Delivering Customer Value Through Collaborative Ecosystem Partnerships

Jonathan Wold:
I am your host, Jonathan Wold. And on this episode of Open Web Conversations Today we have Sandra and Tim joining from Greyd and BigScoots, respectively. Sandra, Tim, thank you both for joining me today.

Tim Monner:
Thanks for having us.

Sandra Kurze:
Thanks for having us.

Jonathan Wold:
So today we’re here to talk about partnerships in a decentralized ecosystem like WordPress companies working together is especially important and I think you guys are both great examples of companies that are further along in experience and working with partners and you’ve also worked directly with each other. So for those tuning in, what I’m hoping to get out of today’s conversation is a chance for you guys to talk about what you guys have done together in your partnership and also some of the work that you guys have done with others like in the industry. So you, because you both have a good amount of experience with that. Sandra, I want to start with you. You are the COO and the CMO at Greyd Greyd is a fast growing startup that’s in the WordPress space and you’ve been full time there for about seven years now. And as we know, being in a startup requires you to wear like quite a few different hats and you’ve worn at least a few. I’m curious if you were to choose between the CMO hat or coo, which would you actually prefer?

Sandra Kurze:
I actually like the mix of it and yeah, that’s great. I have a job that probably I would find anywhere else like that. For the CEO part, I like bringing together different systems and technologies and making them work as a unified infrastructure for us. I love continuously working on how could we improve our processes and workflows. But I also enjoy the marketing part, especially now with all the new opportunities with AI, particularly in enjoy the event part, even though it is challenging with also being a mother of two small children and having to organize all this traveling. But it’s always great to meet with the community and to see all the preparation efforts come into place. So yeah, I am very thankful that I actually don’t have to choose.

Jonathan Wold:
Okay, so what I’m hearing is you like both of the hats. I’m curious because at least from an outside perspective, I think most people would think about a CMO and the COO as pretty different distinct types of role. So what you’re saying makes sense. That combination of hats, how does that, Sandra, affect how you think about partnerships? Because marketing may have a specific way that they look at it. Operations has a specific way. So when you’re blending those together, how does that affect how you think about partnerships.

Sandra Kurze:
From my point of view, it has some very useful side effects because most often, like you said it, partnerships are handled by marketing people and naturally their main thinking goes into everything marketing related. But really good partnerships, they also, they most often include sales aspects to consider. Often you have to involve the product teams because there are technical integrations. For example, you might even end up having to think about how to offer joint customer support and then realize that’s not that easy because partners might have completely different workflows, completely different tools. So my wearing all these different hats provides me with more insights but also with more influence into all those other areas that might play a role in partnerships. So for me it definitely makes things easier here.

Jonathan Wold:
I’m curious, Sandra, to see how that’s going to evolve as grade goes over time. So we can perhaps pick this up in a couple of years and see what you think about it then. Tim, you are a veteran of the hosting industry. You’ve been rocking it now at BigScoots as the CMO for several years. Uh, what does, for those who wouldn’t know, like what does the role of a CMO look like in like the day to day at a hosting company?

Tim Monner:
Uh, it depends on the size of the company obviously. Like, you know, obviously there are varied sizes of organizations for BigScoots. You know, we’re, we’re really not that large. I mean we’re, we’re a sizable company, we have a good deal of staff on there. But for me on the marketing side, I’m very entrenched within all of the day to day activities. So everything that comes in from inbound leads to the conversations with customers to how we’re, you know, pitching and proposing and talking about the value propositions all the way to the strategic ad buys, brand building, reputation. I’m even involved in things like pricing plans, commercialization strategies top to bottom. So my day is pretty packed with multiple facets of work to be done.

Jonathan Wold:
Tim, I’m curious too, for you’ve been in the hosting industry for a long time and you’ve got a lot of context for the space. How does that background in hosting affect how you think about partnerships Today at.

Tim Monner:
BigScoots, it’s interesting because I’ve been at different, different types of hosting organizations. So I started you know, in colocation, data center, cloud infrastructure. All of these have different sort of objectives at the end of the day from a hosting standpoint and all of them have different types of partners as well. You know, whereas a colocation company may have partners where they just want someone as an extension of their sales team, right, as an example, to be able to get more reach into clients and so forth. A company like BigScoots, though, when we look at partners, it’s not so much about just that. It’s not about necessarily, you know, extending the reach that we have. It’s about finding partners that can actually deliver value for our mutual clients. And that’s what we are doing here at BigScoots. That’s why, you know, a group like Greyd was so perfect for us because, you know, we have common core values around how we want to partner together to deliver something valuable at the end of the day for both of our clients and for the community at large. So very different, you know, objectives, goals within the different types of hosting industries.

