Partnership to acquisition

The build, buy, partner decision evolves with your company. It’s not a static decision, but rather one that creates more possibilities over time.

An example of this is when a relationship between companies evolves from a partnership to an acquisition.

R.J. Filipski (Global VP of BD & Ecosystems at Clari), Laura Padilla (Partner and Head of BD at Sapphire Ventures), and Iris Ng (Head of Corporate Development & Strategy) explained why this is such a great play for companies.

Acquisitions come with challenges, one of the biggest being culture-fit.

Your product fit might be perfect, but how do they treat their customers and employees?

Partnerships are an amazing first step toward acquisition because two companies get the opportunity to work together without the huge commitment of an acquisition.

It’s like dating before marriage. It’s such a good idea, it’s the standard nowadays!

Listen to the full build, buy, or partner conversation with these three industry veterans, and check out Andrew Gazdecki’s (CEO of Acquire.com) session on partnerships as a path to acquisition for more.

The secret value of building in an ecosystem

Good leaders are always asking, “How do we scale given our limited resources?”

That answer varies depending on your company and circumstances.

One interesting answer came from Scott Brinker (VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot) and Connor Jeffers (CEO of hapily and Aptitude 8) at the Nearbound Summit.

Last year Connor announced he was building a company exclusively inside of HubSpot’s ecosystem. Here’s why he chose to do that:

1. HubSpot is evolving fast

   As Hubspot moves up market and captures bigger and bigger customers, it discovers new customer needs and problems. This means the need for platform apps expands.

2. Tap into intel at scale

   hapily’s closest partner, HubSpot, is talking to their ICP at a huge scale. Instead of needing to do tons of research of their own, hapily gets to tap into the intel HubSpot’s already collecting.

3. Problem solving

   HubSpot solves the massive problems that hapily customers face. This makes hapily’s job so much easier.

Listen to the session with HubSpot’s Karen Ng (SVP of Product) and Kelly Sarabyn (Platform Ecosystem Advocate) to hear how HubSpot’s product team is building their ecosystem in horizons.

McKinsey Report Shows

As the world becomes more noisy and a lot of channels become diluted, everyone’s looking for new ways to find trusted info. 

Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot, shared that McKinsey predicts that in less than 7 years, 1/3 of the world’s total sales output might become part of the integrated network economy.

Everyone’s looking to trusted sources in their networks. We’ve entered the era of the ecosystem.

Get Scott’s slides here.

Stuff you don’t want to miss!

• Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings — The future of GTM is Nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.

• Nov 29, 2 PM EST —WTF is a System Integrator?— Join Omair Rana, Former Microsoft Director of Partner Strategy, and Scott Pollack, CEO at Firneo, and get ready to demystify System Integrators (SIs) and their pivotal role in the tech world. Register here.

The rising network economy

Send this to someone who needs to be a part of the nearbound movement. We’re all in this together!