In our alliance consulting projects we stress that your alliance strategy depends on your overall technology strategy and positioning. The first three question we will ask you, or help you decide are:
Have you built an an actual application (something users use) or a platform (something developers use?) Yes, this is more of a continuum than a binary question, but where you fall along it is a major driver of your alliance strategy.
When you go seeking partners, do you have customers to bring to your partners, or are you providing customers to them?
Who provides the platform your technology sits on, and how can you best leverage their programs?
Failure to ask these questions (or not answering them correctly) can lead to tremendous waste of time and resources in alliance development. Getting the answers right lets you put resources into alliance efforts that actually achieve results. Confusion about the answer to these questions, particularly different answers from Engineering, Sales and Marketing are unfortunately common in start-ups. To avoid this, consider the implications of each question.
At Hfreeman Technology Alliances, we have the expertise that will get you from these basic questions to an effective and successful alliance strategy.