Jonathan Wold:
That’s actually a good segue into my. I think our first question and thinking for this discussion is, and that is like, what do you look for in a potential partner? Sandra, I’m going to start with you, and if you wouldn’t mind, would you just give a little bit of context for the audience to what Greyd is as an organization for those who don’t know? So, you know, what type of company is Greyd? What do you guys focus on? And then once that’s set, what do you look for in potential partners?

Sandra Kurze:
Yeah, sure. So Create is an entire suite for enterprises, for franchises, and also for agencies who work for these kind of customers that enables you not just to build websites, but to create entire website systems where you have, for example, hundreds of websites connected to each other that sync, for example, contents or layouts or designs and things like that. And regarding partnerships in general, my belief is that partnerships only work if both sides benefit from it. And that benefit, that has to be big enough, because building a partnership takes a lot of time and work, and people often forget about that or really underestimate the time they need to invest to actually not just build a partnership, but also maintain that partnership. I mean, actually building product partnerships, it’s not so different to building personal relationships. They just don’t work if one partner is more invested than the other or if they have different goals they follow. What I often see in the WordPress community is that the standard form of a partnership for many in this ecosystem is some form of affiliate collaboration, which is great from my point of view as an addition to other things. But if some affiliate commissions is the only things the partner will get out of such a collaboration, I can guarantee you that it won’t bring you the results that you’re hoping For. Because many start these affiliate collaborations because they are looking for additional lead and sales funnels. So they go out there hunting for those affiliate partners. And while the idea sounds great, it’s not as simple as that. Because even if it starts promising, your partners might end up realizing that actually they have also other things to do and probably more important issues to think about than focusing how they could send you more leads just to earn a little commission. So to answer your question, what we are looking for is partners that complement all product so it makes sense from a customer perspective. So combine them. We are looking for partners with similar target groups, and even more importantly, we are looking for partners who have a similar working style. Because you will need your partner to work and or to act at the same pace as you do, because otherwise you will just end up like waiting and waiting and nothing is ever being accomplished. Because when your partner then finally starts moving, you’re already like three steps ahead. On the other way around, you’re constantly being pushed and feeling feel being pushed by a partner and can’t keep up. So I think, like Tim already mentioned, that’s one of the main factors why Big Schools and Crate are such a good fit. Because we’re so well aligned, not just in terms of how we think that products could work together or that the way our products work together for our joint target groups, but even more importantly since we think and work in kind of the same way.

Jonathan Wold:
That’s a great point. That’s something that I’ve definitely observed. Between your organizations is a similar pacing where it’s easy to take for granted. Some organizations, like, wow, they want to move really fast. And if you pair them with an organization that moves slow, it’s not that it can’t work, but there’s more friction and more understanding that has to take place on both parts of the organization. Tim, this word partner gets thrown around a lot. And I think as a hosting company, you’re in a great position to shed some light onto this. Because when you think about partners, there’s like, oh, okay, we have our agency partners. Right. And then we have like, maybe technology partners. And there’s like different levels of integration, if you will, from your perspective. Tim, how do you guys at BigScoots think about partners that like, maybe can give some like, definition to that term for folks who are listening? Because I think it can be kind of thrown around. And then what is it that you guys look for in partnership?

Tim Monner:
Sure. I mean, I go back to the idea again of value. Right. And not necessarily value for us. But value for our customers at the end of the day. So we have lots of different client partners and community partners that offer services and stuff that, you know, we’ll help to promote because one of our clients needs an email service. Right. Or something like that. And if there’s a value, we know that partner. We know we trust their services or support. They know that we can rely on them to serve our clients better. We would love to have them come on board, talk with us, also be part of what we’re trying to do from a community standpoint. At the same time, though, what kind of drives us and the DNA of BigScoots is to build and innovate with things. So we love to go out and work with partners where we can actually share some technology, where we can build something new or different or better together and mutually as well for different audiences. One partner, hope it’s okay to bring up on the call, but like Mediavine as an example, BigScoots started a partnership with Mediavine about a year ago where we actually have integrated hosting solutions just for the Mediavine clients who have like, ad revenue or ad placement types of programs on there. And it’s not just we’re selling our hosting package to their clients. We actually work with their developers very directly. We’ve been basically rolling out a number of different technology integrations that really make revenue lifts for Mediavine clients a realistic and real thing and just basically innovating and doing great things. That is sort of where we’re going with grade at this point too. You know, we’ve, we’ve. To Sandra’s point, we’ve been building rapport, we’ve been building great relationships. Our team members have gotten to know each other. You know, we are actually beginning to use each other’s products, which I think is super cool.

