 And I'm happy to announce our panelists. We have Rosalind Lavery from WooCommerce. We have Miriam Schwab from Elementor. And James Giraud from Team WP. This is a really cool space. We've got some volume to it. This is gonna be fantastic. So we're here today to talk about partnerships. I'm gonna give a little bit of context for this. WordPress, as we know, it's a big decentralized ecosystem. There's a lot of players. Coming to a WordCamp like this is a great way to get a sense of just like how big our ecosystem is. And this is still just a small part of it. And one of the best ways that we find to grow in this ecosystem is through partnerships. And in putting this together, I wanted to give you guys a chance to hear from people who have a lot of experience in partnerships and have a couple of things we wanna accomplish. We want to give you a better sense of what's possible, like open you to new ideas about partnerships, give you a chance to hear from each of them with some guidance on what to look for in a good partnership, what are some of the opportunities and challenges. And then ultimately, what we're hoping to do is give you some takeaways that inspire you to go out and work on partnerships of your own. So let's go ahead and get started. So Rosalind, let's just get a little bit of context for your background. You're not a stranger to WordPress. You've been in this space for a long time. Can you just give folks a little bit of context of where you started and what you do now? Sure, cool. Hi, everyone. So I started, I had to go check this. I started working with WordPress in 2009 and spent a number of years, well, a few years building WordPress sites and then a number of years building WooCommerce sites. It was quite exciting and I was in South Africa at the time and it was very exciting at the time because there were a lot of people asking for, how do we make this give us money kind of thing, you know? So that was quite fun. And then I worked at some payment companies in BD and partnership roles for a few years and now I am part of the payment partnership team at WooCommerce and looking at our payment partnerships as well as starting to consider our payment program more broadly within the company. One thing I'm curious about is, have you noticed anything? So there's the way that we do partnerships in WordPress and I think WooCommerce is a great example. It's a much more mature in general program compared to what a lot of folks are doing but you also have experience in the world outside and like the payment space, et cetera. When you, how would you, how well developed do you feel like the partnership stuff is in the WordPress space today? In WordPress in general, I think to me it's almost intrinsically part of it because we're an ecosystem. Like nothing works individually, nothing works on its own. It all is about how we work together and I think the whole nature of WordPress in itself is a bit of a partnership. Yes. So I think the whole ecosystem is kind of designed perfectly for partnerships. Whether we are that developed in figuring out how we formalize that a little bit more I think is potentially where there's growth still to be seen but I think it is part of our ethos. It's like we're well set up for it and the growth part is a lot of what I've been noticing is where it makes sense to people. Maybe they just haven't been curious enough or they're intimidating to like where do I start but there's a general readiness in the space for it. Miriam, so you are also no stranger to WordPress. You've seen and experienced a lot. For those who don't know, can you give us a little bit of your background and what you're doing now? Sure. So I started working with WordPress about 15, 16 years ago and I founded WordPress Development Agency based in Israel. We worked with leading Israeli tech companies and large organizations building custom implementations for them on WordPress. Through the years I came to be familiar with all of the benefits and some of the disadvantages of working with WordPress particularly around performance, scaling and security and tried to look for solutions for that and in the end came to the conclusion that publishing WordPress sites in a static format would solve all of that and I founded a company called Stratik. Works on that for quite a few years and it was acquired a year ago by Elementor. So now I'm at Elementor and I have a relatively new position there as head of WordPress Relations. So in my agency and at Stratik and at Elementor I've had different types of experience and interactions around partnerships. And one of the things I love too is you've also seen at Gamut having both been on the hosting side of things and Elementor has a massive plugin in the space with its own really ecosystem around it as well. So you've had a very rich diverse range of experiences on that front. Yeah, depending on where you are at within our ecosystem, within WordPress, partnerships might look a little differently to you whether there's many agencies here who are working in partnerships as well or if you're a product company or hosting company or a company like Elementor where there's a plugin and there's hosting and there's Stratik now. And like you said, Elementor is very interesting because it has a very large ecosystem around it. Wow, I can't remember the number of plugins. I think there might be like something like a thousand extensions. No, just focused on that, yeah. Built just for Elementor, which is crazy. And some of those