Partnerships Unraveled

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 Mark Ralls, President at Auvik

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Mark Ralls, President at Auvik, to talk about what it actually takes to keep marketing, sales, and customer success all pointed at the same partner outcome. Mark's background spans management consulting and fifteen years across software companies of every size, and that systems-thinking foundation still shapes how he leads today.

Mark's approach to keeping teams aligned starts with a simple idea: speak the partner's language, not the internal one. Where many vendors lean on their own acronyms and a long list of product features, Mark pushes his teams to lead with the specific challenge a partner is facing and let the rest follow naturally. That same instinct for cutting through noise shapes how Auvik talks about AI. Instead of layering a chat interface onto its existing product and calling that AI, Auvik built specific tools around two concrete partner problems: the time sink of troubleshooting and the growth opportunities partners find hard to act on today.

One example is an AI troubleshooting assistant built on retrieval-augmented generation, grounded in fifteen years of historical network data so a tier-one technician can resolve an issue without escalating it. Auvik's own IT trends report shows why that matters: even as companies keep increasing AI investment, only about 5 percent say AI is core to their operations today, and half still spend 10 to 20 hours a week handling tickets manually. Because networks involve so many different devices, Auvik also launched AI Device Lifecycle, giving partners clear, neutral data on aging equipment they can bring straight to their customers.

As Auvik strengthens its channel leadership under newly promoted Chief Revenue Officer Danny Ochoa, Mark's guiding principle stays the same: partners run independent businesses with their own goals, and the job is to help them succeed on their own terms, not to serve as an extension of Auvik's sales team.

Key Takeaways

Speak Your Partner's Language, Not Your Own Mark pushes his teams to drop internal acronyms and long feature lists in favor of leading with the specific challenge a partner is facing. That single shift, he says, reduces the cognitive load that pushes partners toward whichever vendor is easiest to understand.

Name the Friction Instead of Avoiding It. When Auvik and a partner aren't fully aligned, Mark's approach is to say so directly and work toward a middle ground, instead of pretending both sides can get everything they want. He calls it pointing out the elephant in the room before it causes real damage.

AI Needs Proof Points, Not Just a Chat Box Auvik built its AI troubleshooting assistant around two concrete partner problems instead of simply adding a chat interface to its existing product. Grounding the tool in fifteen years of historical network data through retrieval-augmented generation gives partners tangible return on investment, not just an AI label.

Most Companies Still Aren't Seeing AI's Return Auvik's own IT trends report found that despite growing AI investment industry-wide, only about 5 percent of respondents say AI is core to their operations, and half still spend 10 to 20 hours a week on manual ticket handling. Mark ties that gap directly to how heterogeneous networks make generic AI tools hard to apply.

Help Partners Win on Their Own Terms Mark actively pushes back on the idea that partners are an extension of a vendor's sales team, arguing that framing centers the relationship on the vendor's success instead of the partner's independent business. His approach is to ask what challenge or opportunity a partner is facing and figure out how Auvik can help them grow.

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David Willis, Vice President of Technology Alliances at Netskope

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with David Willis, Vice President of Technology Alliances at Netskope, to talk about what actually separates tech alliances from channel partnerships, and why both matter more than ever. David's path runs through the US Navy, AT&T, Riverbed, and Palo Alto Networks before landing at Netskope, and that range shows up in how he thinks about partnerships today.

David credits his time in the US Navy with teaching him to build systems and checklists that hold up even as people rotate in and out, a skill that mattered as Netskope grew from 15 partners to more than 400. But tech alliances require more flexibility than the military ever did, since partners can become competitors and competitors can become partners through acquisitions and spinoffs. David compares the dynamic to NATO: everyone has some tension and overlap, but the group holds together because everyone is working toward the same larger goal, and being quick and honest about misalignment makes the whole ecosystem easier to navigate.