Jonathan Wold:
You guys did an event together as well?

Tim Monner:
Which we did an event together. Respond. Yeah. At WordCamp US, we did some really great things there, you know, and the next phase of this sort of relationship is, you know, we believe we’re going to be integrating different solutions with one another as well. So that if you’re a Greyd user or a big user, you’re taking advantage of that partner’s technologies in a meaningful way as well.

Jonathan Wold:
That’s great, Sandra. I think you’ve already given some clues. My next question is, like, how do you guys think about the success of a partnership? And you’ve already given a couple of clues. Part of it is like, there’s this, this aspect of, like, are you able to build momentum Together. Right. Because if you’re misaligned on pace, then there’s just not going to be that much for from grades perspective, you guys are a startup, you’ve been, you’re growing fast, you have a lot of things that you’re trying to accomplish and you’re making time for partnerships. So in context of what you’re trying to do, like how do you guys measure the success of a partnership? How do you think about success?

Sandra Kurze:
I think that’s in, in general it’s, it’s kind of a tricky question to answer because it really depends on the focus of the partnership because partnerships can have really, really different part focus. For example, if the partnership is mostly about sales, then measuring success is pretty easy because yeah, you just measure like the typical sales KPIs. Sometimes it’s. The main focus of partnership is like Tim mentioned, sharing or adding additional value to your customers. So you might not get, probably not get additional customers or clients through that, but you might get, have a higher lifetime value and things like that is nothing that you will see immediately. So the effect of a partnership might not be short term, it might not be direct. So it really, really depends on what is the goal of the partnership. Sometimes you also have several goals. Sometimes it’s maybe just to being connected because you can do great things together at events, for example. Sometimes it’s a mix of everything. It really depends on what the partnership is about in my opinion.

Jonathan Wold:
That’s great. Thank you. Sandra. Tim, how do you guys think about that? At BigScoots you have the agency partners side of things and you have these more integrated partnerships. How do you guys think about success when you’re putting efforts into partnership?

Tim Monner:
Yeah, like I said, you know, I continue to talk about value and I don’t mean to keep taking this horse here, but you know, at the end of the day, you know, would we meaningful, meaningfully move the ball in the community and do something different? That’s what excites us when we’re introducing new things and new ways of doing things and supporting the WordPress community. You know, we started as an infrastructure provider before anything else back in 2010. It’s been a very long, long journey. When WordPress sort of became, you know, when it started to grow, it started to get attention. You know, the stakeholders of our companies really adopted that. They really took it over and what they, you know, really noticed, sort of a little bit of the background of our company is, you know, when you’re an infrastructure hosting provider, you have to have very certain level of white glove service 24 7, 365 20. You know, you have to be rapidly responding to clients because it means everything to those clients, because if anything happens, they will go down. When WordPress came on, what they recognized is that level of support and service wasn’t there. So they completely revolutionized how they would serve WordPress and used our infrastructure providing services as a way to host these WordPress clients and these sites. And so that’s just kind of indicative of how we continue to kind of grow the company. We look at ways that WordPress can be better or where there’s gaps or where there’s different things where we can jump in and use some of the expertise that we have around infrastructure, you know, deep, you know, entrenchment. With Cloudflare as an example, we have an engineer who is deeply entrenched with their team doing very interesting things, associations, even the events look at ways that things, maybe we could come in and help to try and drive new opportunities, new successes in there and just keep it very energized and successful for the entire community.

Jonathan Wold:
One of the things that I’ve observed, having been in this ecosystem for some time and focusing on the partnership lens is in such a big space that’s like decentralized, where you have so much choice. One of the challenges that decision makers will have is just not being aware of what options are out there. Right. Like there’s a, there’s a good chance that some of the folks are listening will be hearing about grade and, or big scoots for the first time.

