Strategic Alliances

---
name: strategic-alliances
description: Structures partnerships that change what the business can do — technology integrations, channel and reseller arrangements, joint ventures, and OEM relationships. Use this to evaluate or structure a strategic partnership, decide between partnering and building, negotiate commercial terms of an alliance, or diagnose a partnership that is signed but not producing. For audience-borrowing partnerships, use `marketing:partnership-marketing`.
---

# Strategic alliances

Distinct from marketing partnerships. Those borrow an audience; these change what the business can
do or where it can sell.

## Partner, build, or buy

Partner when the capability is genuinely outside your core, the partner is materially better at it,
and the arrangement can be unwound. Build when it is core, or when depending on someone else creates
unacceptable exposure. Buy when you need control and speed and the thesis holds.

The question that decides it: **what happens if this partner becomes a competitor, is acquired by
one, or simply loses interest?** If the answer is existential, do not partner — that is a build or
buy decision wearing a cheaper price tag.

## Structure by what each side actually wants

Partnerships fail on asymmetry of motivation more than on terms. Before structuring, establish what
the partner gets, whether it is material to them, and who inside their organization is accountable
for it.

A partnership that is strategically important to you and a rounding error to them will not be
executed, whatever was signed. Being the small partner is workable — being the small *and
uninteresting* partner is not.

## Terms that determine whether it works

- **Exclusivity** — expensive, occasionally worth it, and always time-boxed. Perpetual exclusivity
  given away early is a recurring regret.
- **Economics** — who books revenue, on what split, and what happens to it if volume grows tenfold.
- **Roadmap commitments** — what each side will build and by when, with a remedy if they do not.
- **Data** — what flows where, under what basis, and what happens to it at termination.
- **Customer ownership** — who holds the relationship, and who may market to them afterward. Most
  disputed, most often left vague.
- **Termination and transition** — notice, and what continues for customers mid-contract. Negotiate
  the exit while everyone is friendly, because it will not be negotiable later.

## Making it produce

Signed is not launched. Partnerships need a named owner on each side, a joint plan with dates, and a
regular review that either side can bring problems to.

The characteristic failure: a signed agreement, a press release, and no operational plan. Six months
later both sides believe the other did not deliver, and neither is wrong.

Enable the partner properly. Their team needs to know what to say and when to bring you in, and they
will not learn it from the contract.

## Diagnosing a stalled partnership

Almost always one of: no accountable owner on one side, misaligned incentives at the level of the
people doing the work, a promised technical dependency that never shipped, or a partner whose
strategy moved.

Say it plainly and early. Partnerships die quietly for a year before anyone admits it, and that year
is the cost.

## Never

- Sign a partnership without naming what each side is measured on.
- Announce before the joint work has a named owner on both sides.
- Let a partnership run past its review date on goodwill.
- Grant exclusivity without a performance floor that ends it.