David also draws a clear line between tech alliances and channel partnerships: both exist to multiply reach, but they run on completely different logic, and those lines are blurring fast as resellers increasingly build and sell their own products. On AI, David sees real acceleration, like replacing a lengthy integration guide with a single file a partner's system can read directly, but he's equally focused on the new problems it introduces, from managing the permissions of AI agents to establishing trustworthy ways to track where data actually came from as it moves between systems.

David's advice for anyone building alliances right now is to keep the system simple and execute it consistently instead of chasing a perfect plan, and to treat every new tool the same way: build it, test it, learn from it, and move forward.

Key Takeaways

Good Systems Survive Every Personnel Change. David's military background taught him to build checklists and systems that survive personnel changes, a discipline that helped Netskope scale its alliance program from 15 partners to more than 400 with a relatively small team.

Tech Alliances Run on NATO-Style Cooperation David describes the tech alliance world as full of tension and overlap, since today's competitor can become tomorrow's partner through an acquisition or spinoff. Everyone holds together because they're working toward the same larger goal, and being quick and honest about misalignment keeps the whole system workable.

Tech Alliances and Channel Solve Different Problems Both exist to multiply reach, but David says they run on completely different logic, and those lines are blurring fast as resellers increasingly build and sell their own products. Quickly identifying whether a partner sells services, product, or both shapes how his team engages.

AI Is Making Integrations Genuinely Faster David points to a concrete example: instead of handing a partner a lengthy SDK or CLI guide, his team can now give them a single file their system reads directly, saving days or weeks of manual translation work.

New Tools Bring New Trust Problems As AI agents multiply, David is focused on questions the industry hasn't fully solved, like how to manage agent permissions responsibly and how to verify where data actually came from as it moves between systems. Speed without trust, he says, isn't much of a win.

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Elise Carbone, Head of Global Partner and Alliances at Deltek

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Elise Carbone, Head of Global Partner and Alliances at Deltek, to explore how partnerships can make deals move faster. Her path ran through HR, consulting, and a startup that Deltek eventually acquired, giving her an unusual outsider's view of how channel and alliance work should really function.

That outsider's view shows up most clearly in how she talks about trust. Years in consulting taught her a simple rule: do not lie during the sales process, because a partnership built on an oversold promise falls apart the moment delivery starts. She carries that same discipline into how Deltek evaluates artificial intelligence, starting with the business problem a partner or customer is actually trying to solve, then asking whether AI is the right answer for it. It is a deliberate sequencing, business need first and technology second, so partners are never sold a capability they cannot yet put to use.

Elise applies the same precision to how Deltek builds its partner ecosystem, using an Ideal Partner Profile tailored to each vertical instead of one broad recruitment list, so the network stays small and genuinely useful instead of wide and thin. She brings partners into discovery calls early, before a deal is shaped, because the earlier a partner understands the customer's real problem, the more they can contribute. She is candid about the ego dynamics that surface in co-selling and treats partner-led and direct sales as the same game, just played with more people at the table.

Her closing insight ties it together: after years of advocating mentorship for young talent, she has shifted to championing sponsorship, opening doors instead of just offering advice. As she puts it, sometimes you have to slow down in order to go fast.

Key Takeaways

1. A Winding Career Path Shaped Her Partner Instincts. Elise moved through HR, HR information systems, and consulting before founding a startup, HR Smart, that Deltek acquired eleven years ago. She stepped into her current role leading Deltek's global partner and alliances organization only a couple of months ago, bringing a founder's practical eye to how partnerships actually get built.
2. Honesty During the Sales Process Builds Lasting Partnerships. Her consulting background left her with one non-negotiable rule: do not lie during the sales process. She believes an oversold promise creates a partnership that collapses the moment delivery begins, so she pushes teams to sell only what the product and the partnership can truly deliver.
3. Business Problems Come Before AI Solutions. She starts every partner and customer conversation with the actual business problem, not the technology, then asks whether artificial intelligence is the right tool for it. That sequencing keeps partners from being sold an AI capability before they have a real use for it.
4. Vertical-Specific Ideal Partner Profiles Keep the Ecosystem Focused. Deltek builds its partner network around an Ideal Partner Profile defined for each vertical, so recruitment fills real capability gaps instead of growing the roster for its own sake. The result is a small, focused channel where every partner has a clear reason to be there.
5. Bringing Partners in Early Makes Deals Move Faster. Elise involves partners in discovery calls before a deal takes shape, so a partner can understand the customer's real problem early and contribute meaningfully instead of reacting late. She also treats partner-led and direct sales as the same game played with more people at the table, a mindset that helps keep ego dynamics in co-selling in check.