Sandra Kurze:
Right.

Jonathan Wold:
And I think from at least my vantage point, on top of all the benefits that you guys are describing, one of the things that good partnerships can do for you is increase the surface area of awareness that people have that, that your company is even an option. And I think, Sandra, you made this point. Well, like, that’s one of the, I guess, adjacent values to this. Like sometimes, oftentimes folks will just focus on this initial affiliate level relationship. Right. And the other like, maybe less obvious value is that like awareness? But if it’s just affiliate, I think you lose some of the depth of trust that can be conferred when folks realize that, oh, this isn’t just a list of folks that they’re aware of, there is value in that actually. And if you’re not doing anything, that’s something. But for folks to see that, okay, there’s actually these organizations are aligned, they do things together. It communicates a trust where if someone is choosing grade as a solution, an agency’s picking grade and they See how closely grade works with big scoots that plants a conscious seed in their minds about what BigScoots is doing and vice versa. And one of the things, so you guys are working together, you also work with other partners. And that’s an important piece of the puzzle right as you’re considering possible partners. And Sandra, I’ll start with you on this. What are some of the things that you look for that indicate someone is going to be a good potential partner? We’ve already talked a little bit about this alignment of like work, how you work together, et cetera. But I want to see if there’s more. Anything else that comes to mind for you?

Sandra Kurze:
Yeah, like what’s very important for us because we’ve been in, in too many partnership discussions where in the first call everything seemed like perfect, okay, we are perfect fit, we want to do something together. And then at some point, a couple of weeks later, you end up realizing that all the effort is coming from your side. And that happened to us a lot. So we are really looking for partners or are looking for, is the partner someone who is really in for the partnership. So for example, are they really ready to do the work that is required to build a real partnership and not just like, yeah, we will put your link on the site and that’s it. So everything they doing proactively is a good sign for us that this might be an interesting partnership for us. So for example, simple things like they just buy a great license for themselves and use the product themselves or they connect us with one of the customers without us having to ask for it right at the beginning. Or they do anything proactively like whatever, like producing a blog article, whatever, just anything that shows us they are really prepared to put in the time and the effort and they really want this.

Jonathan Wold:
I like that. So proactivity is a big thing because it’s like one thing to have an initial conversation, but it’s like what happens from there? How proactive are they? And then I guess with that proactivity it sounds, what I’m inferring from what I’m hearing from you is also this, like are those activities aligned? Because you could connect with an organization that would be very proactive. But perhaps like maybe if the, if stakeholders or other decision makers aren’t involved, it’s just someone like nudging things forward, but you’re not really getting something done. So it’s like that proactivity is important combined with that well aligned interest. That makes sense.

Sandra Kurze:
Yeah. You also, you often realize, do they really want you as a partner or do they just want to have partners? So sometimes a sign for that, for example, that we often. I mean, great. Is a complex solution. And what happened to us a couple of times is that we have been in discussions and working with a partner for a couple of weeks and they still don’t really know what we are doing and what we are selling. So they never took the time to actually test the product and play around with it. They just know what’s publicly and easily approachable on the website, but they are not even prepared to invest proper time into getting to know the solution. And this is like the other side. This is a sign for us that they are not really interested in a partnership with us. They just want to have, like, partners. And that’s not going to work.

Jonathan Wold:
Yep, I like that. Tim, what about you? When you guys are looking at potential partners, you also have worked with quite a few different folks in the space. What are some of the, like, signs for you that it’s going to be like? This has strong potential and red flags as well?

Tim Monner:
Very much. All I know Sandra and most of what she said as well. It’s, you know, it’s one thing to just have a partner that they just want to throw their logo on up, you know, a directory on your site, so they get a little of attention. But it is something different when you get to know those partners, spend time with them, understand what drives them. You know, we’ve spent a lot of time, you know, I keep picking on you. Poor Sandra Growth Craig, with the team over there, you know, at CloudFest, at WordCamp, we’ve spent time talking to them, just getting to know them. I mean, you know, James, our coo, who you guys both know James, and most people on the podcast probably know James at this point. You know, I was excited because Gray offered to bring him to Germany and give him a tour before you went to a working. I mean, those are real relationships with companies, right, that go beyond sales. It’s about, you know, getting to know each other, understanding what drives one another in terms of, you know, how we want to, you know, go to market, how we want to affect the market and so forth. And we really feel that way with Gray, which is why we’re so interested in working with them from the get go. You know, red flags for partners. Like, as I said, I agree with Sandra. You know, a lot of people just kind of want to like, throw their name on something. You know, they definitely, you know, might want to just do an affiliate thing, which I guess is fine. They bring some things, that’s great, but at the same day it’s not meaningful, you know, to the, to the, to the community at large at the end of the day. And we’re looking for something very meaningful that we can deliver to kind of change or revolutionize things.