extensions and plugins are generating serious revenue. So it's like a mini ecosystem in and of itself. And I think it's worth saying too and while just to plant the seed broadly that partnerships is a very encompassing term that can mean a lot of different things, right? Like that's part of what you're alluding to there is like the way that Elementor would do it might be different than what a hosting company would do versus a small agency. Like partnerships is relevant and just the seed I want to plant with you broadly is don't just assume what it means. Like for some people, a partnership is, oh, we're gonna have an affiliate arrangement. And generally versus all the way to like a very deep integration. And one of the examples is paperwork being signed or not. That's one of the turning points where at least in general I find it's, okay, now it's more serious. I think what you were saying about WordPress like the nature of our ecosystem being one that kind of just develops partnerships in and of itself. So I think Elementor's a good example of that because Elementor was developed to be extensible. Yes. Right? And actually I was just talking to someone who used to extend plugins and was working with Elementor and he was so thrilled with Elementor's documentation as a developer. So from the beginning, if you're building a product and you build it so that others can build on top of it and around it, then you're already creating a form of partnerships by actually just almost not doing anything. Yep. You're facilitating that. So James, you've had quite the background in WordPress as well. And you've had as like an especially special way of seeing like the partnership side of the ecosystem grow. Please tell us a little bit about where, when WordPress came into the radar for you, what that looked like and then what you're doing today. Yeah, I have been in the WordPress space almost as long as Miriam actually, about 14, 15 years. Started out running my own little agency, did some product work for page lines theme back in the day for those of you who may remember one of the first page builders, building themes and plugins there and then got hired on actually as their director of operations and doing community management before making the leap to Envato where I was for a while as the author engagement lead that was kind of my main role working with all 60,000 of the independent creators in the Envato ecosystem including many WordPress developers. Now we talked about this. This is interesting too because of the timing, like partnerships as a concept hadn't really been formalized. So it was author engagement. Yeah, author engagement. So I mean, if you think about, it's sort of like a mashup of partnerships and community engagement and community management because so much of what we do working with at scale with so many independent creators is community, right? Just like in WordPress. And so you're navigating a lot of the challenges and opportunities that come along with that. I also worked at Gravity Forms which is a plugin many people may know in the space and most recently was at Stellar WP. And what are you doing now? Give us some context. Oh, what am I doing now? Now I, in the last 18, 20 weeks have been going full steam into Team WP which is a team and culture platform for WordPress companies. James, one of the things I loved about the work you did with Envato early on is like you're very much getting into and this is general about partnerships is it's work that really affects people's livelihoods. When it goes well, it makes it's fantastic. When it doesn't like a strong partnership can be, can make all the difference in a business. And it's all one of the things that we can sometimes just say, oh, it's business but partnerships is also very much about the relationships and like how well people fit together. There's a cultural aspect to it as well. So, you guys, we have a lot of perspective that we can draw from here. What I wanna start with is talk a bit about partnerships as a concept. And the first question I'll start with you Rosalind is when you think about partnerships, for those who like, so first I agree that like it's a general way that we kind of do things in WordPress but now when I went for purposes of this discussion I'm talking about like more formal especially on the commercial and the business side of things. Like we're growing together in a partnership so that's the context for it. From your perspective, like what are some of the benefits and trade-offs that folks should be aware of when they're thinking about partnerships? I think that's, it's always so broad and this is kind of because it depends how you've designed your partnerships or kind of what you're wanting to get out of it. I always see partnerships as being a balance. It, to me, I sort of like, I don't really put affiliates into a partnership concept in my mind because to me that's often a lot more one way. Yeah, can you just touch on that for a moment because I think that's an important concept. Like people, a lot of times I've heard multiple people, oh I have affiliates. It's like, what's that the one way versus two way? And the way that I see it is that the definition of partnership means that there has to be benefit going both directions and kind of similar benefit going back and forth between both sides. So affiliates is a lot more, a lot of the time is kind of based, I see it as being a little bit more of a one way benefit in a way that is then compensated. And that's a