# Partnership Types

Adapted from Corey Haines's *Founding Marketing*, Ch. 11 — "Partnerships tap into existing audiences." The fastest way to reach customers is through companies that already have their attention.

**Flagship proof:** HubSpot's partner program = **$100M ARR, ~40% of revenue, 3,400+ partners.** Mature partner programs average **~28% of revenue and 2× the growth** of companies without them.

Co-marketing (in the SKILL.md) is one of five partnership types. Use this reference to place a given partnership in the right category and pick the right play. The types stack — most companies run several at once as the program matures.

| Type | What it is | Primary payoff |
|------|-----------|----------------|
| **Integrations** | Your product connects to another's | Retention, expansion, marketplace discovery |
| **Reseller** | Partners sell your product for you | Distribution + services revenue |
| **Affiliate** | Promoters earn commission on referrals | Low-risk, pay-for-performance reach |
| **Co-marketing** | Joint content/campaigns with a peer | Borrowed audience, brand halo |
| **App Store / Marketplace** | List inside a platform's ecosystem | Built-in distribution, effective CAC |

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## 1. Integrations

Integrations are the foundation — they make you sticky, unlock expansion, and earn a spot in the partner's marketplace.

**Four ways to build:**
- **Native** — you build and maintain a direct connection. Best UX, highest cost.
- **Platform via Zapier/Make** — ride an iPaaS to cover the long tail without building each one.
- **API-first** — expose a clean public API and let partners build toward you.
- **Embedded** — your product runs inside theirs (widget, SDK, iframe).

**Calendly's staged integration ladder** — build integrations in order of buyer intent:
1. **Calendar** (Google/Outlook) — table stakes, required to function.
2. **Sales stack** (CRM, dialers, Salesforce/HubSpot) — where revenue teams live.
3. **Marketing stack** (forms, ESP, automation) — top-of-funnel capture.

Each rung deepens the account and widens who inside the company depends on you.

**Marketplace strategy + ASO.** Getting listed isn't enough — apps compete for placement. Treat a marketplace like an app store: optimize the listing (title, keywords, screenshots, reviews, category) the same way you'd do App Store Optimization. Shopify App Store and Salesforce AppExchange are discovery engines; ranking well there is a channel, not an afterthought.

**Why it matters:** **83% of enterprise buyers cite integrations as a purchase-decision factor.** Missing an integration a prospect needs can lose the deal outright.

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## 2. Reseller programs

Turn other companies into a sales force. Partners resell your product and layer their own services on top.

**Economics:** resellers typically earn **20–40% of LTV** on the software, plus **2–3× that amount in services** (implementation, training, retainers) they sell around it. The services margin is what makes the partner care.

**HubSpot's agency playbook (Peter Caputa).** HubSpot turned marketing agencies into resellers by making the agency's own business better: give them a product to sell, certifications to differentiate on, and a co-selling motion. Agencies became a durable, compounding distribution channel — the engine behind the $100M ARR partner program.

**Partner enablement is the work.** A reseller program lives or dies on enablement: onboarding, certification, sales collateral, deal registration, co-selling support, and a partner portal. Signing partners is easy; getting them to actually sell requires you to train and equip them.

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## 3. Affiliate programs

Pay-for-performance reach. Affiliates promote you and earn commission on conversions — low downside, since you pay only on results.

**Proof points:**
- **ConvertKit + Pat Flynn** — a single trusted creator can become a top-of-funnel channel on their own.
- **Demio** — **50% commissions** to make the program worth a promoter's real effort.
- **Cometly** — **$251K in a single launch day**, driven by one top affiliate plus **Rewardful** for tracking and payouts.

**The 20/80 affiliate power law.** ~20% of affiliates drive ~80% of revenue. Don't spread effort evenly across a long tail — **identify super-promoters and invest disproportionately** in them (higher rates, custom assets, early access, direct relationship).

**Buyout clauses.** For a super-promoter you want to lock in (or eventually replace with owned channel), a buyout clause lets you pay out future commissions as a lump sum — commonly **~12× the monthly commission**. It caps long-term liability and gives the affiliate a clean exit.

> Affiliate mechanics — commission structures, cookie windows, fraud, tooling (Rewardful/Tolt/PartnerStack) — belong in the **referrals** skill. Keep affiliate work here at the partnership-strategy level: which promoters to recruit, how to tier them, when to buy out.

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## 4. Co-marketing

Joint campaigns with a non-competing peer who shares your audience. Covered in depth in the main SKILL.md (campaign types, partner scoring, agreements). Two ideas from the chapter worth calling out:

**Permissionless co-marketing (Notion's coined move) — the single most actionable idea in the chapter.** You don't need a signed partnership to ride a bigger brand. Notion built and published templates *for* Airbnb, Amazon, and Tesla — no permission, no contract — capturing search demand and brand halo from companies far larger than itself. **Build assets around brands your audience already loves; let the association do the work.**

**Content ecosystems.** Gong earned reach by showing up consistently on **SaaStr** (the audience it wanted, hosted by someone else) rather than only building its own. Pair with the lowest-friction swaps — **newsletter swaps** and cross-promotion — where each side keeps its own leads and simply exposes the other to its audience.

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## 5. App Store / Marketplace

List your product inside a platform's ecosystem and inherit its distribution.

- **Grammarly's Chrome Web Store extension** took it from **0 to 10M users** — the store *was* the acquisition channel.
- Platforms take **15–30% of revenue**. Treat that cut as **effective CAC**: you're buying distribution instead of running ads.
- **Go all-in on one platform when it maps to your ICP.** Arrows built its entire GTM around **HubSpot** — deep integration, AppExchange presence, co-selling — rather than spreading thin across many ecosystems.

**When to choose this:** if a single platform owns your buyer's daily workflow, being *inside* it beats trying to pull users out to your own site.

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## Choosing where to start

- **Retention/expansion problem** → Integrations first (and the marketplace listing that comes with them).
- **Need distribution without headcount** → Affiliate (fast, pay-on-results) or Reseller (slower, higher-touch, services upside).
- **Have content but no reach** → Co-marketing, starting with permissionless assets and newsletter swaps.
- **A platform owns your buyer's workflow** → App Store / Marketplace, all-in.

Programs compound: integrations create marketplace presence, marketplace presence attracts resellers, resellers and affiliates create the case studies that fuel co-marketing.
