Partnership Growth

I made it to VP at Amazon because of the people I partnered with. The same is true for building my part-time business that made $950k last year. Create the partnerships that will let you leap forward - here’s how: 1) Understand Productive Partnerships Here are some examples of the partnerships that propelled my career: a) I partnered with my first boss out of college. I taught her technology, she taught me leadership and drove my first two promotions (lead engineer, then manager). b) At Amazon, my first lead engineer and I worked together for 8 years. I went from Senior Manager to Director to VP while he went from SDE to Senior SDE to Manager to Senior Manager to Director - FOUR PROMOTIONS. c) My COO, Jason Yoong, reached out to me and initiated our partnership by volunteering to build my Substack newsletter. Someone has to take the first step, and he did. d) Most recently, I formed the “Career Growth Collective,” where I invited LinkedIn voices Omar Halabieh, Steve Huynh, and Rajdeep Saha to work with me to amplify our messages across platforms and groups to help more people. Each person in this partnership brings different strengths. Steve and Raj are senior individual contributors with strong YouTube presences. They bring the “Principal” level perspective. Omar is based in Dubai and is actively leading a big team. He also cranks out amazing graphics every day. The different strengths that each person brings leads me to part 2. 2) The Partnership Recipe: i) Build trust with your potential partner Be honest, be friendly, be helpful! ii) Figure out a win-win partnership With my first boss, she needed a technical advisor and I needed management sponsorship. Years later, my first lead engineer did for me what I had done for her. He provided the technical expertise while I sponsored his growth With Raj, Steve, and Omar, we all want to find new readers who will get value from our work. Tip: Take the first step. Invest in the other person without a guarantee of repayment. This will kickstart the partnership, whereas waiting for the other person to make the first move will not. iii) You don’t need perfection I proposed the Career Growth Collective idea to 4 people. 3 accepted and we are thriving together. The main message I want to share with all of this is that you do not need to “go it alone” in your career. What you do need to do is risk that a few people will not return your investment in them when you try to establish partnerships. That is OK. Learn, move on, find others who will. The value of the successful partnerships will greatly outweigh the time and effort put into the ones that didn’t pan out. Who have you partnered with? Praise or thank them in a comment! Who would you like to partner with? Send them this post with a note saying it inspired you to work more closely with them. Steve, Omar, and Raj have shared their own ideas on partnership today. Follow them and read their ideas.

I’ve learned that the most effective partnerships aren’t grounded in contracts, they’re built on mutual empathy and strategic alignment. Too often, alliances fail because they’re managed like vendor relationships, not true collaborations. But genuine partnerships require something more: a shared willingness to take smart risks for one another’s success, the humility to recognize when your partner brings greater expertise, and the discipline to stay aligned through complexity. When done well, partnership becomes a source of transformation. You unlock solutions neither side could build alone and create durable, differentiated value in the process. I had the opportunity to discuss these ideas with Stephanie Mehta for her Modern CEO column in Fast Company. In today’s interconnected world, your ability to build and scale the right partnerships isn’t just a soft skill—it’s a strategic capability and a competitive imperative. More here: https://lnkd.in/g9YJ2f5T

I’ve never met an executive who buys features. They buy outcomes. And outcomes don’t happen without services that scale. That’s why the smartest teams scale through partners, not headcount. When Andreessen Horowitz published their Services-Led Growth framework earlier this month, it put language to something I’ve been seeing for years. Especially in AI-heavy and regulated industries where product alone doesn’t get you across the finish line. A fintech founder recently walked me through their shift. They had solid PLG momentum… until they hit the enterprise wall. Here’s how they originally operated: 1. Onboarding → Templated, impersonal 2. AI delivery → Customer-led, often stalled 3. Expansion → Reactive, CSM-led Then they rebuilt the motion around Services-Led Growth with partner delivery at the center: 1. Onboarding → Productized and SI-delivered 2. AI rollout → Configured with partner expertise 3. Expansion → Partner-led QBRs and roadmap feedback loops The outcome? - Faster time-to-value - Higher adoption and retention - $150K+ in expansion revenue lift per customer 🎯 To help other teams model this shift, I built something practical: The SLG ROI Calculator: Internal vs Partner-Led Delivery It covers 6 arenas of ROI: 1. Time-to-Onboard 2. Feature Adoption 3. Expansion Revenue 4. Onboarding Cost 5. Retention Rate 6. Latent Partner Opportunity With built-in benchmarks and formulas it’s designed to help you quantify the upside of SLG at a glance. 💬 Comment “SLG” and I’ll DM you the calculator. 📥 Use it to make your business case, pressure test assumptions, or reframe how you measure partner impact. 🆘 Need advice? DM me or visit Connected Revenue #AI #Partnerships #LinkedInTopVoices The chart is courtesy of a16z.

