Growth at all costs is over. Boards no longer ask how many people you hired. They ask how efficiently you can grow, and that question is reshaping how revenue leaders scale across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

What you will learn:

▹ Why treating EMEA as one market inflates customer acquisition cost, and what to do instead

▹ How to trade a share of AE headcount for partner headcount without losing quota on the street

▹ The give to get motion that keeps local partners active long after referral business dries up

▹ How to match global SIs, regional integrators, and boutique consultancies to the right customer segment

▹ A real example where going partner first lifted conversion by up to 50 percent in six months

Guest bio:

David King Harris is VP Sales EMEA at Optro. He has led European, EMEA, and global teams through both the growth at all costs era and the efficiency mandate that followed, with earlier roles across martech leaders and IBM. He speaks in commercial terms because he carries the revenue number himself.

Chapters:

• Introduction and guest background
• Why EMEA is a collection of markets, not one
• Local partners and the last mile of trust
• Matching partner types to your ideal customer
• Where partnerships should sit in the organization
• The efficiency pivot after COVID
• The revenue receipt: partner first results
• Rapid fire and close

Rebuild your EMEA go to market around efficiency.

What you will learn:

▹ Why the partner team's job is not to bring a list of integration requests to product, and what to do instead to validate real end-user value before anyone writes a line of code

▹ How to choose between a large, hard-to-work-with partner and a smaller, easier partner, and why internal relationships and prioritisation willingness often matter more than market reach

▹ What it means in practice when a product manager asks your partner team a hard question, and why the correct answer is sometimes no

▹ How to build the working relationship between engineering, product, and the partner's technical team so integrations move fast without becoming liabilities

▹ The most common mistake product teams make when building toward a partnership, and how to avoid building something customers will never use

About the guest:

Agata Bugaj is Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX, a property access technology platform serving multifamily, commercial, and student housing. She brings over fifteen years of experience leading product, UX, and engineering teams across B2B SaaS and enterprise eCommerce. Prior to ButterflyMX, she served as SVP of Product at FullStory, where she scaled the product function from Director through to SVP level.

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

Most B2B SaaS companies treat integrations as a favour the product team does for the partner team. That framing is killing revenue. When product and partnerships operate in silos, the integrations that get built are the wrong ones. The ones that do get built often go unused. And the network moat that should be compounding never forms.

Agata Bugaj, Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX and former SVP of Product at FullStory, joins Sebastian Hoelzl and Will Schnabel to break down how product leaders and partner teams can work together in a way that actually moves the commercial needle.

What you will learn:

▹ Why the partner team's job is not to bring a list of integration requests to product, and what to do instead to validate real end-user value before anyone writes a line of code

▹ How to choose between a large, hard-to-work-with partner and a smaller, easier partner, and why internal relationships and prioritisation willingness often matter more than market reach

▹ What it means in practice when a product manager asks your partner team a hard question, and why the correct answer is sometimes no

▹ How to build the working relationship between engineering, product, and the partner's technical team so integrations move fast without becoming liabilities

▹ The most common mistake product teams make when building toward a partnership, and how to avoid building something customers will never use

About the guest:

Agata Bugaj is Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX, a property access technology platform serving multifamily, commercial, and student housing. She brings over fifteen years of experience leading product, UX, and engineering teams across B2B SaaS and enterprise eCommerce. Prior to ButterflyMX, she served as SVP of Product at FullStory, where she scaled the product function from Director through to SVP level.

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

Most e-commerce SaaS companies enter new international markets the same way: hire SDRs, spend on localised ads, and wait. It is an expensive bet that rarely pays. JD Klausner has spent his career proving there is a faster, cheaper, more defensible path — one that runs through the partner ecosystem.

What you'll learn:

• Why the brute-force international expansion playbook is mathematically broken in 2026, and what a partner-first market entry looks like at the execution level — not the strategy deck level.

• How to separate your GTM partners from your product partners before entering a new market, and why confusing the two is the most common reason international launches stall.
• The three-step entry sequence Klausner used at Loop Returns to open the UK market — partner-first to fill product gaps, pipeline validation before hiring local AEs, and localisation only once revenue is real.
• How to kill "commission breath" on your sales floor: the operating model for getting your top AEs to treat local partners as revenue accelerators rather than margin threats.
• What "partner density" actually measures, why it is the single ecosystem metric worth reporting to your board, and how it predicts revenue velocity in a new geography before you have closed a deal.

JD Klausner is VP of Global Partnerships at Commerce (BigCommerce). He previously served as SVP and General Manager, International at Loop Returns, where he led the company's expansion into European markets, and before that as VP of Partnerships at Yotpo. He has spent the better part of a decade building partner ecosystems and channel operating models across e-commerce, martech, and global logistics infrastructure.

