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Finding a partner

by socialentry
2 replies
Hey gang, how are you all?

It's in my plans to go looking for a tech partner sometimes in the new year. Preferably offline.

I'm not 100% sure where I'm going to go but right now, I'm thinking maybe SaaS/open source consultant. I'm just trying to narrow down the niche and which letters I want to specialize in the alphabet soup of ERP,CRM,etc and see which one would be viable.

So my Qs:

1-How do you find a partner and what standard do you use to see if he's trustworthy without knowing him/her for extended periods of time?

2-What would you consider to be a fair split between the sales and the tech partner? And what is a good way to keep everyone in the partnership honest?

I know you can do things like chargebacks, but really, these are after the fact.

3-Are the meetup.com networking events a good way to go about it?
I've always been somewhat wary of business organizations so what kind of people go to these exactly?

I've never before looked outside my very close social circle for a partner. I could go for a friend of a friend, former coworkers of friend or acquaintance of a friend and this kind of thing, but then it goes back to the dilemma of not really knowing them.

Thanks all and happy new year's eve 2
#finding #partner
  • Profile picture of the author thet
    Look into Software Defined Networking.

    It's the future. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

    Its B2B.
    Signature

    Recognize reality even when you don't like it - especially when you don't like it.
    — Charlie Munger

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  • Profile picture of the author jamesfreddyc
    From someone who conceptualized, built, maintains, operates and markets a SaaS...

    I can't comment on how to find a partner but I would mention a couple of things:

    1. It takes time to develop the solution, refining it, and incorporating the NECESSARY components.
    2. Identify if you will be agile or rigid in the SaaS framework: you will get a lot of requests to change it to meet specific needs.
    3. Those spaces you mentioned are competitive. I'd look into creating something unique: find a problem within a niche and build a solution. For example, LeadPages.net started out as a niche product that solved the problem of efficiently creating effective squeeze/landing pages and integrating them with popular email subscription services.

    There's a lot more and sorry to not have addressed your specific needs regarding developing partnerships, but thought this might help anyway.
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