Strategic alliances
Distinct from marketing partnerships. Those borrow an audience; these change what the business can do or where it can sell.
Partner, build, or buy
Partner when the capability is genuinely outside your core, the partner is materially better at it, and the arrangement can be unwound. Build when it is core, or when depending on someone else creates unacceptable exposure. Buy when you need control and speed and the thesis holds.
The question that decides it: what happens if this partner becomes a competitor, is acquired by one, or simply loses interest? If the answer is existential, do not partner — that is a build or buy decision wearing a cheaper price tag.
Structure by what each side actually wants
Partnerships fail on asymmetry of motivation more than on terms. Before structuring, establish what the partner gets, whether it is material to them, and who inside their organization is accountable for it.
A partnership that is strategically important to you and a rounding error to them will not be executed, whatever was signed. Being the small partner is workable — being the small and uninteresting partner is not.
Terms that determine whether it works
- Exclusivity — expensive, occasionally worth it, and always time-boxed. Perpetual exclusivity given away early is a recurring regret.
- Economics — who books revenue, on what split, and what happens to it if volume grows tenfold.
- Roadmap commitments — what each side will build and by when, with a remedy if they do not.
- Data — what flows where, under what basis, and what happens to it at termination.
- Customer ownership — who holds the relationship, and who may market to them afterward. Most disputed, most often left vague.
- Termination and transition — notice, and what continues for customers mid-contract. Negotiate the exit while everyone is friendly, because it will not be negotiable later.
Making it produce
Signed is not launched. Partnerships need a named owner on each side, a joint plan with dates, and a regular review that either side can bring problems to.
The characteristic failure: a signed agreement, a press release, and no operational plan. Six months later both sides believe the other did not deliver, and neither is wrong.
Enable the partner properly. Their team needs to know what to say and when to bring you in, and they will not learn it from the contract.
Diagnosing a stalled partnership
Almost always one of: no accountable owner on one side, misaligned incentives at the level of the people doing the work, a promised technical dependency that never shipped, or a partner whose strategy moved.
Say it plainly and early. Partnerships die quietly for a year before anyone admits it, and that year is the cost.
Never
- Sign a partnership without naming what each side is measured on.
- Announce before the joint work has a named owner on both sides.
- Let a partnership run past its review date on goodwill.
- Grant exclusivity without a performance floor that ends it.
