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Understanding the Mechanics of Partnering with “Big Companies” with a Large Channel

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Mechanics of Partnering

As exciting as it sounds, when a business development or partner sales representative from a large company in your domain calls you, it tends to, in most cases, generate more work than get customers in the short term for a startup.

The first part of partnering with a large company is to understand when you are ready to “sell with” or “sell through” the larger company.

In theory, partnering sounds awesome. The large company has a huge installed based, they may not have a product competitive to the one you posses and your solution fills a gap they may have in their portfolio.

In practice the mechanics of the partnership, the logistics, elapsed time and commercial terms are the things that wear you down.

First realize that they are multiple “players” within the large company – if it is a large technology company, they are very much engineering driven – so the internal engineering teams have a preference to build not buy or partner.

While the product management teams might have a more outside-in view, it is also likely they will prefer to build internally (“I dont think the product will take too long to build” OR “We can build what that startup built in 3 months with 3 resources”).

Then you have the marketing teams, which tend to be consumed (in larger companies) with the current quarter’s lead generation or to focus on helping their sales team’s quarterly goals. While they would like to partner, it is with the intent to have their message be more “cool”, “relevant” or “credible” with potential customers or analysts / press etc.

The sales teams would like to partner if it helps them get the deal done. If they do not get credit for the deal, (or quota relief), no amount of convincing will get them to partner with your startup.

I am going to skip over the other incidental teams such as Finance, Legal and Services team, since they tend to get involved in the back end of most partnership opportunities and rarely lead.

That leaves you with the Business Development team – who reached out to you in the first place. In most large technology companies, they are chartered with “inorganic” growth – or the ability to generate revenue either by having other companies sell their products or helping revenues grow by selling other products the company does not build itself.

In larger technology companies, most BD organizations report either to the Sales team or the Marketing team. In less than 10% of the companies they might report directly to the CEO (via the Corporate Development organization or Finance in even rarer cases).

Most business development professionals are well meaning, have an outside in market perspective and are keen to make deals happen, but, in most companies, they tend to execute deals and influence the strategy, not come up with it.

Meaning, they can make the deal happen if the product or sales teams desire, or they can say no to a deal, but they rarely initiate the deal. There are exceptions.

So, what should you do when a Business development person reaches out to you to partner?

First, ask them to help you understand the dynamics of their organization and their process.

Typically, they will have a 3 or 5 step process.

Startup Partnership Business Development Process
Startup Partnership Business Development Process

Step 1: Layout the market scenario, including product fit, competitive roadmap, etc. and get buy in from Engineering and the product teams. Obtain an executive champion

Step 2: Layout the Go to market plans, with help from the marketing and sales teams. Secure the executive champion for post integration.

Step 3: Detail the financial impact – the investment to be made, the potential revenue impact, the opportunity. Secure the budget needed for the various teams for the deal.

Step 4: Get buy-in to start negotiations with your startup. This includes discussion with their legal team on the framework of the agreement, discussions with your startup on the roles, responsibilities and work each team needs to do to be successful. This includes defining success with milestones at each stage.

Step 5: Final contract completion and roadmap for the partnership with the outline of the announcements, etc.

This entire 5 step process usually takes months if not 2 quarters on average.

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Creating Artificial Constraints as a Means to Innovation

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Artificial Constraints

Many of the entrepreneurs I know have created new innovative startups thanks to real constraints they had. For example, I was hearing AirBnB’s Brian Chesky, on the Corner Office podcast and he mentioned that when he and his cofounder were trying to get some money to get started and the only way to keep afloat was to “rent” their air bed they had in their room. That, then led to Air Bed and Breakfast, which is now AirBnB.

This was a real constraint they had – no money to “eat” so they had to make it happen somehow.

I have heard of many stories of innovation where in the protagonists had real constraints of either financial, technology, supply, demand, economic, social or any number of other characteristics.

The interesting story that I have also recently heard of how Facebook has “pivoted” from being a desktop offering to getting a significant part of their revenue from mobile is how they were given the arbitrary constraint of only accessing Facebook via the mobile phone.

So there are ways that you can create “artificial” constraints to force innovation to happen.

Most larger companies and some smaller ones as well, have to constantly find ways to create artificial constraints – to find a way to innovate and be more be a pioneer.

