As companies search for low-cost ways to market and compete to stand out in congested fields like cybersecurity, channel friends become increasingly valuable.
As early-stage businesses aim to reduce costs, boost sales, and capitalise on existing customer ties in industries like cybersecurity, the relationships between startups and channel partners have grown stronger. A channel partnership strategy may not have been at the top of rising technology businesses’ priority lists a decade ago. But in recent years, startup partnerships have grown in popularity as a strategy for quickly growing fledgling businesses. That pattern has persisted and, if anything, has gained in significance.
“There is this continuing trend of enterprise technology startups getting to market particularly through channels,” said Chad Cardenas, CEO of The Syndicate Group (TSG), a venture firm in Los Angeles that raises financing from ecosystem partners to support startups’ go-to-market strategies.
Startups who don’t use the channel to market their products “are at a massive disadvantage,” he continued. Cardenas previously held the positions of CEO and CIO of Irvine, California-based integrator Trace3.
MIT Sloan startups investigate the channel
Several instances of the connections between startups and the partner ecosystem are shown in the Innovation Showcase from the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium last week. Early-stage businesses looking to do business with enterprise IT buyers are featured at the yearly event. Kognitos, a startup in San Jose, California, that took part in this year’s Innovation Showcase, seeks to build connections with partners in business and technology consultancy.
According to Jason Langone, the chief of growth at Kognitos, “we have started down that path.”
Kognitos offers a generative AI platform that streamlines many aspects of corporate operations. For clients looking to use generative AI into their operations, partners provide domain and business process knowledge. As they look into how to use technology for service delivery, partners are also potential consumers for Kognitos’ products.
The worldwide systems integrator Wipro’s investment division is taking part in Kognitos’ seed round. The $6.75 million in investment will be used to expand the Koncierge platform by Kognitos. Two of the five recent customer calls, according to Langone, were with major service providers.
In contrast, Kognitos intends to introduce a community integration builder in the second half of 2023 with the goal of assisting clients and partners in developing unique API integrations.
Alpha Software is a participant in the Innovation Showcase and uses channel partners as well. About 35% of Alpha Software’s business, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based provider of low-code/no-code platforms, comes from consulting companies that already have connections to businesses, according to Richard Rabins, CEO and co-founder of the company.
Partners offer client access in addition to system integration possibilities. According to Rabins, the topic of data sharing and integration is broad, and partners may be skilled in “glueing different solutions or different applications together.”
Customers use the platform provided by Alpha Software to create mobile apps, and partners may have the necessary skills to integrate such apps with Bluetooth beacons or IoT devices.
The Longmont, California-based company Fermyon presented information about its serverless cloud computing environment at Innovation Showcase. The business collaborates technologically with Docker, HashiCorp, and Microsoft’s Azure Kubernetes Service. The CEO of Fermyon, Matt Butcher, stated that the business is also investigating partnerships with generative AI businesses and may potentially investigate cloud consulting firms.
These latter “end up being a force multiplier for many organisations” and a means of development, he claimed.
partnerships in sales and marketing for startups
For firms with little funding for sales and marketing, the force-multiplier feature is a major draw.
“A startup could build everything internally if they really wanted to hire marketing, sales, and engineering in-house, but it would be expensive and take a lot of time to accomplish the growth goals,” Cardenas added.
However, a single channel relationship may lead to the development of numerous client relationships throughout the installed base.
If you network with the proper partners, you may fast realise economies of scale, according to Cardenas.
Partners in the channel help a cyber startup
TSG assisted in establishing connections between Grip Security and its ecosystem partners. According to Cardenas, TSG matches startups with appropriate channel organisations by learning about their use cases, ideal target customers, and value propositions. TSG currently has 450 partners in its network. Through TSG, channel firms can invest in a potential startup, while the latter acquires a go-to-market partner.
Cardenas stated, “We wound up making a lot of very key introductions to channel partners,” and that as a result, Grip Security updated its revenue forecast upward. Because it’s simple to show and implement, the product of the company, according to him, matches partners.
Cardenas claimed that although it wasn’t necessarily planned, cybersecurity service providers like Grip Security have grown to be a significant portion of TSG’s company. The majority of the company’s recent ten investments have taken place in the cyberspace. He pointed out that IT managers are more reliant on channel partners to assist in vendor selection due to the speed of change in cybersecurity and the breadth of available technologies. Because of this, partners can be a useful channel for businesses fighting for attention.
The channel is a desirable ally for an early-stage company due to the unstable economy and emphasis on efficiency. Today, it’s more crucial than ever to reach the market rapidly and affordably, according to Cardenas.
