#platform

Cloud market ☁️ breakdown from infrastructure to products/services, all the way to the end customers

Nearly $600B ☁️ cloud market is largely built with partnerships as building blocks.. Here is a quick breakdown from infrastructure to added products/services, all the way to 💻 the end business customers ⚡️ Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) - $91B in global revenue, 36% YoY growth It starts with cloud hyperscalers (Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google) that provide access to raw computing to process workloads, store data, manage access, networking (e.g. firewall), vi

CrowdStrike's partnership playbook. Why a top 10 SaaS platform is a partner-first company.

CrowdStrike is a disruptor 🗽 in the cybersecurity industry, the 2nd fastest SaaS company that reached $2bn ARR. It’s also a “partner-first company” with ~75% of its sales via #channel partners. Let’s look at the role that #partnerships, platform and network effects play in their success. 🏆 CrowdStrike - top 10 SaaS CS is a cybersecurity cloud platform delivering endpoint and workload protection. It became famous in 2016 for tracing Democratic National Committee hack back t

Box's (BOX ) partnerships playbook: from 0 to 1500+ partners

Today Box (BOX) is ~ $1Bn ARR, where ~ 40% of New ARR 🏆 comes in-directly via partners. But let’s look at how they started #partnerships, their key drivers and the evolution of their playbook from the early days. Box is a cloud content management platform - it could be compared with Dropbox, but focused on enterprise with more features and built as an #Api #platform from the early days. Today it has 100K+ customers with 1420 of them paying $100K+. 🤝 Box partners to: Differ

#5️⃣ from our 7 key partner insights in 2022 - becoming a #platform is among top aspirations in SaaS

🛠️ Becoming a #platform is among top aspirations in SaaS. But what should be true to become another Slack, Shopify or HubSpot? Companies need first to achieve scale, earn the right to be a platform, and think about customers and partners like a 2-sided market. 💎 Earn the right to be a platform Sharrifah Lorenz, who led #partnerships in Asana, Loom and now Census had an insightful answer to my question: “Is Asana a platform or will it become a platform?” 💡 "The question is

#7️⃣ of 7 partner insights in 2022 - partnerships while difficult, are scaling up regardless

🎯 7 partner insights in 2022 - a brief summary of key trends from a busy year. 7️⃣ #Partnerships while difficult, are scaling up regardless Three underlying trends: 📈 90% of companies are now using/planning to use partner API [Gartner] 😮 500 million apps will be created and deployed in the cloud by end of 2023 [IDC] Vast majority of these apps will NOT be standalone products, but rather apps created in non-code tools. Still, there will be MUCH more SaaS products. ⚡️ 80% of

Fintech unicorns grew 11X growth in 5 yrs

To put things in perspective, there were 274+ #fintech unicorns in Sept 2022, up from 25 in 2017. 🔎 11X growth in 5 yrs, even after tech multiple corrections. Three key drivers: 🚀 New business models of #platform and ecosystems help new (and existing) players jump across industries (e.g. WeBank from WeChat) 🎯 Customers now expect MUCH high personalization, zero friction, etc. (e.g. Apple / Google Pay) ⚡️ Tech has eliminated size as an advantage (from traditional banks) in

🏆 #1 of 7 key partner insights of 2022

#1 of 7 key partner insights of 2022. Last year many realized that despite the drums of #plg, there's never been a 🗽 top tech company that's reached the IPO scale without #partnerships. 2. Explosion APIs unlocked indirect monetization 3. Partnering with cloud #marketplaces is now must-do in SaaS 4. Partner Ops are rising into prominence 5. Becoming a #platform is among top aspirations in SaaS 6. The rise of a new Partnerships Leader 7. Partnerships while difficult, are scali

How Slack built a platform and unlocked ⚡️ network effects [Platform playbook]

This week Slack’s co-founder, Stewart Butterfield announced leaving Salesforce (SFDC). Slack is now folded into SFDC #platform, its fastest-growing category. ⚡️ Let's glimpse back at Slack platform journey and the role #networkeffects played in Slack becoming the largest Salesforce acquisition. At the time of 2020 acquisition SFDC vs Slack ratio was 22 : 1 in revenue and headcount Rev: $21B vs $0.9B; Employees: 54K vs 2.5K but only 🏆 2 : 1 in apps, #ecosystem and developer #

Shopify focused on #ecosystem early and now paying $0.4B/yr to partners [Ecosystem playbook]

Shopify is one of the top B2B SaaS companies that focused on #ecosystem early. Last year it paid 💎 $411M to their App Store partners (8% of Shopify's $5B revenue) while in total their partners generated $32B Rev in their ecosystem 💡 ~7X Shopify’s Rev. 🎯 Here is a snapshot on how and why Shopify is building an ecosystem Today Shopify is the best full-stack e-commerce solution outside of Amazon. It's for you, if you sell online and want to own brand/customers 100%. Following

How up to 20% of Zoom revenue is sourced by partners ⚡️ [Channel playbook]

Many of us love Zoom and the product seemingly sells itself. But not only 15-20% of their revenue is ⚡️ powered by 8K+ partners, the company also would’ve focused on #channelpartners earlier given a chance. 💰 Zoom boasted $4.1B revenue in FY22, roughly half of which is Enterprise (they call it “non-online” in contrast with Consumer). This segment is a major growth area, and where partners are essential. Zoom CRO Ryan Azus: “Partners are the core pillar of how we're going to

Some companies want to be a "platform", because… they just want to be platform 🤔.But how to do it?