The Power of Partnerships: Building Connections That Drive Startup Success 🤝 Hi everyone! Ankita here, excited to discuss how strategic partnerships can unlock incredible opportunities for startups. In today’s competitive environment, the right collaborations aren’t just helpful—they’re essential for scaling, innovating, and making an impact. Why Partnerships Are a Game-Changer With the right strategies, partnerships can transform the way startups grow, adapt, and thrive. Let’s dive into how startups can leverage meaningful collaborations: 🌟 Breaking Into New Markets Strategic partnerships help startups navigate unfamiliar markets faster and more effectively. Tip: Work with local businesses or organizations with established networks to gain market-specific insights and reduce entry barriers. 🌟 Innovating Through Collaboration Collaborating with complementary startups or established players can spark creative solutions and refine ideas. Tip: Pilot projects are a great way to test co-created innovations before scaling up. 🌟 Learning and Scaling with Mentors Partnerships with industry veterans or advisors bring invaluable expertise and open up new avenues for growth. Tip: Align with mentors who understand your vision and can provide guidance rooted in experience. 🌟 Enhancing Customer Experience Joint ventures with companies offering complementary services can elevate the overall customer journey. Tip: Co-develop solutions that add value for customers, creating a seamless experience. 🌟 Boosting Brand Visibility Collaborations with trusted brands amplify credibility and broaden reach. Tip: Explore co-marketing campaigns or events that position your startup alongside a respected name in your field. 🌟 Streamlining Operations Sharing resources like infrastructure or technology with partners can reduce costs while maintaining quality. Tip: Identify shared goals where combining efforts enhances efficiency for all parties involved. 🌟 Driving Social Impact Collaborating with mission-aligned organizations enables startups to amplify their contributions to societal challenges. Tip: Focus on partnerships that balance purpose and profit to create lasting impact. Moving Forward Together Startups grow stronger through collaboration. By building meaningful partnerships, we can share resources, exchange ideas, and collectively create more value. A well-planned partnership strategy isn’t just an advantage—it’s a catalyst for growth. 💬 What partnerships have shaped your startup journey? Let’s share ideas and learn from one another! #StartupGrowth #PartnershipsMatter #Collaboration #SharedSuccess #StartupStrategy

The Overlooked Growth Lever: Structuring IP & Partnerships the Right Way. Securing Intellectual Property or IP and structuring robust partnerships are crucial to driving product success and ensuring long-term growth. Here’s how to make them work for you: Safeguard Key Innovations: Protect patents, trade secrets, and trademarks to prevent competitors from capitalizing on your ideas. Draft Rock-Solid Agreements: Clearly define IP ownership and usage rights in every partnership. This prevents future disputes. Focus on Improvements: Include terms for ownership of improvements made during collaborations. Leverage Strategic Licensing: Use licensing agreements to monetize your IP while retaining control. Align Incentives: Create win-win partnerships by including shared revenue models or exclusivity terms. In sum, IP without protection is just an idea. IP, especially when it comes to partnerships, is more than legal necessities—it’s your competitive advantage. Have you secured yours? What’s one way you’ve used IP or partnerships to support your product’s success? Share your insights below! -------- 💥 I’m Olga V. Mack 🔺 Expert in AI & transformative tech for product counseling 🔺 Upskilling human capital for digital transformation 🔺 Leading change management in legal innovation & operations 🔺 Keynote speaker on the intersection of business, law, & tech 🔝 Let’s connect 🔝 Subscribe to Notes to My (Legal) Self newsletter

