Well, let's not redefine partnerships to win an argument. It won't teach anyone anything. To speak plainly, I will include affiliates, resellers, system integrators, software integrations, trade associations, and distributors all as partners.
Distributors have not succeeded with SaaS yet because SaaS is intrinsically intractable to distribute. If the customer has to come back ultimately to the manufacturer (aka ISV) who will then insist on controlling the billing and customer service relationships, then the distributor has no opportunity for brand or margin.
Also, generally it is not a good idea to work with a "distributor" that has no experience retailing your type of products.
We talk about this a lot within the trade association (Disclosure: I'm on the board, as is Constant Contact) if you're interested.
I didn't redefine anything–it was always my definition. I only brought it up because Olark's partners page is really just an affiliate program [0]. Affiliate programs are marketing–you build out your affiliate program once, with whatever terms you choose, and others can choose to send customers your way or not. For tools like Olark that need to integrate into CMS and ecommerce platforms, affiliate programs make a lot of sense.
But affiliate programs are not strategic partnerships or biz dev. Sorry.
Also, while I agree that distribution partnerships are bad for SaaS startups, it's not that cut and dry. Not everyone will approach you for a distribution partnership because they want margin or affiliate fees. Like I said, big companies often just want to slap partner logos on a web page or brochure. It is just a nice sounding bullet point for their enterprise sales people ("Look, we have over 40 integration partners here at Hooli").
Again, the comments here seem to back-up my side of the argument.
Distributors have not succeeded with SaaS yet because SaaS is intrinsically intractable to distribute. If the customer has to come back ultimately to the manufacturer (aka ISV) who will then insist on controlling the billing and customer service relationships, then the distributor has no opportunity for brand or margin.
Also, generally it is not a good idea to work with a "distributor" that has no experience retailing your type of products.
We talk about this a lot within the trade association (Disclosure: I'm on the board, as is Constant Contact) if you're interested.
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