# Partnership & BD - All Guest Insights

*9 guests, 11 mentions*

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## Adam Grenier
*Adam Grenier*

> "I was able to basically position and say, 'Look it, you want to work with us. Let me into your alpha, because I have five years of experience already buying mobile ads. I know the space. I know it'll work. And if you get us to work, we're a killer case study...'"

**Insight:** Securing strategic partnerships with major platforms (like Facebook or Google) requires demonstrating how your success helps them prove their own business model.

**Tactical advice:**
- Offer to be an alpha tester for new platform features to gain a first-mover advantage
- Pitch your company as a unique case study for a category the platform wants to grow

*Timestamp: 00:22:13*


## Ayo Omojola
*Ayo Omojola*

> "Very often the way to make things happen is network-dependent, not necessarily about the merit of the thing itself. So it's just like, there's companies that exist because the founders know the CEO of every major payer in the country"

**Insight:** In highly regulated industries like healthcare, business development is often driven by high-level network access rather than product merit alone.

**Tactical advice:**
- Determine if your business model is network-dependent early on.
- Be extremely crisp about your use case to lower the social capital cost for others to introduce you.
- Focus on identifying the specific person in an organization who has their 'finger on the button' for decisions.

*Timestamp: 42:23*


## Jason Droege
*Jason Droege*

> "McDonald's actually approached us and they said, 'We'd love to do food delivery with you.' And I said, 'No.'... I pushed them off for four or five months... I think it actually ended up being in net benefit because we got a great deal with them."

**Insight:** Strategic patience and the willingness to say 'no' to a major partner can lead to better deal terms and exclusivity.

**Tactical advice:**
- Don't rush into partnerships just because of the partner's size
- Use initial resistance to negotiate better deal terms or exclusivity

*Timestamp: 00:57:27*


## Jen Abel
*Jen Abel 2.0*

> "The problem with channel partnerships and why I don't believe in them is there are a hundred of you on this list and you're expecting them to sell it on your behalf. Biggest no-no, they're not vision casters, they're not visionaries, they're consultants."

**Insight:** Relying on large consultancies (e.g., Accenture, Deloitte) as channel partners is often ineffective because they lack the founder's visionary selling ability.

**Tactical advice:**
- Don't expect consultants to disseminate your product; they are not incentivized to be your visionaries.

*Timestamp: 00:44:02*


## Julia Schottenstein
*Julia Schottenstein*

> "Use that corp dev team to your advantage. It's their job to meet absolutely every company that could be potentially interested. So take that meeting, say you're not interested in an acquisition just yet, but push them to make an introduction to someone that could sponsor the deal. So usually that's someone in product or maybe a GM."

**Insight:** Corporate development teams are gateways to internal product sponsors; use them to build relationships even if you aren't ready to sell.

**Tactical advice:**
- Take meetings with corp dev teams even if you aren't currently looking for an exit.
- Ask corp dev for introductions to GMs or Product leaders who could act as internal sponsors for future deals.

*Timestamp: 00:40:12*


## Meltem Kuran
*Meltem Kuran*

> "Venture capital partners was a huge one because when you get money from a new VC, they ask, they're like, 'Okay, thank you for giving us this money, now we want to expand our team with the money you gave us. What are your other portfolio companies using? What is a platform that you trust that you would recommend?' So people go to their VCs for that kind of question."

**Insight:** The best partners are those whom your target audience already views as a trusted resource for the specific problem you solve.

**Tactical advice:**
- Identify partners who are consulted at the exact moment the customer's problem arises (e.g., VCs during hiring phases).

*Timestamp: 00:35:18*


## Sriram and Aarthi
*Sriram and Aarthi*

> "I just had a conversation on the internet. I have this whole thing where I do think a lot of people trying to get ahead in their career, especially in technology, should just write cold emails, cold DMs, notes, put out content, et cetera and that leads to good things."

**Insight:** Cold outreach and content creation are powerful tools for building high-value relationships and partnerships.

**Tactical advice:**
- Send cold DMs or emails to leaders you admire.
- Provide value or show genuine interest in their work to initiate a relationship.

*Timestamp: 00:06:18*

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> "Go and meet every single peer that you have you don't directly meet with. Go get coffee with them and ask them, 'Hey.' Have no agenda. Just ask them what's going on in their life, who are they, what their life story is and then who are a couple of interesting people that you should meet with?"

**Insight:** Internal networking within a company builds a resource pool for future hiring, role-seeking, and problem-solving.

**Tactical advice:**
- Schedule two 'no-agenda' coffees per week with peers and leaders.
- Always ask for introductions to two more interesting people at the end of a meeting.
- Follow up at least once a year to maintain the relationship.

*Timestamp: 00:21:29*


## Keith Yandell
*Keith Yandell*

> "Why don't you figure out what the scalable solution is for this? We will build you a product. You won't need to come ask us every time to build something. And then you'll know the parameters in which you can negotiate."

**Insight:** Effective BD teams work with Product to build scalable platforms rather than negotiating bespoke, one-off integrations.

**Tactical advice:**
- Define the parameters of what can be negotiated before entering partnership talks
- Build self-serve platforms for partners to increase velocity and reduce engineering load

*Timestamp: 49:32*

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> "We should have gone out and tested this at one hotel with just some hacky operations and seen what the uptick was... before going and asking for the product resources."

**Insight:** Use manual operations to validate partnership hypotheses before committing precious engineering resources to a build.

**Tactical advice:**
- Test partnership ideas with 'hacky' manual operations (e.g., physical promo codes) first
- Apply the 'Dream big, start small' philosophy to BD deals

*Timestamp: 50:35*


## Tobi Lutke
*Tobi Lutke*

> "Being a good partner in business is like this corporate marshmallow test that companies tend to fail in a very funny way... If you're talking about long timeframes, like 100 years, there is no question. But clearly, the correct way to play iterated prisoner's dilemma is coordinate for both sides. It's way more valuable doing that over long periods of time than any momentary defection could possibly be convenient at a moment."

**Insight:** Strategic partnerships succeed by treating them as an iterated prisoner's dilemma where long-term coordination always beats short-term defection.

**Tactical advice:**
- Resist the urge to pull future profits forward at the expense of a partner
- Operate on the assumption that both you and your partner will win your respective markets
- Pass the 'corporate marshmallow test' by choosing long-term coordination over immediate convenience

*Timestamp: 01:06:44*


