Pitching & Packaging for Partnerships: How to Land Amazing Deals & Tell If They're Working

Peter Pham

CEO BillShrink

Why Partner?

• Do more with less– Focus on what you do best and what creates your

competitive advantage

• Leverage each other for the benefit of both• Traffic• Revenue• Users

You Get..

• Partners can help accelerate– Brand awareness – Legitimize your technology– Make you seem bigger than you are..

They get to upgrade..

• “You’ve built what we’ve wanted to for years, but just didn’t have the resources”

What to look for

• Find combination of • small startups – nimble quicker deals• larger partners – bigger numbers but

slow

• Find deals that are win-win or you will lose-lose

Examples

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Examples

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Research

– upstream/downstream traffic– competitors of possible partners– Demographic profile– Reach

• Stay on top of your space with a great RSS reader and follow your space religiously– Techcrunch techmeme etc to find similar deals or gaps

in potential partner products

Competitors

• Google Alerts is your friend

• Do the same research for your competitors as you would partners

• Find their traffic sources – SEO, SEM, partners and see how you can win

Networking

• Great list for 2009 conferences at http://andrewchenblog.com• Use your Advisors and Investors for Intro’s

Deal Hunting

• It’s never too early to start don’t wait till you’re “ready”

• Big game hunting takes months so start early

Pitch

• Find their hot button (if you did your market research you’d know)

• Template, but customize the pitch based on the hot button

• Mockup, mockup, mockup (do the thinking for them)

Move the deal forward

• Know their competitors cold– Nothing moves partners faster than knowing you

are working with their competitor– Set deadlines that you need to make strategic

decision on who to work with

• Keep driving the deal– Weekly status updates of who owes what to whom– Weekly or weekly calls with a PM

Legal

• Get a lawyer involved early– Remember it’s your IP, you are NOT co-developing.– Iframes, API’s are ideal– Indemnification, who owns the user rights to market

to the user), and try to avoid exclusive deals– Right to their marks, joint press release and use of

their branding– Privacy policy, terms of use, etc.

And get a good lawyer…

Replicate and Scale• Through deal flow - Learn what everyone’s needs and

limitations are

• Start building the scalable infrastructure early

• Build out demo sites for partners– Nothing sells better than something they can touch

• Can you build a simple self serve version?– Javascript, iframes, API’s etc.

Which deal to do when• Value

– Does doing this deal increase value to the company

• Revenue – Realistic annual revenue potential

• Reach – How large is their reach and what % will you get

• Brand – How much PR/brand value is this deal– Will it help you get the next deal?

• Effort– How much time/effort vs. other thngs

Measure

• Manage by Measuring – manage expectations consistently by providing data

• Click thru, conversions, lifetime value, revenue, uniques etc

– Send monthly reports so there’s no surprises

•  Get more deals• Case studies, references, PR all driven by numbers

peter@billshrink.com

Twitter - @peterpham