While some constraints are good – lack of funds at the early stage for example and lack of resources, there are entrepreneurs that are stymied by these constraints and those that will find  a way to seek a path to go forward.

I think this is a great way for you to think about innovating in a new space. If you have constraints, find a way to use it to your advantage.

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The Great Mobile App Migration of March 2020

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Mobile App Migration

Over the last few weeks as many in the world have been in lockdown, there has been a temporary “mobile app migration” happening. There are new apps downloaded and they replaced existing apps on the “home screen”.

While some of these apps are likely temporary use, for e.g. I have 6 “conferencing apps” – Zoom, Uber Conference, Webex, Google Hangouts, Blue Jeans and Goto Meeting. That is because of the many people I have conference calls with – each company seems to have chosen a different web conference solution.

Other apps seem like they will have staying power – Houseparty, for e.g. which has games, networking and video conferencing all built into one app to keep in touch with friends and relatives.

Houseparty

The apps that have moved away from my “home” screen, which I expect will come back once the crisis will be behind us include – Uber, Lyft and all the airline apps from Delta, Alaska and United.

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Perseverance with the Ability to Pivot on Data: 21 Traits We Look for in Entrepreneurs

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Perseverance with the Ability to Pivot

There are 5 key inflection points I have noticed which makes founders question their startup, to either make a call to continue working on their startup, pivot to a new problem or quit their startup altogether.

It is at these points that you really get to know the startup founder and their hunger and drive to be successful. I don’t think I can characterize those that choose to quit as “losers” or “quitters” because of many extraneous circumstances, but there is a lot of value that most investors see in entrepreneurs who face an uphill part of their journey to come out on the other side more confident and stronger.

These five inflection points are:

  1. When you have to get the first customers to use and pay for the product you have built after you have “shipped” an alpha / beta / first version. Entrepreneurs quit because they have not found the product-market-fit – because the customer don’t care about the product, there is no market need, or the product is really poorly built, or a host of other reasons.
  2. When you have to start to raise the first external round of financing from people you are not familiar with at all. Entrepreneurs quit because while it is hard to get customers and hire people, it is much more harder to get a smaller set of investors to part with their money, if you do not have “traction”, or “the right management team” or a “killer product”.
  3. When you have to push to break even (financially) and sustain the company to path of being self sufficient. Entrepreneurs quit at this stage because they have now the ability to do multiple things at the same time – grow revenues and manage costs, and many of them like to do one but realize it is hard to do that without affecting the other. So, rather than feel stuck they decide to quit.
  4. When you have to scale and grow faster that the competition – which might mean to hire faster, to get more customers, to drive more sales, or to completely rethink their problem statement and devise new ways to grow faster. Entrepreneurs quit at this point because they are consumed by the magnitude of the problem. They overassess the impact the competition will have on their company, give them too much credit or focus way too much on the competitors, thereby driving their company to the ground.
  5. At any point in the journey, when the founders lose the passion, vision or the drive to succeed. Entrepreneurs quit a these points because they have challenges with their co founder, they don’t agree with the direction they have to take, or encounter the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome.

While I have observed many entrepreneurs at these stages at  discrete points in time, I have also had the opportunity to observe some entrepreneurs in the continuum, and I am going to give you my observations on 3 of the many folks I have known, who, have quit.

Perseverance separates great entrepreneurs from good ones
Perseverance separates great entrepreneurs from good ones

One went back to college to finish his MBA after getting a running business to a point of near breakeven, another found the business much harder than he originally thought he would and got a job at a larger company and the third was just unable to have the drive to go past 11 “no’s”‘ from angel investors.

Over the last 8 years, if I look at my deeper interactions with over 90 entrepreneurs, who I would have spent at least 100+ hours each, I would say that of the 24 people that are not longer in their startup, the one thing that stands out among the ones that persevere is that it is not “passion” or “vision” at all.

It is the inherent belief that they are solving a problem that they believe is their “calling”. They also don’t believe that there is any other problem that’s worth solving as much, even though there may be easier ways to make money.

So most of my questions of entrepreneurs to test whether they will pivot or quit are around why they want to solve this problem (which I am looking to see if they know enough about in the first place) versus any other one.

The answer to that question is the best indicator I have found to be the difference between the pivots, the leavers and the rest.

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