Most SaaS vendors assume their software sells itself. Ivan Stegic has spent nearly two decades proving otherwise. As CEO of TEN7, a Drupal agency whose mission is to Make Things That Matter, he has built a business on a different premise: that trust — not technology — is the real currency in any ecosystem. In a world where the % of spend on B2B software and tech services continues to increase, the agency that own the client relationship owns the deal.
What you'll learn in this episode:
- Why the agency's role in a SaaS partner ecosystem is not to sell software but to act as an unbiased trusted advisor — and why that position is commercially more powerful than any reseller arrangement.
- How open source technology, specifically Drupal, creates a structural cost and flexibility advantage that proprietary all-in-one suites (Adobe, Sitecore) cannot match — and how to make that case to a non-technical CEO.
- The mechanics of a co-sell win: how TEN7 and Pantheon jointly replatformed a health system client, transferring trust from agency to hosting partner and closing a deal neither could have won alone.
- Why Ivan is sceptical of agentic AI at scale, and why he believes open source will dominate the digital experience market by 2030 — including what that means for how agencies and SaaS companies should be hiring right now.
- How a values-driven partner selection process — built on shared mission and ethics, not commercial incentives alone — produces stronger, more resilient client relationships and higher NRR.
Ivan Stegic is the Founder and CEO of TEN7, a Minneapolis-based Drupal agency with a mission to Make Things That Matter. A physicist and psychologist by training, Ivan has led TEN7 since 2007, building a fully distributed team that designs, builds, and cares for Drupal-powered digital experiences for mission-driven organisations across healthcare, education, and nonprofits. He is also a Strategic Board Advisor at Augmentum Global and a longstanding contributor to the Drupal community.
Chapter overview:
00:00 – Introduction & Ivan's background
04:30 – Why SaaS vendors need service partners to unlock enterprise
10:15 – The agency as trusted advisor: unbiased evaluation in a noisy market
17:00 – Open source economics: TCO, flexibility, and owning the code
24:30 – Values-driven partner selection and the ethics of co-selling
31:00 – The TEN7 × Pantheon co-sell: a health system replatform
37:45 – AI scepticism, agentic risk, and what open source dominance looks like by 2030
42:00 – Rapid fire: hiring, predictions, and who to interview next
If the operating model underneath your partner programme was never designed to succeed, start with a conversation. Visit ecosystemalpha.com to book your investment audit.
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