Usually the honest answer is yes to a pilot, no to a program. Big companies sign a lot of partnerships and staff very few, so the announcement costs you nothing and gets you nothing. Before you commit engineering time, ask for one named customer, one named seller on their side and one date. If they cannot give you all three, it is a business development conversation, not a partnership, and you should keep it warm at low cost. The startups that get burned are the ones that rebuilt their roadmap for a partner who never sent a single lead.
4 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it The Almabase founder on partnering with a billion dollar company as a small Indian startup and the win win win test he uses, which is the honest version of 'punching above your weight'.
On SaaSBoomi by Kalyan Varma with Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor 50 min listen
Open saasboomi.org →Why we picked it An investor's readiness test rather than a how to, built around three blunt questions: are you ready, which partner type, and who owns it. Useful before you say yes to a first inbound partnership.
From OpenView by Scott Maxwell 8 min read
Open openviewpartners.com →Why we picked it Makes the point most first timers miss: channel accelerates growth that already exists, it does not create it, and you should budget at least two months of work per partner after signing.
From GTMnow by Shubham Sood 10 min read
Open gtmnow.com →Why we picked it Survey data from 950 B2B SaaS companies on who actually runs channel and how much revenue it carries, which is the fastest way to sanity check whether your product profile suits resellers at all.
From SaaS Capital by Rob Belcher 9 min read
Open saas-capital.com →How partnerships and alliances reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Scale, fund & exit, our D2C track.