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Amanda Stewart, Americas Distribution Channels, Microsoft Teams Rooms Specialist at Microsoft

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Amanda Stewart, Americas Distribution Channels, Microsoft Teams Rooms Specialist at Microsoft, to talk about what happens when artificial intelligence moves from a personal tool to a team one. After more than 30 years across integration, distribution, and field sales, Amanda now helps build the distribution strategy behind Microsoft's fast-growing AI-powered workplace category.

That range of experience shows up directly in how she designs partner programs today. Having worked inside an integration partner, a distribution company, and a hardware manufacturer before joining Microsoft, she understands the pressure partners feel to do more with fewer resources, and the pressure Microsoft feels to do the same. Her approach is to find the handful of business priorities where both sides can genuinely meet, instead of pushing a one-size-fits-all framework partners cannot use. That grounding, she says, is what let her step back into channel work with a deeper understanding of what actually drives partner success.

Amanda joined Microsoft's distribution team for Teams Rooms devices as one of its first four people in North America, building the category from the ground up before it grew into the broader AI-powered workplace, spanning Teams, Teams Rooms, Teams Phone, and the Copilot layer that ties them together. That growth has opened the door to partner types she had never sold through before, including managed service providers, since roughly 70 percent of the remaining opportunity for Microsoft Teams customers sits in small and medium rooms, not the large, complex ones traditional integrators already serve well.

Her closing thought reframes the AI conversation: adoption succeeds when it moves from personal productivity to team productivity, since impact compounds once colleagues build on each other's work. It's a simple shift that changes how a room gets things done together.

Key Takeaways

1. Thirty Years on Both Sides Shapes Program Design. She has worked inside an integration partner, a distribution company, and a hardware manufacturer, giving her firsthand knowledge of what partners need before she ever managed a partner program herself. That perspective helps her translate Microsoft's priorities into terms partners can actually act on.
2. Channel Relationships Pulled Her Back From Direct Sales. After more than a decade in field sales, disruption in her vertical market pushed Amanda to reconsider her path, and she returned to channel work for the relationships and creativity it offered. She has stayed in channel roles ever since, most recently building Microsoft's Teams Rooms distribution strategy.
3. A New Category Built From the Ground Up. Amanda joined as one of the first four people building Microsoft's distribution model for Teams Rooms devices in North America, testing and adjusting the approach as the category grew. That early work has since expanded into the broader AI-powered workplace portfolio.
4. Managed Service Providers Represent Untapped Room Space. With roughly 70 percent of the remaining opportunity for Microsoft Teams customers sitting in small and medium rooms, Amanda's team is exploring how managed service providers, a partner type she had not sold through before, can help reach that space. Traditional integration partners continue to serve the large, complex rooms well.
5. AI Adoption Multiplies From Personal to Group Use. Amanda encourages partners and customers to think beyond individual productivity gains and toward what a team accomplishes together once AI tools are deployed in shared spaces like meeting rooms. She describes it as a multiplier effect that only shows up once adoption moves past the individual.

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Pax8 Beyond '26 Special – Tim Coach, Chief Evangelist of Community & Channels at Cynomi

In this Pax8 Beyond '26 special edition of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Tim Coach, Chief Evangelist of Community and Channels at Cynomi, to talk about bringing a security platform to the channel. A former managed service provider (MSP) owner who spent two decades rebuilding MSPs, Tim brings a translator's instinct to every partner conversation.

