fact that you could tell me, look, no, I don't. There might be someone on my team who cares. It's not me. And it's like, yeah, but you already bought it. Like we we started some deals, we worked together well, we have some proof points. If that's not what's gonna work for you, tell me what does. And it's like, no, let's keep doing this. And can we get this customer success story? Can we get a quote so I can go share it with the next person? Okay, yeah, then let's do that. So I don't I don't think it works, sadly.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Sorry, yeah. Sorry to cut you off there. I want to talk a little bit more about how you're um doing your job today. You say it it looks a lot different today than it used to and because of AI. So, you know, how are you utilizing AI and and you know, how is it helping you do a job of five?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah, well, I was only scared. Am I allowed to say bad words? I was only scared of shitless for the first, you know, forever. I remember in my last job, I had a boss and he said, um, if you don't start using AI, you're gonna get left behind. And I said, that's cool, that's fine. I'm done with being left behind. I don't care. And then obviously I got this job and I was like, I can't work in AI and not use AI. So um how so that being said, I have found that there is execution and speed and scale in it. So to give you a little bit more of a direct answer, what am I using? Um, of course I'm using ChatGPT. Yeah, I'm using ChatGPT, I'm using Claude. I would say those ones are my, they're my thought partners. As a as a one-person marketing team, they're my thought partners. I need someone who can kind of help me massage content ideas, take a quirky fun idea and turn it into a bigger campaign. And so I'm using those to kind of help me unpack where those can go. Um, Canva AI is another one I'm trying to be better about because I'm trying to get faster asset creation for uh things like social media in particular. Um, I'm not exactly a graphic designer, so I'm using Canva to try to help. Um, our CRM, we're a HubSpot customer, and I've actually been a HubSpot customer for over a decade now. Their ops and workflows, they've got their assistant side of the tool. I'm using that. And then the biggest one, and I'm not paid for this. I always feel like I should be like, they should pay me on this. But the biggest one I use is Swan. It's called Get Swan. And I use that to run a lot of our go-to-market rev ops revenue flows. So analysis of deals, um, how deals are moving or not moving. Um, yeah, iterating on some messaging there as well with Swan. So it doesn't replace, I've had to really say this out loud, and I'm gonna say it here too, because maybe I'll hear myself back and believe myself more today. Um, it doesn't replace strategy. It doesn't replace that I still have a relationship with my partner reps or my team or my CEO. And it surely does not replace my judgment. And yeah, I think just saying that aloud felt kind of good too. So, yes, it lets me operate like a team of five, but there's still the thinking and relationship side that's very human and very rewarding. And I'm making sure for me personally, Ricky, like it's a choice. I don't use AI to respond to my emails. I I'm I'm me. That's a choice. But I am using AI in other areas that might help me move faster.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

This is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately, just hearing you say about that judgment piece, right? I think we're in a position in our careers where we we have a career history of not utilizing AI. And so we can see the outputs and then we can utilize our judgment of like this is a good output or a bad output, right? And then go from there. I'm a little worried about people coming in the workforce now that are just using AI for everything where they don't they don't have that history, that expertise to know what's good or bad. And they're kind of moving up. And I don't know what that looks like in a couple of years. I mean, we'll we'll find out. But I mean, I think we're we're very fortunate to just know what good looks like and we can work with AI and know what's good or bad and and move move forward. You know, there's a whole crop of people coming up in their careers that don't know what good or bad looks like, you know. They do from a textbook, but not in reality. And it's gonna be interesting to see, you know, how they take those outputs and and put it back into practice.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Yeah, it's the part that scares me the most because I could just I could say what I just said to you with some confidence, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Hey, strategy, relationship, judge like but again, going by it scares the shit out of me. Yep. Yeah. If it works right now, I can couple it right now. But you're right, I don't know what it how it's gonna look in a few years, and I definitely don't know what it's gonna look like for the new generation or generation entering, even I know we said tangent a little bit, but um, I mentor on the side a bit, and it's typically through connections and people I work with and mentoring has just changed because the conversations have been like, I don't know what to do. It's just AI, AI, AI. And like, is that is that what work is? It's like I I don't have the answer.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

How much does how much does community and mentorship play a role in in what you do in the startup world?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

