Technology Partnerships Mastermind Series
Co-taught Partnership Leaders' four-week EcoU mastermind with Briana Strauss of Zapier in June 2023: discovery, evaluation, execution, and launch of technology partnerships, one live hour a week.
Partnership Leaders runs EcoU, its education arm for people who run partner programs. In June 2023 I co-taught its four-week Technology Partnerships Mastermind with Briana Strauss, then Senior Partner Manager at Zapier: one live hour a week, a shared Slack channel, and graduation requirements that made people apply the material to their own partner program between sessions.
The four weeks follow the life of a technology partnership. Discovery (who to partner with): the inputs that should drive the list, prospect feedback, closed-lost reasons, strategic markets, product gaps, and how to use account mapping honestly, since not every overlap is a good one. Evaluation (what to build): how to determine what is valuable, how to prepare a scope that both product teams will accept, and what has to exist before a build can start. Execution (how it is built): what a build cycle looks like, direct versus iPaaS versus other approaches, where the resources come from, and how quality is managed. Launch (why it matters): telling the market, the first onboarding, processing feedback, and planning the next iteration.
The pairing was the point. Zapier sees thousands of integrations from the platform side; I had spent years on the other side of the table, being the product manager the partner team has to convince. Most of the week-two and week-three material is the same thinking as the business case guide, the integration questionnaire, and the partner integration plan, taught live to people who had to go use it on Monday.