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I've been thinking about "partnerships" as an underutilised tactic to build and scale startups
Why is this important today: everyone wants to do more with less (aka focus, efficiency)
Exception to the "underutilised" comment: fintechs (unlicensed) partner with banks (licensed) - but that is enforced by regulation
Regulatory licenses draw boundaries of what you can do or not do
My hypothesis is that startups don't know themselves to be able to partner with others
Without knowing "who you are", you can't lean on someone else, at least not without worrying about competition (you mix up complements and substitutes)
How to know thyself?
"Strategic clarity" is the end-goal: is there a framework that mortals can use?
Licenses define what "you can do yourself", strategic clarity defines what "you should do yourself"
My preferred framework to get this clarity: big vs small product, by Shreyas Doshi
Your big product: what makes or breaks the value prop for your customers
Your small product: everything else
Example: Uber's (as ride-sharing) big product is "matching demand with supply", small product is "the mobile app"
Which is why Uber could partner with Google Maps and offer Uber bookings inside the Maps app
Your big product can change over time
Applying this to partnerships
Once you know your big product, partner with others to outsource your small products
Chances are that your small product can be the big product for someone else (ideal partner candidate)
Examples to think about (caveat: recalling from memory without research, might have missed nuances)
From the link: "BSPs are a global community of third-party solution providers with expertise on the WhatsApp Business Platform"
Onboarding to WABA is only possible via a BSP, which is perfect for WhatsApp because it offloads customer management onto BSPs, thereby enabling WABA to focus on their big product = becoming a super app for consumers
BSP's big product (e.g. for Yellow) = omnichannel conversations for support/marketing
Stripe's partner ecosystem
Stripe started partnerships (for growth, not regulation) with their 28th employee
Examples: system integrators or dev agencies that "advise, implement, deploy, or offer managed" integrations built with Stripe APIs
Common template for all infra players? Infra's big product = quality, reliability, scale; but (mainstream) customers want full solutions with bells and whistles on top
Since big product can change → partnerships are not permanent
Partnerships can open future product opportunity: "a marketplace of partners"
My hypothesis for the recipe of partner marketplaces: enough number of partnerships + mature interfaces for partner engagement
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The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: