Partnerships and Alliances

Partnerships and Alliances are key to the success of any venture.  They are, however, not all created equally.  Whether you are planning or already running your business you need to know how to identify business and strategic partners and allies that will truly help leverage your resources and accelerate your success.  You must also know what skills are necessary for the job, how to effectively close the deal and how to manage the ongoing relationship.  You'll even learn how to identify the right VP of Biz Dev from this process! 

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Speakers T.A. McCann of Polaris Ventures and Paul Neel of Meridio will explore the various aspects of Business Development from both the "inside" perspective and the "outside/partner" perspective.

Topics will include:

Identifying the right partners -- analyzing the value delivery chain, alignment of core all the competencies and looking for potential partnerships.  Distinguish partnering for revenue reasons (these are good deals) from strategic partnering where there is no revenue but make sense and are trickier to structure.  Learn how to find the right OEM's, VAR's, and SI's.  Learn the questions to ask both yourself and prospective partners.

Structuring a valuable deal -- the nuts and bolts of putting a successful deal together when there seems like a good fit.  How to structure the "pitch"? Who do you approach?  What documents do you need?  What do you do next? 

Working with Microsoft, in particular.  For software start-ups, investors (especially in Seattle) and customers are going to want to know what Microsoft is doing in this area and the entrepreneur needs to be able to answer specific anticipated questions.  Both T.A. and Paul have a lot of specific advice on finding the answers and working with Microsoft successfully.  Determine how and when to "partner" with Microsoft? What to expect? How to approach the product teams and field sales organizations?

Speakers 
T.A. McCann, Entrepreneur in Residence, Polaris Ventures.

T.A. McCann successfully founded 2 companies including HelpShare, a knowledge management software company and Soft Labour, a web application development firm before being hired to run business development and product planning  for Microsoft Exchange Server. In that role, he identified key partners and created partnerships in new emerging markets including email archiving and messaging compliance.  In May, he was recruited to Polaris Ventures as an EIR where he is currently researching new startup company ideas and working with select portfolio companies to develop and execute their business development strategies..

Paul Neel, VP of Microsoft Program, Meridio.

Paul Neel brings over two decades of leadership and diverse experience in alliances, sales, marketing and product management. He has an extensive background in taking vision to strategy to execution. He has a record of success in both early-stage companies and market leaders companies.
Before Meridio, Mr. Neel was responsible for the initial build-up of all partnership strategies, product direction and execution with 120 partners at KVS Inc. For over four years he built from start-up all strategy with partners, programs pulling KVS from a direct model to one of 75% partner lead and scale. Key to KVS' acquisition by VERITAS was consistent delivery of sales, partners, the Microsoft relationship and product leadership by Paul and his team. Prior to KVS Paul had a long and successful careers with Adobe Systems and AGFA Corporation which included sales, strategic alliances and product planning. Mr. Neel holds his bachelor degree in Business Administration and Accounting from the University of Arizona.