Whether you’re in the early innings of your startup journey, deifning a brand-new market, or strategically scaling up the S-curve towards an IPO, you should stay mindful of the critical points to developing the right partner and channel motions. As the diagram below indicates, companies in the early “ferment” stage beneift most from base-level technical partnerships/integrations. At the “takeoff” stage, companies should move to co-selling with technical partners. At the “maturity” stage, the team and product are likely ready for broader go-to-market partnerships with solutions-integration (SI) providers, information-technology outsourcing (ITO) and distributors (disti for short). We’ll deifne these terms more below. S-Curve of Channel Partnerships Start Grow Scale Multiple Personas or Products for Expansion Channel 2-Tier Disti Scalable Partnership & CS Motion Clear Solution Integrators Message/Story Implementation Partners Capabilities Direct Sales Tech Partnerships Marketplaces Initial MVP Time 26