Tim's path started in engineering and internal IT before he took over an underperforming MSP, inheriting what he calls a lot of chaos. His military background gave him a simple lens: standards, processes, and procedures fix most of what goes wrong. He spent the next twenty years rebuilding and consulting with MSPs alongside a business partner, before friends in the vendor world convinced him to make the jump to the vendor side. He credits meeting Cynomi's founder at a Pax8 event, and seeing how the platform solved a bottleneck he had personally struggled with, for pulling him into security.

Cynomi's AI agents, launched in April 2026, give every managed service provider a security dashboard that shows a client's real security posture for the first time, instead of a guess pieced together across a handful of tools. Tim is careful to frame this as compliance support, not a replacement for a chief information security officer (CISO): the platform lets less experienced staff handle a large share of the work, flag smart exceptions, and build an evidence repository, freeing the CISO to focus on strategy while creating a clear growth path for junior team members.

His advice to partners echoes his own path: manage clients to a recognized security standard and compliance follows by default. Customers care about risk, revenue, and cost, not technical jargon, and translating value into those terms is what makes a partner trusted.

Key Takeaways

1. From MSP Chaos to a Standards-First Playbook. Tim inherited an underperforming MSP and leaned on his military background to bring order through standards, processes, and procedures. That same discipline carried him through two decades of rebuilding and consulting with MSPs before he moved to the vendor side.
2. Channel Evangelism Means Translating, Not Just Representing. Tim sees his role as translating dense industry language into what an MSP actually needs to hear, while also learning from the community he serves. He treats teaching and being taught as a two-way exchange, not a one-way pitch.
3. Constant Industry Change Is Usually a Reframing. Tim compares today's shift to agentic AI with earlier transitions, like typewriters becoming keyboards and blacksmiths becoming mechanics: skills adapt, they rarely disappear. He argues the businesses that struggle are the ones unwilling to adjust, not the ones facing change itself.
4. Cynomi's Platform Gives MSPs Real Security Visibility. Cynomi's AI agents, launched in April 2026, give MSPs a dashboard showing a client's actual security posture for the first time, replacing the scattered estimate most teams relied on before. The system also tells users what they are looking at, why it matters, and what action to take next.
5. Standards-Based Compliance Removes the Affordability Question. Tim's advice to MSPs is to manage every client against a recognized security standard so compliance follows automatically, and to help partners budget toward that goal over time. He frames this as making security achievable for everyone, not just clients who can afford high-end governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs.

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Danielle Simon, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at Actian

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Danielle Simon, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at Actian, to talk about what it means to build a partner ecosystem from nothing. With more than 15 years in strategic partnerships and alliances, the last decade focused on data, Danielle describes herself simply as a builder.

Most of Danielle's career has been spent inside startups and scale-ups, where building a partner ecosystem means starting from an ideal customer profile and finding early partners willing to build market demand together, before that demand even exists. Her opening question to a prospective partner is simple: will you get in the market with me, and how can we help each other from day one? She has also become skilled at distilling a joint value proposition into a single sentence, spelling out exactly why two companies are stronger together and precisely when a salesperson should bring that partner into a deal.

As data infrastructure has become the foundation for AI, Danielle has watched the market rationalize after an initial frenzy, landing on a simple idea: AI is the engine, but governed, secure data is the fuel. That shift has blurred what partners actually do, with resellers picking up services work and independent software vendors selling their own products, so she leans on regular cadence and a clear read on each partner's strengths, whether that is a particular cloud platform or a specific AI use case, to know exactly which partner to bring into which conversation.

Danielle's advice echoes her own path: partnerships is a high-friction job most never fully understand, so find your community and keep learning from it, whether that's a program built around cocktails instead of tiers, or a global network like Women in Alliances.