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

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.

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

In this episode, Sebastian and Will are joined by Rebecca Potts, a leader in strategic industry partner sales at Google Cloud, to demystify the complex world of hyperscaler partnerships. Rebecca explains why simply being "listed" in a marketplace is no longer enough and provides a roadmap for partners to stand out in a crowded ecosystem.

The conversation dives deep into the "hyperscaler multiplier," revealing how successful partners align their solutions with the specific business problems customers are trying to solve. Rebecca also shares critical insights on "burning down" committed cloud spend and why technical POCs are being replaced by rapid, AI-driven business outcomes.

Key Takeaways:

• Solve, Don't Just List: Why specificity in solving industry-specific business problems is the key to standing out to field sellers.

• The "Burn Down" Strategy: How to connect partner solutions to a customer's committed Google Cloud spend to accelerate deals.

• AI-First Mentality: Shifting from technical POCs to demonstrating 90-day business outcomes using forward-deployed engineers (FDEs).

• Relationship Building: The "dating to marriage" analogy of building long-term, trust-based partnerships in a hyperscale world.

  
  

Chapters

• What Business Problem Are You Solving? The Key to Standing Out

• Understanding Cloud "Commits" and the Backlog Strategy

• The Role of System Integrators in Owning the Process

• Flipping the Script: The Shift to AI-First Mentality

• What is an FDE? Moving from Slides to Real Results

• Rapid Delivery: The 90-Day Outcome Cycle

• Common Pitfalls: Why Great Stories Sometimes Fail to Launch

• Partner Success Stories: Tiger Analytics & Tech Systems

• From Dating to Marriage: Building Trust in Partnerships

• The Impact: Why Partner-Led Deals are 56% Larger

• Rapid Fire Round & Rebecca’s Career Lessons

  
  

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

In this episode of Ecosystem Alpha, hosts Sebastian and Will sit down with Richard Evans, a veteran SaaS leader and current Managing Partner at Hatchd Marketing Group, to deconstruct the "Better Together" Paradox. Richard shares insights from his diverse career as a CRO and Head of Marketing, explaining why the traditional approach to joint value propositions often fails to resonate in the modern sales cycle.

We dive deep into the mechanics of the "Franken-deck," exploring how the shift from "inside-out" product-centric pitches to "outside-in" ecosystem stories can cut through the noise of AI-generated content. Richard also shares revenue receipts from his career, including how to verticalize a general product through strategic partnerships—and explains why overcoming the 9% trust barrier in vendor messaging requires a radical refocus on peer validation and credibility.

Chapters

• The Franken-deck Dilemma: Deconstructing why the traditional partner logo slide at the end of a sales deck acts as a distraction rather than a value-add.

• Outside-In Positioning: Shifting from "me-centric" product pitches to using account signals to lead with a customer’s existing tech stack.

• The 9% Trust Barrier: Analyzing shocking G2 data on vendor credibility and the power of peer communities in influencing enterprise buying.

• Verticalizing the Generalist: A case study on outperforming competitors by wrapping general products in vertical-specific ecosystem stories.

• The PMM Intersection: Navigating the friction between product marketing and partner marketing to build cohesive upstream messaging.

• Marketing Fundamentals: Richard’s "must-read" classics for grounding marketing strategy and his predictions for the future of Agentic AI.

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

In an era where "growth at all costs" is no longer the gold standard, how can sales leaders drive durable, sustainable revenue?

This week on Ecosystem Alpha, hosts Sebastian and Will sit down with veteran sales leader Todd McCormick to discuss the evolution of the "Lone Wolf" CRO into a collaborative, ecosystem-focused strategist. Todd breaks down the "CAC crisis" and explains why borrowing trust from partners is the most efficient way to scale in today’s trust-deficient market.

Key topics discussed in this episode:

• The Efficiency Shift: Moving from vanity pipeline metrics to high-quality, partner-influenced leads that actually convert.

• Proving Partner Value: How to talk to your CFO about reallocating budget toward partnerships to drive down Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC).

• The Modern BDR: Why the traditional cold-calling model is broken and how an AI-first, partner-aware outreach strategy is winning the new logo game.

• Real-World Results: Todd shares how he doubled win rates and reduced sales cycles by nearly three months through strategic ecosystem alignment.

