Build and scale partner ecosystems that drive revenue and platform adoption. Use when building partner programs from scratch, tiering partnerships, managing co-marketing, making build-vs-partner decisions, or structuring crawl-walk-run partner deployment.
Build and scale partner ecosystems that drive revenue and platform adoption. These aren't theory — they're patterns from building partner programs that drove 8-figure ARR and observing partnerships with real economic commitment.
Triggers:
Context:
The Pattern:
Most "partnerships" are co-marketing theater. Joint webinars, logo swaps, press releases. No economic commitment. No real skin in the game.
Real partnerships look different:
How to Tell the Difference:
Ask: "If this partnership fails, what does each side lose?"
If the answer is "nothing" — it's not a partnership. It's a handshake.
The best partnerships I've seen involved uncomfortable commitments on both sides. Multi-year cloud spend commitments. Dedicated engineering teams. Revenue guarantees. The discomfort is the point — it forces both sides to make the partnership work.
Framework: Three-Sided Value Proposition
Every successful partnership creates clear value for three parties:
Your Company:
The Partner:
Shared Customers:
Decision Criteria:
Before pursuing any partnership, answer:
If both sides can walk away with zero cost, it's not a partnership — it's a handshake.
Common Mistake:
Treating "partnerships" as marketing announcements. Integration launches, joint webinars, co-branded content. These create buzz, not business. Real partnerships require uncomfortable commitments.
The Developer Marketplace Decision:
Running ecosystem at a platform company during hypergrowth. Leadership debate: Open the network to anyone, or curate for quality?
Quality control camp: "We need gatekeeping. Otherwise we'll get SEO spam, low-quality APIs, brand damage."
Open network camp: "Developers route around gatekeepers. Network effects matter more than quality control."
The decision: Went open. Quality concerns were real, but we made a bet: Control comes from discovery + trust layers, not submission gatekeeping.
What We Built Instead of Gatekeeping:
Result: Network effects won. Thousands of APIs published. Quality surfaced through usage, not through us deciding upfront.
The Pattern:
Curated ecosystem (Gatekeeper Model):
Open ecosystem (Discovery Model):
When to Use Which:
Is brand damage risk high if low-quality partners join?
├─ Yes (regulated, security-critical) → Curated
└─ No → Continue...
│
Can you scale human review?
├─ No (thousands of potential partners) → Open
└─ Yes (dozens of partners) → Curated
Common Mistake:
Defaulting to curated because "we need quality control." This works when you have 10 partners. At 100+, you become the bottleneck. Build discovery and trust systems instead.
The Certification Wedge:
Early in a cloud partnership, looking for channel leverage. Targeting managed service providers (MSPs).
The insight: Buried in the cloud provider's partner program requirements: "Must include [our product category] in certified stack."
The play: Built entire partnership pitch around that one line. MSPs didn't just want our product — they needed it to maintain certification.
Result: We became required, not "nice to have." Closed MSP deals 3x faster than generic partnerships.
Framework: Partnership Leverage Types
1. Requirement leverage (Strongest)
2. Economic leverage (Strong)
3. Competitive leverage (Moderate)
4. Customer leverage (Moderate)
5. Co-marketing leverage (Weak)
How to Apply:
Before pitching partnership, identify your leverage:
High leverage (requirements, economics) → Full partnership investment Moderate leverage (competitive, customer) → Light partnership, test first Low leverage (co-marketing only) → Don't do it, you'll waste time
The Qualification Question:
"If we don't do this partnership, what happens to you?"
Common Mistake:
Pitching partnerships based on your benefit, not theirs. "We want access to your customers" is co-marketing theater. "You'll maintain cloud provider certification" is leverage.
Structure partner programs into clear tiers based on commitment and capability:
Tier 1: Integration Partner (Self-Serve)
Tier 2: Partnership Partner (Joint Development)
Tier 3: Strategic Partner (Co-Development)
Decision Criteria:
Common Mistake:
Treating all partners equally. Tier 1 partners want self-serve, Tier 3 want white-glove. Mismatch creates frustration.
De-risk partnerships with phased validation before full commitment.
Crawl (4-8 weeks):
Walk (8-12 weeks):
Run (6-12 months ongoing):
The Pattern:
Most partnerships fail in Crawl phase. That's good — you learn fast with minimal investment.
Common Mistakes:
Go/No-Go Criteria:
After Crawl:
After Walk:
Enter Run Only If:
If you can't articulate what each party gets, the partnership will fail.
Partnership Charter (Required Before Launch):
Mutual Goals:
Value Exchange:
Timeline:
Measurement:
Governance:
The Signature Test:
Both sides should sign the charter. If either side won't commit to paper, there's no real partnership.
Common Mistake:
Verbal agreements without documentation. When things get hard (and they will), you need written alignment.
Pre-Launch (4-6 weeks before):
Launch Week:
Post-Launch (Weeks 2-8):
Common Mistake:
Treating launch as finish line. Real work starts after launch — adoption, support, iteration.
Is this capability core to our product differentiation?
├─ Yes → Build it yourself
└─ No → Continue...
│
Would building this delay our roadmap by >6 months?
├─ Yes → Partner
└─ No → Continue...
│
Is there a credible partner who needs us too?
├─ Yes → Partner
└─ No → Build
Does partner have engineering resources to self-serve?
├─ Yes → Start at Tier 1, evaluate for Tier 2 after 6 months
└─ No → Continue...
│
Is this a marquee logo that shifts our positioning?
├─ Yes → Tier 3 (Strategic)
└─ No → Tier 2 (Joint Development)
Did Crawl phase meet success criteria?
├─ No → End partnership, learn from failure
└─ Yes → Continue...
│
Did Walk phase meet success criteria?
├─ No → End partnership or restart Crawl with changes
└─ Yes → Move to Run phase
Treating partnerships as sales channel, not platform expansion
Launching without clear integration pathways
Expecting partners to self-promote
Creating too many tiers
Ghosting after launch
Pursuing partnerships for vanity
No clear exit criteria
Before starting any partnership:
Before launching any partnership:
Partnership leverage hierarchy:
Go/no-go criteria:
Based on partnerships work across multiple platform companies during hypergrowth, including running a developer marketplace ecosystem (open vs curated decision) and leveraging cloud provider certification requirements for channel growth. Not theory — patterns from partnerships that actually drove revenue and platform adoption.