Key Takeaways

1. A Career-Long Builder Thrives on Starting From Zero. Danielle spent over 15 years across marketing, public relations, and now strategic partnerships, with the last decade focused on data infrastructure and AI. She describes herself as a builder who is most energized inside startups and scale-ups, where a partner ecosystem has to be created from scratch.
2. Early Partnerships Start With Mutual Market Entry. Instead of asking a new partner to open their book of business right away, Danielle opens with a simpler question: will you get in the market with me? That approach builds trust quickly while still solving a real problem neither company could solve alone.
3. A One-Sentence Value Proposition Speeds Up Sales. Danielle has trained herself to distill why a partnership works into a single sentence her sales team can repeat, naming the partner's strength and exactly when to bring them into a deal. If she cannot explain it that simply, she treats it as a sign the partnership needs more work.
4. AI Runs on Governed, Secure Data. Danielle sees AI as the engine and governed, secure data as the fuel, which means the most interesting opportunity for partners right now is helping companies apply AI to their own business, not the AI technology itself. She calls the current environment a consultants market, since most companies are still early in that journey.
5. Partner Roles Are Shifting as AI Blurs Lines. Resellers are picking up service work and software vendors are selling their own products, so Danielle keeps a regular cadence with partners and tracks each one's specific strengths. That knowledge is what lets her team know exactly which partner to call for a given customer situation.

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Pax8 Beyond '26 Special – Jeannine Edwards, Sr. Director, Marketing at Cynet

In this Pax8 Beyond '26 special edition of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Jeannine Edwards, Sr. Director, Marketing at Cynet, to talk about building community in the channel and staying ahead of a threat landscape that moves faster every year. Jeannine spent roughly a decade at ConnectWise helping originate the idea of channel community, and she brings that same instinct to Cynet's partner ecosystem today.

At ConnectWise, Jeannine was among the first people in the channel to hold a title built around community, running IT Nation in its early years and creating the company's invent program over roughly a decade there. She describes the real work of community as facilitation: connecting dots and building feedback loops that run both from partner to vendor and back again. At Cynet, an emerging vendor still early in its community journey, she recently helped stand up the company's first Partner Advisory Council, built to be actionable, not a showcase, so partner input can genuinely shift the roadmap.

That community instinct meets a genuine urgency in Cynet's core pitch. Modern attacks rarely stay in one place, moving through an organization in fast, chaotic paths the moment a single click goes wrong, while adversaries increasingly use AI of their own to move even faster. Cynet's answer is a unified platform paired with a managed detection and response (MDR) team built from its own people, sharing the same context and intelligence as the technology itself, so it functions as an extension of a managed service provider's (MSP's) team, not a commodity add-on.

Her closing advice is simple: don't let AI and security buzzwords wash over you. Understand what a vendor's claims actually mean for your business, lead with the customer's real pain point, and let that clarity be the differentiator.

Key Takeaways

1. She Helped Originate Community as a Channel Discipline. During roughly a decade at ConnectWise, Jeannine was among the first in the channel to hold a role built specifically around community, running IT Nation in its early years and creating the company's invent program. That early work shaped how she approaches partner engagement today.
2. Community Only Works When It Is Actionable. Jeannine treats community as facilitation: connecting dots and building feedback loops between partners and the vendor, not simply gathering people for a good dinner. Cynet's first Partner Advisory Council was built around that same principle, giving partners real influence over the roadmap.
3. Channel-Only Growth Is a Three-Legged Race. Going channel-only and MSP first gives Cynet reach it could never build with a direct sales force alone, but it only works if the partner is fully in sync. If either side falls behind on enablement, Jeannine says, the whole motion trips.
4. Modern Attacks Move as Fast, Chaotic Paths. Jeannine describes today's threats as multi-vector paths that cascade through an organization within moments of a single mistake, especially now that adversaries use AI to move even faster. Cynet's response pairs a unified platform with a human-staffed MDR team that shares the same context as the technology itself.
5. Cutting Noise Protects Both Margins and Trust. Jeannine points to a statistic that stuck with her: roughly 60 percent of security alerts get ignored simply because there are too many of them. Reducing that noise protects the two biggest cost centers for an MSP, tools and people, while keeping technicians focused on what actually matters.

