I had a meeting with a VC friend of mine this morning. He is a young switched on guy and I value his feedback on our plans. The coffee at Coupa Cafe is always good too :)
His broken record for me this morning is that to really get Ephox to "blow up to the next level" that we really need to get our positioning alongside our partners such as IBM, Vignette and EMC correct.
Essentially his view was that it was very important for most of what we are doing to be seen as a standalone solution that complements and integrates with our partners but is not 100% joined at the hip as a "add-on". Many widget companies (e.g. the plethora of Facebook applications) would be familiar with this concern. Leverage your large partner by all means (e.g. Facebook has 40M+ users) but use it as a means to an end of building a relationship with that end users which extends beyond that particular platform.
Channel strategy is a fine line to walk and no doubt a challenge many if not all entrepreneurs face. If anything I see most entrepreneurs under-utilizing the possibilities for partnerships with the likes of IBM or Facebook. But I guess the point is that even when you fully appreciate how fantastic these relationships can be they should be seen as a stepping stone to building a great standalone company with standalone customers, joint customers, white labeled customers who don't even realize you exist and customers somewhere in between.
I would point to the strategies that other great "complementers" such as enterprise search companies (Autonomy, FAST), instant messaging security (Facetime) or email compliance (Postini) as good models for blending OEM, channel and end user paths successfully.
The trick, in my humble opinion and with respect to enterprise software, is to have an OEM offering that is at least as good as anything else on the market or anything that a vendor could do internally and then produce an end user "upsell" offering which is even more powerful and compelling. All whilst continue to complement, not compete against, your partners. Simple right?
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