It plays a huge role. It plays a huge role. It was it it goes back to actually the earlier question you asked, you know, what keeps pulling me back. Um, a huge part of it was that it was that I could mentor. It's that I could um I'm a connector. I'm a connector through and through. And so the startup space allowed me that. It allowed me an opportunity to meet people and connect with them, um, connect new hires into organizations. I mean, I will say I about quite a few mentors, too, I shouldn't say quite a few, two gals that I've mentored in the past kind of five, six years. I've been able to help play us into roles through connection and community and startup and just giving an opportunity to like get gritty and just work. Like I want to work, I want to work hard. So it's played, it's played a huge, huge role. And that's something that we don't need to get into it here, um, unless you really wanted to, but that's completely changed. Like how I mentor and who, and if I can, like, am I am I providing value to them? Can I right now? Um and it's just that's a that's a bigger question that I don't have an answer to. And it's been harder to answer and fell.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Yeah, no, I mean, I've experienced it firsthand. I mean, I've always been, I like to think of myself as a networker, you know, and built strong relationships, you know, corporate side for 20 years. But when I made the jump into the startup world and saw what like real community and real mentorship was, and you know, people even had big competitors that would go out of their way to give me their time and expertise, and you know, nothing was in it for them. And I saw it firsthand and how, you know, a valuable that was to me as a startup where I was doing a lot of things I just didn't even know what I was doing. And people were stepping up wanting to help me. And I I I I felt that and now I want to give that back, you know. So now I look for opportunities, like you said yourself, to like where can I add value and can I even add value?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah. Yeah. Not everything requires. I mean, I know we go to work, we go to work, so we get a paycheck, and the paycheck affords us home and activities and kids' sports and vacations and all these great things. And and that's true, but um, we're we're taught that, right? Like we get a job and then we're taught, like, oh, we go to work and you get a paycheck. And like things become very transactional. And so when you peel off, you take the money off the table, what does that look like? What's the driver? And I think that's a lot of the fun part and the rewarding part about mentorship and connection and community and networking is you're still mind sharing with humans and you're building rapport and maybe even friendship along the way. And that's often more meaningful than a paycheck every two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

No, that's so true. I mean, so many, so many friends I have now. Or just people I've met through the industry. I mean, I remember I spent three years in, I was telling you earlier, spent three years in Chicago. You know, I moved to Chicago to open our office for IDG at the time. Didn't know a soul. I was calling on the advertising agencies there. And they happened to be, it was the time where like a lot of the tech agencies were in Chicago. So like StarCom had Microsoft, HP was at OMG, Intel was at OMD, and you just went down the list. And so I just started working with these people. And we go out and we'd have fun nights and we'd have hard nights and you know, working on RFPs till midnight. And what I uh to this day, that was like uh God, I don't know, 16 years ago. These are still my friends. I'm getting baby pictures and we're texting, and they're all they're doing something different. I'm doing something different, but they're they're true friends today, and we we started just as a working relationship.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Yeah, you're a community, the people that support you doing partner Vista, right? Or the people who are like, yeah, do a podcast. Yeah, do it. So yeah, I think that's we again, it's the human piece, it's that connection, it's the relationship.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Totally. Well, let's let's end with a piece of advice. You've done this a couple times. You've probably learned a lot of what to do differently. You know, if you had advice for someone that was coming into this for the first time, or maybe you telling your past self, what would you do differently? Like what was what's what's one piece of advice you want to give someone coming into this world?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Oh my gosh. Well, if we're talking specific to partner marketers, right? Like the biggest thing is uh you're not behind. I think so many times, right, when we're building these things, especially if you're coupling startup and partner programs. So in in my unique case, right, it's um you're not behind. Like just focus on one to two partners. We're not trying to build a whole program and build the whole world and we're not trying to build for scale before what I said earlier, right? The signal. You kind of want a couple bites of signal. Um, you just need one or two partners at the table with you who can bring you into a deal and you will serve for something, right? That that signal piece, that brand credibility piece. Um one partner, two partners, not a whole not a whole not a whole spreadsheet of them.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

I love it. I think that's that couples well with the community side of things because if you have a community of people that have done this before are doing it, they'll provide you perspective. And I say that from my own experience where I've the last 14 months doing this, I there's many times where I felt like I was behind and I've had other founders be like, dude, you're you're crushing it. Yeah. But for my little siloed, I'm like, I I'm thinking 12 months, 18 months out, and I'm like, but we're so far behind. We need to do more faster.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

It's so true. You, you, and your your own worst enemy, and everyone says it, right? And some of these things I'm saying are not special. These aren't special things. I've learned it from someone else who said it to them, who said it to them. But you don't, we don't need perfect. Perfect is not, I think sometimes I wanted that. As somebody who was like, I'm like a 4.0 student, I only want A pluses. I wanted to carry that through. And so that equaled to this mentality of perfect. Perfect messaging, perfect program, perfect one pager. I didn't want to deliver anything ugly. I didn't want my brand to look any, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We just need to get into conversation. We need to get to the get a seat at the table, and then revenue will validate everything else I'm working on. So if I can get into one deal with one partner, that validates all the that other stuff. So one day at a time, one piece at a time, not perfect. Um, and our all our versions are different, right? What perfect means to us. We're our own worst enemy and we have our own definition of everything. Reminding ourselves that is also important. Hey, this is my version of perfect, and it's okay if today it's not as perfect. Like it's okay. Nobody even your version's different than mine. I'll be okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Well, I love it. I'm gonna end with giving myself a pop quiz. Let's see if I can get the name right from the beginning. Yudia.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Oh, so good. Did I get it? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

All right, all right, cool.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

I mean, I was hoping you'd say beauty, but it's I thought about it for a split second.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

I was like, no, I don't want to.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Uh yeah, we'll we'll just get like a niece, one of my nieces on the line next time.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Well, youdia, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a lot of fun. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

It's been so nice. Thank you. It's an honor. Take care. Bye. Bye. See ya.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

That's it for this episode of Never Go to Market Alone. If you liked what you heard, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another GTM friend. For new episodes or to see how we're helping partner marketers succeed, visit partnervista.co because friends don't let friends go to market alone.