Three signs you should partner, not build

So when does it make sense to partner? Here are the three signs it’s time to partner:

1. You want to offer something your customers need, but it’s not your core competency

This is the most common reason for partnering that we’ve heard from partners—offering something a customer needs but it’s not your core competency. They know their customers are asking for personalized experiences, real-time insights, or more control. They’ve scoped out what it would take to build it. And it’s doable, but it’s not your team’s core strength, and you’re lacking in-house expertise. 

In many cases, teams are already stretched to their limits. They’d have to pull engineers off core features, learn a new domain, and delay other priorities. Even with a strong team, doing something for the first time takes longer and carries more risk. For example, Shopify chose to create the Shopify Fulfillment Network rather than manage their own warehousing and fulfillment. They leaned on their network of partners to provide order & inventory management, and order fulfillment on behalf of Shopify merchants. This allows Shopify to focus on their core competency of product development and marketing. (Source: Radial Insights, 2024)

If the capability isn’t your core and your team doesn’t have deep experience in it, partnering can save time, reduce risk, and help you get to market faster. You can still offer the capability, without building it from the ground up.

2. Your customers want customization, but you can’t support it at scale

We’ve seen this pattern with analytics dashboards, engagement tools, and user personalization features. Your customers want to define their own rules, automate responses, or test ideas. However, every request is converted into an engineering ticket for your team.

If you rely on dev cycles for every update or change, you’ll hit a wall quickly and start losing revenue opportunities. This is where a partner can help you safely hand over control to your customers. When Stripe expanded its partner ecosystem to support "broader multiprocessor support for payments,” they enabled customers to customize their payment setup. Their partner ecosystem allowed Stripe to handle complex orchestration without having to support every payment provider directly. (Source: Stripe Newsroom, 2024)

Partners help give your customers a way to self-serve without compromising security or reliability. That means fewer tickets for your team, faster feedback loops, and happier customers.

3. You need to move fast, but you don’t want to compromise on quality

Sometimes, you don’t have the luxury of time. And some things are too important to hack together. When you’re trying to get a new product to market, show traction, or land a key customer, it’s tempting to build quickly just to ship. But speed without reliability can hurt more than help.

A good partner will give you a proven, reliable solution you can embed today, with the flexibility to grow over time. When Uber announced strategic partnerships with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud, it chose not to expand their own data centers. These cloud providers offer "an ideal combination of price, performance, flexibility and security", allowing Uber to focus resources on core business initiatives. (Source: SiliconANGLE, 2023)

Partnering helps you deliver value quickly without taking on long-term maintenance costs or distracting your team from your core product. You get to market sooner and grow without overcommitting.