Jonathan Wold:
I want to touch on, on scale for a moment because I like Sandra, how you pointed out that partnerships are like relationships and as humans we are finite in our capacity, right? Maybe there’s some future world where AIs will be partnering with each other. I certainly kind of hope not. But, but we have, we have finite attention and res. And, and obviously there’s something about scale, right? Like organizations as they grow, will have entire partnership teams and they’ll have portfolios. And you guys are at a stage where I think, at least from my perspective, you’re further along than a lot of folks in the space, yet still, like, you’re still, you’re still looking at the future here. You’re not. You don’t have a large team on each side just handling partnerships, right? So as you guys are looking to the future in the next couple of years, how are you thinking about your capacity for partnerships and recognizing as well there’s different levels, right? Like the time and effort. Tim, on your side with agency partners is going to vary from what you invest into a relationship. Like, great. But Sandra, I’ll start with you. As you look ahead to the future, based on what you’re seeing today, how are you thinking about scale in context of partnerships? Given the time intensity of what I’m.

Sandra Kurze:
Hearing you describe, I think what’s really, really important, especially for smaller companies like us, is like quality or quantity. So for us, scaling in the partnership context doesn’t mean to get as many partners as possible because like I said, each partnership Is a lot of work, like finding out do we fit together, then actually doing stuff together, maintaining that relationship that takes a lot of time. Just calls with each other, they take time. So you can’t do that with 20 different partners if you don’t have that partnership team already. And it’s probably just one or two people on the team focusing or like actually doing all the partnership work. So the thing how we look at it is we really want to find like a few partners, but partners were really important to us with whom we really work closely together, because, as you might have seen, Great is currently expanding a lot internationally, especially to the US and partnerships are really, really important for that because those partners, they are already on the market. They know the market a lot better than we do. They already have access to the target groups that we want to get access to. They know how the market works. They have a lot of contact and a network and everything. So basically they already have their business here and we want to go there. So it makes completely sense to not start from scratch and find everything out on your own, but to collaborate with partners and in exactly the way, as Tim has described it, in a way that makes sense not just for us, but for the customers, because the solutions fit together that good. So that’s what we are focusing on. We don’t plan to build like dozens and dozens of partnerships, but we really want to invest into a couple of partnerships and those actually, like, drive them forward and make them thriving.

Jonathan Wold:
That makes a lot of sense, Tim. You guys are a larger organization than Greyd is today, but you, you have a lot of things on your plate in your role. And as the team, like BigScoots will continue to grow, how, as you think about partnerships on your side, how do you think about the scale, like aspect of that? And like, and put it another way, there’s so many things that you have on your plate as the CMO and in a growing organization. Like, where do partnerships fit into that for you?

Tim Monner:
Very importantly, obviously, you know, once again, because we will need to scale, we will sort of need to tap into some of our really, really valued partners to kind of help us understand different areas of where we can maybe become more efficient and streamline productivity. Interestingly enough, I kind of laughed earlier when you talked about a lot of people listening to this may not have heard the brand of BigScoots were great. This ties to that conversation. And one of the reasons that since we’ve been around since 2010 and people haven’t heard about us was we were so fixated on support and service, on how to help customers and how to scale. So it very much plays to the question that you’re asking here, which is we have focused very, very strongly on how to deliver superior quality as much as we can and scale appropriately. Right. So what we do is we’ve learned that when we do things right up front, the right time, we can scale easier on the back end, especially with clients with support and things. The other thing that we’ve been doing really quick to sort of plan for the future too, is we’re always ahead of the curve a little bit on technology as well. We try to stay as much as we can. On top of that, we’re actually expanding our data centers right now. We’re putting top of the line technologies and we’re doing different things. And of course, a lot of that is coming from recommendations from partners and stuff as well. We have to rely on them to help us understand what is right around the corner and how are we going to be able to accommodate for that. We don’t shy away from that. Fortunately, we have a leadership team that values the future versus the present in terms of like not shying away too much from making the hard decisions now to invest in the future so that we can be prepared for it. And we’re not like basically running at the last minute, sort of a chaotic state. So yes, partners are very important for us, but we don’t know everything. We have a lot of very talented engineers and developers on there. So we would love to bring on agencies that can help us understand how to grow better, how to do things better. We did this recently with one of our agencies as well. We always ask for feedback and they gave us some feedback on some different things that we’re now incorporating within our new client portal that we’re developing. And we get that kind of feedback not just from partners, but from clients across the board. So, you know, we need help, we need assistance, we love the feedback from people and we need to know how to shape basically our company and our services moving into the future.