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Ep. 251 – Larry Walsh, CEO & Chief Analyst at Channelnomics

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst at Channelnomics. After three decades studying how vendors and partners work together, Larry brings a data-driven, refreshingly clear-eyed view of what actually makes channel relationships thrive, and where the real opportunity for growth is hiding.

Larry opens with a distinction that reframes the whole vendor-partner relationship: vendors tend to operate on narrative economics, describing value in ways people can believe, while most of the channel runs on vibe economics, things partners feel but can't always articulate. That gap is where misalignment creeps in. Larry shares an example of a vendor struggling with partner engagement, only to discover they were playing defense, protecting margin so tightly that the benefits weren't worth the effort. The fix isn't about equal treatment, it's about equilibrium: creating conditions where partners make money with a vendor, not on them.

The conversation turns to friction in the go-to-market process, and Larry points to Channelnomics' own research on quoting: some partners wait three to five weeks for a quote, at a moment when customers expect Amazon-level speed. He also describes how partner programs accumulate like sedimentary layers, with policies piling up long after anyone remembers why they exist. His approach isn't chasing perfection, since that's expensive and never fully reachable, but building a continuous habit of asking whether a rule or process still earns its place, and removing what only adds drag for partners.

Looking ahead, Larry sees the channel's role only deepening: less about moving boxes, more about becoming the connective tissue between vendor promises and customer outcomes, helping partners go further, faster, and with less risk.

Key Takeaways:

Equitable Outcomes Drive Partner Engagement
 Larry points out that vendors and partners tend to run on two different kinds of economics: vendors describe value in narrative terms, while partners operate more on feel, things they sense but can't always put into words. When those two are out of sync, engagement suffers. He shares a real example of a vendor whose partners weren't engaging, only to find the vendor was "playing defense," making it too hard to capture even modest benefits, and the fix was building genuine equilibrium rather than identical treatment.

Partners Earn Only When They Perform
 Larry breaks down why channel economics work the way they do: a direct salesperson has to be paid, trained, and supported whether or not they close deals, while a partner only earns when they deliver. He notes that a channel sale runs roughly 10 to 15% more economically than a direct one, largely because partners are mining the white space already sitting inside their own install base.

Quoting Speed Decides the Sale
 Drawing on Channelnomics' own research, Larry shares that a third of partners are waiting three to five weeks for a quote, at a time when customers, conditioned by Amazon-style buying, expect answers instantly. He points to vendors managing a quarter million SKUs or custom-built hardware as examples of how quickly complexity can turn a quoting process into a lost sale.

Probability Models Replace Guesswork With Strategy
 Larry describes a recent project where a global vendor was deciding how to restructure a regional partnership, and Channelnomics ran the options through a probability model that scored four different configurations by likelihood of success, one coming in at 85%. Rather than replacing judgment, the model gave the vendor a clearer set of trade-offs to weigh, which lined up with their budget and capabilities.

The Channel Keeps Evolving Into Trusted Advisors
 Larry pushes back on "save the channel" narratives, pointing to a partner ecosystem that's larger than ever, with more than 600,000 partners in Microsoft's network alone and roughly 1.2 million worldwide. His view is that the channel's role keeps shifting, from selling boxes to clouds to now selling outcomes, with partners becoming the connective tissue between what vendors promise and what customers actually experience.

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In this special 250th episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Dorian Kominek, Channel Leader for the Zapier Solution Partner Program. After a decade as an entrepreneur and years building partner programs across services and SaaS, Dorian brings a refreshingly grounded view of what channel work actually is, and why humility might be its most overlooked skill.

