Ask one question: who owns the customer relationship and who takes the money. A referral partner sends you a name and takes a cut while you do everything else. A tech or integration partner builds a connection between the two products and you each sell it into your own base. A reseller buys at a discount and sells on their own paper, so the customer is theirs, while a system integrator gets paid for services around your product and often decides which software the customer buys at all. Each one needs a different contract, a different margin and a very different amount of your time, so naming it correctly on day one saves you months.
4 hand-picked resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it An Indian SaaS operator walking through revenue partners versus tech partners, how a startup recruits its first ones, and the common mistakes, framed for founders selling out of India.
On SaaSBoomi (Marketing Nation) by Anand Venkatraman with Arvind Parthiban 45 min listen
Open saasboomi.org →Why we picked it The best plain English glossary of the nine partner types plus 20 metrics to track, which is exactly what you need when you are new and everyone around you is using acronyms.
From HubSpot Blog by Aja Frost 15 min read
Open blog.hubspot.com →Why we picked it The clearest single explanation of the five partner types and what each is worth, including real margin bands (20 to 30% for VARs, 5 to 10% for referral) and how to compensate your own AEs on partner deals.
From Bessemer Venture Partners (Atlas) by MP Eisen 20 min read
Open bvp.com →Why we picked it Six distinct programs on one page (consulting, GSI, distributor, VAR, affiliate, marketplace) is the fastest way to see how a mature partner portfolio is segmented rather than lumped together.
From Zoho 6 min read
Open zoho.com →How partnerships and alliances reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Scale, fund & exit, our D2C track.
