A much bigger company wants to partner with us. Should we say yes?
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.
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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.
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.
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'.
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.
