Thought Leadership

Most large partner agreements optimize for headline dollars and burn through MDF on activity that produces slides, not shipped software.

Structured the Esri stack to prove the opposite: a multi-year private pricing agreement anchored consumption, and a separate AI-focused SCA was deliberately scoped to fund engineering artifacts — two Foundation Models for geospatial AI and an ArcGIS Model Server POC — with named owners, milestones, and re:Invent as the forcing function.

Both sides' engineers leaned in because the contract required it. ~$1M ARR estimated for 2026 from the SCA alone, on top of ~$10M ARR from the PPA. Thesis: an SCA with defined engineering deliverables buys product; MDF alone just buys activity.

Partner leaders keep expecting AWS sellers to promote their product because it's technically great. It never works — sellers respond to program status, compensation mechanics, and customer pull, in that order.

Wrote up the CLEAR playbook as the template: ISVA + Strategic Resale gave sellers institutional permission; the AWS/CLEAR/Okta CISO event created top-down customer demand; opportunity-sharing rhythm made the pipeline visible. No individual seller relationships were required.

65 opportunities launched, 15+ closed, motion that survives seller churn — and a repeatable framework for any ISV partnership that needs the AWS field to originate.

At the executive table where scope, funding, and integration decisions get made, most partner leaders can't argue architecture and most engineers can't argue commercial structure. The gap gets resolved by committee, badly.

Argue both sides. Sit in the scope conversation on the Nebula co-build with strong opinions on MVP cut and integration path; sit in the commercial conversation with the same clarity on Marketplace mechanics and consumption economics.

Decisions land faster and closer to what the joint product actually needs. It's why 12 co-engineered solutions shipped instead of stalled — and the throughline in the writing.