Archive for the ‘partnerships’ Category

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Good Layman’s Explanation of a Licensing Agreement

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Jay Parkhill on GigaOM wrote a nice explanation of licensing agreement. It explains nicely all the obscure legalese that marketing people like to avoid. It’s worth a read.

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Looks Like Fairness Counts

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Slow Leadership discusses research out of Wharton about how treating partners fairly matters. No kidding. Any good business development person can tell you this. Yet many executives don’t get it. So here’s how it works: if your partner feels like you screwed them, then they won’t put any effort into the relationship and both parties end up losing. So the lesson for today is DON’T SCREW YOUR PARTNERS!

Posted in business development, leadership, partnerships, work | No Comments »

Corollary to September Post on Web 2.0 Business Development

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

Collaboradate.com posted about businesses building themselves up using MySpace. He suggests that “they should continue to phase out competing widgets, or charge companies to have their widgets be compatible with the site.” I’d do this if I were MySpace. So I’ll say it again – be careful when attaching your fortunes to other businesses without some kind of contractual relationship.

Posted in Internet biz, business development, community, partnerships, social networking | No Comments »

Offline Behavior Drives Online Usage – Lessons for Business Development

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

Startup Review wrote a great case study on Facebook. The main takeaway for me is that offline behavior drives online usage. Other examples of community sites that fit this bill are Gay.com, BlackPlanet.com, and iVillage, all of which are successful sites that were created to serve an existing community. They were not communities created online from within another site. Looking at sites like Linkedin, which is on it’s own a very successful site and one that I like very much, has tried to create communities from within its site as exempliefied by university and professional affiliations. This has not worked nearly as well external sites serving these same groups. If you’re a mainstream service trying to create niche communities, you would be better served trying to partner with existing sites that serve these niche groups than to try building the community yourself.

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The Art of Distribution – Business Development from Guy Kawasaki

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

Guy Kawasaki posted How to Change the World: The Art of Distribution. It’s an interesting Biz Dev lesson for startups.

The underlying and important assumption in modern day distribution is the asymmetry of the arrangement. For most entrepreneurs distribution involves piggybacking on another organization with much greater momentum.

One of the tips he gives is to “Look for adjacency.” He uses eBay/PayPal, Linkedin/Simply Hired, and FeedBurner/TypePad as examples. Note that these are formal relationships, not where one party is simply sucking off of the other party using open APIs. Most important, he reminds startups to “focus on revenue.” This is the what’s in it for them advice that I always start with. “If your partner will make money, then the deal will probably happen.” He also points out:

 Look out for the other guy. The right perspective for distribution partners is: Let’s both make money. For sure, it’s not: How can I ensure that we make a ton of money and stick it to our partner? I have never seen a case where only partner makes money. Either everyone makes money or no one does.

Well put Guy. Get that formalized deal that works for both parties. Again, partnerships really haven’t changed much in the Web 2.0 world.

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