Dorian traces his path from a decade as an entrepreneur through partner programs in appliances and food service, and into the two years he has spent building Zapier's Solution Partner Program, a network of agencies that help customers automate their workflows. Along the way he picked up a philosophy he now leads with: human first, living close to the surface of who you are, with less pretense and more willingness to be vulnerable. Looking back at his years in traditional channel roles, he points to something tech could stand to learn: humility, and the discipline to get down to brass tacks and keep things simple.

That same directness carries into how Dorian sees tech's partner ecosystem. Because SaaS products are intangible, lines of code rather than physical goods, companies have been free to get creative, building service partners, integration partners, and resellers across every hue of what he calls the partner rainbow. Bringing that kind of program into a company that grew through product-led growth took a different kind of case-making. Dorian frames building a channel function as an act of entrepreneurship, one that thrives when it rides alongside senior leadership's broader strategy from day one.

With Zapier's own product evolving fast alongside AI, Dorian's approach is to stay iterative: lean on partners as eyes and ears, take small steps, and let the relationships, not the roadmap, lead the way.

Key Takeaways:

Human First, Not Just a Tagline Dorian's LinkedIn line, human first, describes people who live close to the surface of who they are, without the layers of pretense picked up over a career. He admits that living this way makes you more vulnerable, but says it feels more authentic and makes it easier to build things together with partners.

Traditional Channel's Underrated Edge: Humility Before tech, Dorian ran distributor relationships at Miele and channel marketing at Compass Group, work he says keeps things refreshingly simple: a customer's dishwasher breaks, and the job is to offer real options. He believes tech does its best work when it carries that same directness forward, since the underlying job is still just one-to-many relationships built on people helping people.

Every Hue on the Partner Rainbow Because software is intangible, just lines of code rather than a physical product, Dorian sees tech partnerships as far more inventive than the traditional distributor-and-installer model. Instead of a handful of fixed categories, companies can build service partners, integration partners, and resellers across, in his words, every hue of the rainbow, giving the episode its title.

Treat Channel Building Like a Venture Dorian frames standing up a channel function as an act of entrepreneurship: small bets, fast iteration, and a willingness to take risks before the data fully proves the case. He notes that mature companies naturally lean managerial and protective of what they've built, so the programs that succeed are the ones that align closely with senior leadership's broader strategy.

Staying Iterative When the Product Won't Sit Still With Zapier's product shifting quickly alongside AI, Dorian has learned to let go of trying to control every outcome. His approach now is to lean on partners as eyes and ears, take small steps, and build as the picture changes, without over-constructing a plan for a moment that may not last.

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In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Kyle Tatum, Senior Channel Sales Manager at NordSecurity. Kyle leads new managed service provider recruitment for Nord and has been part of the channel program since its early days, giving him a first-hand view of how Nord scaled past a thousand partners while keeping the experience personal.

Kyle opens with what has made NordSecurity's channel program stand out as it has grown. Every new partner gets a free Not For Resale license to use internally, direct attention from a real person during the recruit phase, and a dedicated account manager as soon as they sell their first seat. No inbox roulette. Nord's alliance work follows the same integration-first mindset. The recent partnership with CrowdStrike started with two real integrations: an API-driven shutdown of secure access when CrowdStrike detects a threat, and a SIEM integration in progress. Marketing then follows from the actual substance.

From there, the conversation turns to consumer brand equity as a channel tool. NordVPN is a globally recognized brand, and Kyle treats it as an icebreaker. Even when partners initially assume Nord is a consumer-only company, that opens the door to demonstrating what the enterprise stack actually delivers. Kyle draws a parallel to how Nike broke into skateboarding through one credible product moment. On AI, Kyle is thoughtful. Managed service provider requests are moving toward Model Context Protocol integrations that let them manage products through Claude or ChatGPT. Nord has already shipped that for Nordstellar and is bringing it to other products.

Kyle closes on a piece of practical wisdom that grounds the whole conversation. Don't get caught up in the hype cycle. Vendor conversations, real integrations, and real relationships are what shape lasting channel partnerships. People buy from people they like.

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