After securing partnerships with over 90 companies and building a portfolio of over $4 billion worth of investment deals in my career, I’ve learned that strategic partnerships are not just beneficial—they’re pivotal.    Here are three secrets to forging million-dollar partnerships that can help you achieve a similar feat:    1. Understand Your Unique Value Proposition: Before approaching potential partners, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of what unique value your business brings to the table. This will help you articulate why a partnership with you is beneficial, making it easier to attract high-value partners.    2.Align Goals and Values: Successful partnerships are built on shared goals and values. Ensure that your potential partner’s vision aligns with yours. This alignment fosters trust and collaboration, leading to long-term success.    3. Leverage Mutual Strengths: The best partnerships are those where both parties bring complementary strengths to the table. Identify areas where your partner excels and see how these can augment your business capabilities.    Partnerships have been the cornerstone of my growth strategy, helping me unlock new markets and drive significant growth.    Don't wait until you feel 'ready'—start building those relationships now.    #BusinessStrategy #Partnerships #Growth #BrandBuilding #ThePathRedefined

𝐈 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞-𝐮𝐩 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐬. A couple of weeks back, Mac Reddin 🦕 delivered a great session that started with a very clear message: In any company, you should be doing one of three jobs: 🛠 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 💰 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 🤝 𝐎𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐯𝐞 If you are not in any of those three categories, you'll struggle to get support. As partnership pros, we normally fall in the second and/or third buckets. However, many fail to prove their impact through hard cold data 📊 that matters. I've been there myself 😰. Let’s be clear, if you don’t back your talk with data that shows impact to the metrics that matter... guess what? Your ELT won't care. Trust me, your CEO does not care that you’ve signed 100 partners, if you aren’t generating any business with them. Yes, we wear many hats and do many jobs, but our only real currency is data that shows impact and results. 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐢𝐬 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 👑, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭. So what are some things that you can do, you ask? ✅ Build and maintain your team's and business’s P&L statement ✅ Learn how much your team costs and what you must do to be profitable (shoutout to Cory Snyder for that lesson) ✅ Understand the metrics that matter to your ELT: NRR, ARR, NACV, Revenue Growth, CLTV, CAC, CAC Payback Period, Churn, Renewal Rate, ROI, etc. ✅ Back your stories and requests with data that demonstrates impact directly to those metrics It's until you fully embrace this that you’ll start getting the buy-in and support you are looking for. 📈 TL;DR 📈 👑 Data is king 📦 Become obsessed with gathering and measuring data 📊 Understand your team's P&L 🔢 Back your talk with data that impacts the metrics that matter Want to learn more? Kelly Stratman and I will be talking about this and more on stage at Partnership Leaders #Catalyst next week. Otherwise, hit me up, I'm always happy to chat! #Partnerships #PartnerOps #GTMStrategy #PerformanceMetrics #RevOps

A common partnership snafu is that companies want partnership success, but don’t provide the resources to get there. I heard of a case where a whole marketing team quit, the partnerships team was given no marketing support, and they didn't yet have an integration with product -- and yet, the CEO expected the partnership strategy to deliver instant revenue. Wild. But not uncommon. Partnerships can't thrive in a vacuum. They need cross-functional support—marketing, product integration, sales enablement—all aligned to succeed. Before you set revenue targets for your partnerships, ask yourself: Do we have the resources to support them? If the answer is no, you have to help your leadership teams to reconsider their expectations. To help create the cross-functional support needed for partnerships to thrive, here are four strategies: 1. Involve Cross-Functional Leaders from the Very Beginning Bring key leaders from marketing, sales, and product into the partnership planning phase. Early involvement gives them a sense of ownership and ensures they understand how partnerships align with their own goals. Strategy: Schedule a kick-off meeting with stakeholders from each relevant department. Create a shared roadmap that outlines how partnerships will impact each team and their specific contributions. 2. Tie Partnership Success to Department KPIs To gain buy-in, tie partnership goals directly to the KPIs of each department. Aligning partnership outcomes with what each team is measured on ensures they have skin in the game. Strategy: During planning sessions, ask each department head how partnerships can contribute to their targets. Build specific KPIs for each function into the overall partnership strategy. 3. Create a Resource Exchange Agreement Formalize the support needed from each department with a resource exchange agreement. This sets clear expectations on what each function will contribute—whether it's a dedicated product team member for integrations or marketing resources for co-branded campaigns. It turns vague promises into commitments. Strategy: Draft a simple document that outlines the roles, responsibilities, and deliverables each team will provide, then get sign-off from department heads and the executive team. 4. Demonstrate Early Wins for Buy-In Quick wins go a long way toward securing ongoing resources. Identify a small pilot project with an internal team that shows immediate impact. Whether it's a small co-marketing campaign or a limited integration, these early successes build momentum and demonstrate the value of supporting partnerships. Strategy: Select one or two partners to run a pilot with, focused on delivering measurable outcomes like leads generated or product adoption. Use this success story to demonstrate value to other departments and secure further commitment. Partnership success requires cross-functional alignment. Because partnerships don’t happen in a silo.