Jonathan Wold:
Thank you, Tim. Sandra, for those who are listening, who are maybe thinking about partnerships but haven’t really started yet, they’re just getting started. As you look back at your experience and what you’ve seen work and not work with grade. For someone just starting out, what would you recommend? Where should they put their initial energies and efforts?

Sandra Kurze:
In general, I would say start with small things. You might have found the perfect partner who is a perfect fit for a technical integration. But these things, they really need time so there’s chances are high that you will either invest all that time and then at the end figure out, okay, the partnership won’t last for other reasons, or your tech team is fine fully focusing on, on building that technical integration. And in the meantime, your marketing and sales and partnerships people, they just lose interest because they can’t do anything other than wait. So they focus on, on other things. So even though your ultimate goal might be that technical integration, start with smaller things like, like we did with big goods. Start with probably event collaboration, start with marketing, joint marketing efforts, because that will not only get help, you get to know your partner better, understand them better, and see if things work out between the two of you. It would also keep people motivated and things are actually happening instead of just like, okay, we’re working on this one big thing that will happen like end of next year or something like that. So and that’s how we did it. For example, because with BICS Goods, and we mentioned it before, our plan has always been to get the products together because they’re such a great fit. And we’re still working on that, we’re still figuring out for the best ways to do that. But in the meantime we are also doing other things that don’t take that much time, that have quicker results. So that would be one advice. And the other thing is we talked about red and green flags before. One red flag I didn’t mention is that if we see partners doing things where we would have easily fit in, but it just didn’t think about it. So for example, they published that great blog article about, okay, this is the text that you need for, I don’t know, enterprise projects. And they kind of mention everybody but you. I don’t mean with that, that if you, when you’re a partner you have to be like into everything. But these kind of things, they show that the partnership is not really on the top of their mind. Probably the marketing guy who was responsible for the blog article is not even aware of there being a partnership with us. So these kind of things, they show me that a partner again is not really into it, but there’s just like one partnership manager who knows about grade and who would are great, but that’s not deep enough. So if you are the ones building those partnerships, make sure it’s not just you as that one person, but make sure it’s the companies or the other people should be aware what’s happening. They should be updated regularly and they should also know the partners. Of example, both BigScoots and Great we have been in, in demos of each other’s products, not just with like one or two people, but basically with the entire team. So even the people who are not like day, day to day working with the tools, they know the tools.

Jonathan Wold:
I like that a lot. There’s something also about momentum and this idea like, because it can be a bit counterintuitive where if you have a clear vision of we want a tight integration in the future. I like that point, Sandra, a lot because sometimes I can overly focus on that destination and just overlook some of the simple. But momentum building activities where it’s like, as long as you’re clear on where you’re going, starting with simple things can actually make a lot of sense and that can keep that momentum going month after month, where it’s like maybe it’s six months down the road or a year down the road to where you really want to be, but continuously updating each other as the products evolve, keeping each other in the loop on that and then ultimately like having those small activities build momentum. Tim, what about yourself? Oh, Sandra, anything to add to that?

Sandra Kurze:
Yeah, I just wanted to add. It also makes sense from like a customer perspective because they have seen you together already and then you can make the great announcement, like we now have like the technical integration of the two products working together instead of like they have never heard anything of the two products somehow being related and then surprise, okay, we’re now integrated so that it also makes sense from a storyline perspective. Perspective.

