

From 0 to 2 Million DAU’s: The Guide To Growing Your Startup via Partnerships - aaronwhite
http://brianbalfour.com/post/60293339476/complete-guide-growing-consumer-startup-partnerships

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robkornblum
I tend to think that partnerships are more successful at fulfilling demand
than creating it. Big Co's often have a hard time seeing the need at first.
Just my 2 cents. [http://robkornblum.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/early-stage-
busi...](http://robkornblum.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/early-stage-business-
development/)

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ondiekijunior
Theoretically the best way to scaling a startup, but unless you are YC funded
and Techcrunch AND NYT and other similar hyped, dont expect any success with
this. You have to bring a critical mass to the table, 0 -2million improbable
but more likely can we say 30k-5,000,000 is very possible

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lukethomas
Do you have any other examples of sizing up a potential partner before
reaching out to them? If certain metrics are confidential, it seems like it's
not as straightforward.

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bbalfour
There are all the obvious public metrics from things like Compete, Alexa, app
rankings, twitter following, facebook following, etc etc.

But beyond that I would dig deep into using the product. If I was going to
assess the engagement (DAU/MAU) of a social network I would look at how people
are commenting. Or maybe send 20 friend requests/messages to random people and
see how fast on average they respond. You can get a feel for certain things
just by using the product.

Otherwise I would just reach out and start a discussion. Some partners will be
shy to give up metrics, but you usually can pull it out of them over time.

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wsul
Hey Brian, of the partnerships you mentioned, or any others, what is a good
example of a deal that killed it for both parties? Any 1+1 = 10 kind of deals
come to mind?

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bbalfour
Good question. Not to be a pessimist, but in most scenarios I have found
partnerships to under perform initial expectations. Part of that can be
mitigated with the things I outline in the post. But I think more than
anything finding that one key predictor of success is important. For Viximo it
was sites that had high DAU/MAU ratio. We'd rather take a company with 1/10 of
the total audience, a crappier experience, and worse business terms but a high
DAU/MAU ratio. It made a huge difference.

But that key predictor is different for every business. Finding it can be
tough. But once you find it you increase partnership success chances by a lot.