Chapters:

• Intro: Welcome to Ecosystem Alpha

• Growth at All Costs vs. The Efficiency Frontier

• Breaking Down CAC: Proving Partner Value to the CFO

• Getting Sales Buy-In: Solving the Compensation Conflict

• Borrowing Trust: Why Buyers Don't Trust SaaS Sellers

• ABM and Strategic Account Planning in the Enterprise

• The Evolution of the SDR: AI-First and Partner-Aware

• Reallocating Marketing Budgets for Better Outcomes

• The Ecosystem Flywheel: Achieving Durable Growth

• Real-World Results: Doubling Win Rates with Partners

• Rapid Fire: Overrated Metrics and Building Partner Trust

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

In this episode of Ecosystem Alpha, hosts Sebastian and Will sit down with Dhwani Dalal, Revenue Operations Leader at Brio.Co, to dissect the "RevOps Blueprint" for the modern software era. As the traditional linear sales funnel gives way to more complex, interconnected buyer journeys, the role of Revenue Operations has transformed from a back-office "fix-it" function into a strategic architect of the go-to-market (GTM) engine.

Dhwani shares her wealth of experience from leadership roles at Yotpo, DocuSign, and Squarespace to explain how RevOps acts as the "glue" that binds marketing, sales, and partnerships together. We explore the concept of the "Trust Tax"—the friction caused by fragmented data—and how building an AI-native infrastructure can lead to better win rates, faster sales velocity, and superior capital efficiency.

Key takeaways include:

• The Evolution of RevOps: Shifting from managing spreadsheets to designing the future of GTM strategy.

• Solving the "Trust Tax": Why a single source of truth is mandatory for account executive (AE) adoption.

• Ecosystem-Led Growth: How to embed partner signals directly into the buyer journey to drive higher win rates.

• Modern Metrics: Moving away from "useless" MQLs toward Blended CAC and ecosystem-specific velocity.

• The AI-Native Tech Stack: Leveraging orchestration layers like Glean AI to automate field labor and drive data integrity.

  
  

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

In this episode of Ecosystem Alpha, hosts Sebastian and Will sit down with Darren Kennedy, a seasoned services leader from ServiceTrade, to discuss why the modern Chief Customer Officer (CCO) must act as an ecosystem architect. Darren shares insights from his career at Salesforce and Pardot, explaining the critical shift from "growth at all costs" to a focus on efficiency and customer lifetime value.

We dive deep into the mechanics of the "un-churnable account," exploring how technical integrations and partner co-delivery serve as the primary levers for Net Revenue Retention (NRR). Darren also shares "revenue receipts" from his current role—including a staggering 29.4-point NRR increase linked to integrations—and explains how borrowing trust through "unreasonable hospitality" can repair client relationships and solve complex implementation hurdles.

Chapters

• Formal Introduction: Darren Kennedy and the DNA of a services leader

• Beyond NPS: Moving past lagging indicators to track real-time adoption and workflows

• The 29.4% NRR Hook: The statistical correlation between integrations and stickiness

• Partnership "Give to Get": Building the infrastructure to support a delivery ecosystem

• Borrowing Trust: Navigating co-delivery and the "whose client is it?" mindset

• The Operational Shift: Moving CSMs from "brute force" to partner-led solutions

• The "Why" Factor: Using change management to align teams with ecosystem motions

• Vertical SaaS Nuances: Why "word matters" and how relationships differ in blue-collar industries

• Revenue Receipts: Saving a high-risk account through a partner-led "save"

• Rapid Fire: Unreasonable hospitality and the most useless CSM metrics

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

In this episode of Ecosystem Alpha, hosts Sebastian and Will sit down with Jon Mead, the founder of PartnerBridge, to discuss why a staggering 80% of partnerships fail and how to move away from the "logo soup" approach. Jon shares his journey from sales engineering to founding a solution that uses data signals and AI to predict partner success.

We dive deep into the mechanics of Partner Fit, exploring why pricing alignment and company maturity are often overlooked. Jon also shares "scars" from his past, including a failed pitch to Deloitte, and explains how flipping the partnership funnel to an invite-only model can drastically lower your CAC and augment your outcomes.

Chapters

• Introduction to Ecosystem Alpha and guest Jon Mead
• Formal Introduction: Jon Mead and the PartnerBridge origin story
• Why Partnerships Fail: Moving past "logo soup" and reactive motions
• Partner Fit: Navigating pricing alignment, ICP, and company maturity
• The AI Shift: Using data signals to map influencers and watering holes
• Cost Analysis: The "hard numbers" behind onboarding and strategic drain
• Time-to-Value: Driving efficiency through quick wins and risk reduction
• The "Easy Button": Using sales kits to embed partners into GTM motions
• Flipping the Funnel: Why an exclusive, invite-only approach wins
• Revenue Receipts: Learning from a failed GSI pitch at Deloitte
• Rapid Fire: Overrated partner criteria and multiverse sci-fi
• Closing Thoughts and guest recommendations

Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast

1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).

2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.

3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.

4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.