Amazon invests in Acquia
Today Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal and Acquia announced that Amazon invested in Acquia. See his post here. Partnership at it’s best is mutual and customer driven. And that was certainly the case here and on heels of today’s announcement I wish both Amazon and Acquia continued growth and more delighted customers together!
So let’s take a moment to double click. The Amazon and Acquia partnership comes after much good work and congratulations are due to both teams for working successfully together to deliver a strong track record of customer success over some years. The fact that this led to an investment is just icing on the cake. It was not the objective of the partnership, it just played out that way. Whereas so many startups look to bigger partners for investment as a starting point, I advise against it. So unless there is some absolutely obvious imperative that it must start with an investment, I highly recommend focusing instead on developing success in the market which proves to your potential partner why it would be in their interests to work with you. Better still let them approach you, that way you’ll know you’ve really earned it.
And, for those of you following our Harvard i Lab Startup Secrets series, this is a perfect example of the article I talked about here on “How Small Companies Can Get Big, Fast!”
May many more entrepreneurs be inspired to achieve win-win partnerships from these examples. If you have stories of how you’ve built successful strategic partnerships for your startup, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below as I’m always looking for fresh case studies to bring to the Startup Secrets workshops.