Here's how I use Deep Research to help me land new partnerships at Pilot, with sample prompts: These days, I'm spending a lot of time talking with various ecosystem players (think: payroll providers, banks, vertical SaaS companies) who are potentially interested in offering accounting and tax prep to their customers, because it'll increase revenue or improve retention. I use Deep Research to (1) help find potential partners, and (2) to prep for specific meetings. For finding partners, here are two strategies I use: 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝗜'𝗺 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 Prompt: Create a list of vertical SaaS companies that sell to SMBs that might be good partners for cross-selling Pilot.com's accounting and tax service. Focus on companies that principally serve US businesses. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 Prompt: Who does [Competitor] with? Specifically, what other services sell tax or accounting that are powered by [Competitor]? Some percentage of these folks are probably unhappy with the status quo, and they definitionally already have the problem because they work with the competitor, so they're good candidates to reach out to. Before any given conversation, I'll kick off two Deep Research queries to make sure I'm as prepared as possible for the meeting: 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 Prompt: I'm about to meet with Jane Doe, Company A's CEO, to talk about a partnership between Pilot.com and Company A. What should I know about her? This generally gives you a good holistic overview of who you're meeting with and what they might care about. 𝗡𝗼𝗻-𝗼𝗯𝘃𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 Prompt: Build a business case for why Company A might want to introduce an accounting or tax prep cross-sell into their customer base. In my experience, this generates about 95% kinda-drivel obvious stuff, but there's sometimes a nugget of something you would have otherwise missed, which makes the whole thing very worthwhile. Could you have gotten these same results with a bunch of tedious Googling, or, say, an MBA intern? Yes, sure—but now that this is 100x more accessible, I've found that I do it way more. What are the killer use cases I'm missing?

Last weekend I built an ugly (but functional) shelf to go in a garage closet. I used cheap recycled wood, but I still used dovetail joinery -- no glue, no nails -- just the right fit. The result is a structure that's resilient, even under stress. It's analogy time! Complex deals are like this. The parties need to come together in ways that are strong, resilient, and built to last. But too often, these deals rely on force—aggressive terms, rigid structures, or an overreliance on contracts to hold things together. This doesn't work very well. They need to be more like a dovetail: ✅ To really come together, the pieces change shape a little. Each party adjusts, not by compromising their integrity, but by shaping themselves to fit the partnership. ✅ The joint holds—without clamps or glue. A good contract is essential, but it shouldn’t be what holds the deal together. The real strength comes from how well the parties fit and work together. ✅ No forcing, no breaking. If you try to hammer a dovetail joint together, it will split. The same is true in negotiations—forcing alignment leads to failure. The best deals come from processes that feel natural and build trust. This takes skill, preparation and vision. In business transformation, too many deals fall apart because they try to rely on clamps and glue—counterproductive procurement processes, last-minute concessions, misaligned incentives, or overbearing terms. But the strongest partnerships, like a dovetail joint, don’t rely on glue. They rely on thoughtful design, mutual adaptation, and building a connection that holds firm under pressure. #TransformationEnablement #BusinessTransformation #DigitalTransformation #Negotiation #LobsterSox