Jonathan Wold:
I like that a lot. Tim, what about yourself? As you. For folks who are listening, who are just starting out from your perspective, what are some things that they should be keeping in mind?

Tim Monner:
Yeah. Before we do that, I’ll make one plug for Greyd’s platform. She mentioned the demo and we did have about half of our team, I think, on the demo that Greyd delivered. And I’ll be honest with you, we believe that we’re technical, innovative people. My team was pretty floored by the capabilities of that platform. So kudos to you, Sandra. Really, really good. But yes, I agree, commitment is a big thing. Right. If you’re going to start out, you know, commit to your partner. Don’t just, you know, it’s not peripheral, it’s not surface level. Understand their product, get to, get to know them, know what drives them, everything else, what, what’s going to make a difference for you both mutually moving forward. You know, when we look at partners, you know, we’re not necessarily looking for somebody that, you know, has a really awesome product that we believe we can Integrate it. I mean, that would be terrific. It would be great to connect to that and everything else. But we’re just as excited about a partner that has a vision for a really great product and start working with them to see if we can bring that to market with them. You know, that’s, that’s like I said, you know, we’re entrepreneurs at heart at our company. You know, we, we, we once again, I keep saying we have, you know, engineering in our DNA, but we are, we, we love to disrupt things, we love to build new things. So, you know, when we’re, when you’re looking for a partner out there now, make sure that they mesh with those aims, with, with whatever objectives your company has set for itself in terms of who they want to be and how they want to go to the market and make sure they fit that profile and that they’re going to complement your service. So many different variables on there. Like I said, it’s so hard and it just depends on the product you offer as well. But definitely make sure at the end of the day that you’re committed to that client and that you guys can both deliver value for everyone.

Jonathan Wold:
I like that. That’s such a key point too, is this. I guess it kind of goes without saying, or it should go without saying, but it’s worth calling out that ultimately a good partnership, at least especially in context of what we’re discussing, is about delivering added value for the mutual customer, right? When two companies in a B2B context are working together, at the end of the day you’re looking for how does a big scoots partnership provide more value to great customers? And how does a great partnership provide more value to BigScoots customers? And that’s going to look different. And when we look at this through the lens of the ecosystem as a whole, there’s, I think that there’s something really powerful because you guys are solving different parts of the problem set for customers, right? But like when we take a step back here in a decentralized space and open source and this world that sort of we live in, where neither one of you are controlling the whole experience, right? It becomes essential for the end customers if we want them to be succeeding in open source, that the companies that are providing pieces of that puzzle for them do the work together, it oftentimes I’ll see situations where it’s the customer who ends up trying to advocate for better cooperation between the companies, right? They’re like, hey, why won’t. And that can be a great starting point. But how Much better for the companies themselves to begin proactively saying or asking that question, like, how can we serve our customers better? How can we provide them more value and then being proactive in making those connections happen.

Tim Monner:
Yeah, I mean, you talk about that. You know, Jonathan, one of the things that we do here often is also, you know, the very fact that we’re. We’re connected with most of our partners on Slack directly. So even like when clients work with clients, we’re talking to our partners back and forth. You know, we’re resolving issues for those clients in a cooperative and collaborative way on the back end. And that’s so important for. Not only for the teams to understand and know each other, but to have that immediate kind of give and take back and forth. Because the client shouldn’t be caught in that. Right. They shouldn’t be caught in the middle of those things trying to figure that out or trying to, as your point, get one vendor to advocate, go call another vendor and talk about what’s going on. Right. Like, those partners should be working together on the back end. And that’s super important in a relationship.

Jonathan Wold:
I like that you mentioned the work. It is work, right? Like, it doesn’t just happen. And while you can certainly get some quick wins and there can be some magic that comes out of it, the real value, in my experience, and I think you guys demonstrate this well, is that continuous effort over time and continuously asking, like, hey, what can we do? Because you guys all have a lot of things going on, right? Like, there’s lots of, lots of things that are calling for your attention. And to continue to make partnerships a priority also communicates a lot of value to the others. And. But it is, it is work, right? It’s something that requires time and effort. And I think it’s part of what also, I guess, I think brings that added value to those who are willing to do the work. Because it differentiates you as great as looking at potential partners in the space, noticing, okay, who’s actually showing up and putting the attention, like, makes and vice versa. Right. This has been really helpful. Anything else, Sandra, that you want to add from your perspective or any other observations or things that you guys have learned?

