I'm advising a small company with a great track-record in its narrow but well-respected market niche. The company's management wants to leverage its good brand reputation to expand into related but new markets. As a result, I am particularly aware right now of key success factors that drive good and even great tech companies. One strategy that comes up is to affiliate the company with much larger players. Makes sense. If you can get say, IBM, to validate your product offering then the future could be golden. Ask Bill Gates.

But that strategy is not necessarily a panacea for all companies as Ed Sim of Beyond VC argues:

I was in a board meeting last week, and as we reviewed the results one item quickly jumped off the page - the company did a great job signing up a couple of Tier 1 partners but a less than stellar job driving results. This was not surprising as what happens more often than not is that we can get caught up in the thrill of the chase, signing a big deal for example, but forget that the real work begins after the deal is inked and the press release hits the wire. Signing a deal in and of itself does not bring on any new customers and the more successful startups understand that. The teams that can drive successful relationships keep pushing its larger partner, putting together a plan with expected goals, driving implementation, creating product literature for the new partnership, offering new ideas, asking for marketing dollars, and coming up with new innovative campaigns to drive adoption. They just make things happen and are just as relentless after the deal as they were before the deal was signed. The less successful teams will let the big partner move at its own (...read more...)