Some companies want to be a "platform", because… they just want to be a platform 🤔. But what does becoming an actual SaaS #platform entails? 💬 We discussed Asana's platform journey with insightful Sharrifah Lorenz, CFA who led #partnerships in Asana, Loom and now Census: 📈 Building partner integrations Slack had built all of their original integrations, because they wanted to prove out the model of Slack being a platform. And once they started getting traction, they reache

monday.com partnerships playbook 📑 - how they grow revenue with partners and app marketplace

monday.com, a project management SaaS unicorn recently underscored that 💡 “our marketplace and partnership continues to be one of our larger #growth drivers across our company”. Let’s take a look at their #partnerships strategy. 📊 Monday started as a customizable project management SaaS to help teams manage and collaborate on project activities in one place. Over the last 10 years it’s grown into a publicly listed company with a $4.3bn market cap today. Monday created their

Salesforce playbook of connecting platform, partner ecosystem and community matter together

With 85% of revenue 💰 coming from 20% of customers that use 4+ clouds (products), Salesforce is a compelling case of why #platform, partner ecosystem and #community matter and how they fit together. 🗽 Community Salesforce (SF) today likes to mention its community in the broadest sense to showcase maximum impact. "We have over 15 million trailblazers" (this include customers and partners) 4M people used Trailhead learning platform 9.3M jobs to be created in SF economy by 202

⚡️ 80% of software engineering orgs will have #platform teams in less than 5 yrs.

⚡️ 80% of software engineering orgs will have #platform teams in less than 5 yrs. The trend is spreading from partner-facing software platforms to using platform architecture with dev teams internally. ✔️Platform engineering helps developers to build faster by creating reusable tools, and self-service capabilities. Benefits include: Rapid product innovation Faster delivery Higher security and stability 🛠️ Typically platform teams build internal developer portals that include

How do you become a 💎 strategic asset for your partner?

How do you become a 💎 strategic asset for your partner to help them to achieve their goals? If they start to see your #partnerships through this lens, this can truly elevate it to the next level. A few questions that might help you with this - from our fireside chat with Bryan Williams [source in comments] ⚒️ On product integration How can your solution add value to their existing customers or enhance their core #platform? Can you help with your integration to unlock network

Which strategy to achieve high growth is the best?

Which strategy to achieve high #growth is the best? 1. Expand the core of the business 2. Expand into adjacent categories or geographies 3. Create breakout businesses via innovations, #ecosystem or platform building McKinsey analyzed B2C outperformers of the last decade and found that today companies need to 🎯 use all three. Each of them separately isn't enough any more to achieve high growth. A few interesting thoughts: 📊 Expanding the core Predictably, expanding the cor

Transition from SaaS product to a platform ecosystem require a company-wide mindset 👇 👆 shift

One of the most important and yet the hardest transitions from SaaS product to a #platform ecosystem is the company-wide mindset 👇 👆 shift that it requires. The two big parts of this transition are on the product side and on the customer engagement side. Insights from Scott Brinker who is leading HubSpot transformation into one of the most successful #saas platforms: 💬 Changing the mindset of a company from being purely a product or suite, to being a company that really t

Cash and risk planning is essential in partnerships

#Partnerships may take more time and effort than you expect. Cash and risk planning in the process is essential even for well funded 💎 deep tech startups. 📈 You can get A LOT of insights from partnering with prominent enterprises. But typically the challenge increases with the size of the companies you’re partnering with and with the complexity of your tech/integration. 💡 Example: famous autonomous vehicle developer Aurora, co-founded by alums from Google, Uber ATG and Te

How HubSpot stepped up 🗽 for their partners at a time of crisis.

Putting partners first, paying forward, win-win-win … often these claims remain in the decks. But here is a great example of how HubSpot stepped up 🗽 for their partners at a time of crisis. 💬 Brian Halligan, co-founder and Executive Chairperson of HubSpot at SaaStr: “Covid hit…we got about half [❗️❗️❗️] our business through partners, and she said [Yamini Rangan - then CCO, now CEO of HubSpot] these partners are gonna really be sucking wind, they're gonna have to lay everybo

Is this a threat or an 💡 incredible ecosystem opportunity?

When you look at thousands of SaaS products on the market, what do you see? A 😈 competitive threat or an 💡 incredible opportunity? While everyone tried to get rid of competition, HubSpot recognized a chance to build a #platform ecosystem and harness the energy of the new entrants. Insightful story about early days of that transition, shared by Scott Brinker. Scott has been famously mapping #martech ecosystem and now leads Platform Ecosystem in HubSpot: 📉 Everyone saw a thr

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