Sandra Kurze:
Yeah, probably one thing we start. We talked a lot about how to build such a relationship and how to start. But I think it’s also really important to not forget about how to continue and how to keep an existing partnership thriving. And I can just go back to my example before. Always remember, like, product partnerships are not that different from personal relationships. So it needs constant investment of both sides to keep things working. If you don’t want to grow part so if things are working great, don’t stop focusing on it because make sure you always stay in close contact with your partners and be aware of any changes that might affect a partnership because your partner’s goals might be changing over time. They might release new features that will change their product focus. Your contact person there might leave the company. So if you’re not close, you might end up missing these kind of things and you might up drawing apart just as it happens in personal relationships. So if you really need to keep being invested, keep showing interest, keep asking how they’re doing, what’s on their mind, what’s important. So literally just do whatever you would also do to keep personal relationship alive and thriving.

Jonathan Wold:
Alexandra, I think that that’s such a great point too is that oftentimes partnerships will start with individual person to person, like first contacts and relationships. People do move on though, and it’s important to think about for the from the context of the company itself, how do you build those tighter? Like how do you a make sure that the example that you share with marketing that the organization knows who their partners are right for marketing to get out a blog post that doesn’t reference a partner is an oversight that speaks to the processes internally, right? It’s like so. So it has to. I think I would add that a good partnership moves beyond in the context of organizations, moves beyond the individual relationships to processes within the organization that can be then picked up as people come and go within. Right? Like it’s easy and for any number of reasons people will move on. Or maybe someone goes on leave for a period of time and it’s like, well who’s going to pick up the things? And if those aren’t in processes and it’s not documented and understood, it’s really easy for that to be missed. Tim, any last thoughts to add from your perspective on partnerships?

Tim Monner:
Yeah, I just agreed with Sandra quite a bit. You know, we’ve gotten to know not just Sandra, but most of the team over at grade. We’ve had face to face with them either on video or at events. And I think to her point, it’s good to keep up those relationships. We’re pushing to bring them over to Chicago to do a data center tour, which I’m hoping is going to happen sometime in the near future. They’ve offered us to go over to Europe and take James and some of our team around. So we’re looking forward to that. But yeah, I mean I just, I really want to thank Sandra and her team. They’ve been really great partners for BigScoots and I’m looking forward to really doing some interesting things in 2026. What’s kind of exciting for us is you guys are kind of coming into the community kind of about the same time. We are just starting to come to the community. So it kind of feels like there’s an energy sort of being like, I guess newbies, I guess would be the right word, even though we’ve been around for years, but within the community itself.

Sandra Kurze:
So it’s like that being able to.

Tim Monner:
Kind of do this together, to kind of come through the community to get people a chance to get to know us, to have these conversations and to hopefully evolve technologies over time is just such an exciting adventure for us and a journey. And we’re really happy to have you guys on board with us.

Sandra Kurze:
So thank you so much. I can just return that and I’m looking forward to all the great things ahead of us.

Tim Monner:
Thank you. And thank you to you, Jonathan, because I think you actually made the first introduction. So kudos to you as well.

Jonathan Wold:
It has been a lot of fun watching you guys grow and the things that you’ve experimented and tried and I hope for those that are listening that they’ll pay attention because I think it’s a good example of when there’s a good alignment of interest and you put in the effort. It takes time, but that time is part of where that value comes in. As the connections deeper, as opportunities come up, it really gives a chance to increase the value that you guys are providing for your mutual customers. Sandra, if anyone is interested in learning more about grade and or getting in touch with you about partnerships, what’s the best way to reach out?

Sandra Kurze:
Just go either to Greyd IO and there’s also a demo video of our solution or if you want to be in touch with me personally, just. Just reach out via LinkedIn for example.

Jonathan Wold:
Excellent. And Tim, how about yourself?

Tim Monner:
Yeah, same thing. Bigscoots.com if you want to come visit with us. And I always encourage people, they jump on and talk to our team. They’re there 24 7. Have a good life conversation with them about anything. Or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. Happy to return any questions or connect with anyone that’s interested.

Jonathan Wold:
Excellent. Thank you both for your time. Enjoy the rest of this year and look looking forward to seeing what you guys do in the next.

Tim Monner:
Thanks John.

Sandra Kurze:
Thank you. Bye.