bit of a transaction that is there's something going one way and we're paying for it in the other direction but it's almost more like a sale and less like I am trading with you and I'm giving something and it's coming back but together we're growing more than what we would if we were individually selling those things to different people or something. That's a bit harder to, but it's a bit of the one plus one is more than two kind of concept. So one of the clear benefits if it's two ways that you're growing together, your interests are aligned. What's a trade off? Like what's a downside of that level of like you're both working closely together? I think the tricky thing that you have to be aware of when you are building partnerships is how you manage the competition behind that because naturally what ends up happening as you start building partnerships is it becomes a question of, well what you're doing is you're making something more together than you would individually but now it means that you're growing differently to how you are to the rest of the ecosystem and particularly think when you're in a space of an ecosystem, you're now starting to elevate particular people or particular partnerships within that space and how do you make sure that you're still growing the broader ecosystem as part of that and how do you balance that competition that happens between the different partners that you have and keep that balance in a way that you don't end up because in my mind as well like you can get exclusive partnerships, they're not the ones that I tend to prefer because I think they often remove people out of the ecosystem more than they actually encourage them. This is a key point. This is something for folks who are new to it, I've noticed this a lot, where they'll gravitate towards exclusive and it makes sense at first blush like why someone would ask for that but in general, it's like, at least in my experience, it is more of a short term. It's maybe a short term win but you're missing out on the long run. Yes and I associate that to the concept of growing the pie. You want to together be growing the pie as well as each other's business and the growing the pie piece is very difficult to do in an exclusive arrangement because invariably, the world changes, systems, what you need out of it, you almost become a bit too comfortable in an exclusive environment because it's a little bit like what you would expect, you're going to get the worst coffee at an airport because you've got no choice. You've got no, exactly. And I think I put exclusivity into a bit of a similar thing. So I think there are times when it can work but I think it's a tricky piece of it and a lot of the time for me, it's more about how you find that balance and how you build partnerships in a way that shows and creates value that is beneficial to both sides of that partnership as well as the users or merchants or whoever that you're actually doing that partnership for. There's always a third party and I think taking that third party into account, you're generally partnering to build value between two companies but for the benefit of a broader community. So there's always that third element that you have to take into account. That's a key point because sometimes people talk about partnerships but if you lose focus on the mutual customer, then it's like, oh, we have a partnership but it doesn't really go anywhere. Miriam, so from your perspective, it is a similar question, like you have a lot of experience in partnerships, you've seen it from multiple lenses now and the hosting side and the plug-in side of things and what are some of the benefits and trade-offs especially that stand out to you? Well, like you mentioned, the benefit really is one plus one equals more than two. It's an exponential. Yeah, and I think that's one of the wonderful things about being in business in general and then we're pressed specifically, which is that instead of everyone just doing their own thing and staying in their own lane, if we each bring our value to each other's customers then everyone wins and including the customer, right? Because like for example with Elementor, Elementor's market shares is relatively large and so what happens is a lot of other products in the ecosystem will see that a large percentage of their users are using Elementor. So how can we make sure that these users are getting the best possible experience? We can all pretend that like you're doing your thing and we're doing we're thing and there's no overlap or we can look at it and say, okay, our mutual users are gaining value from you, value from us. Now how can we collaborate or at the very least communicate around that reality and make sure that we're bringing the best possible experience? Yes, I like that. James, you've had this like one of the reasons why you focus on the culture side of things now is that you've been a part of that at multiple steps in the different organizations that you've been in both being acquired, like there's all these cultural things that often don't get talked about so much that have an impact. I'm curious from a partnerships perspective, what are some of the benefits that you've noticed like when it comes to the culture of a company? When you're doing, so company A has a certain way of doing things, so commercially they agree that this is a, we're gonna work well together and like Rosalind was saying it's gonna be a two way, we're really gonna work, but maybe they're very different cultures. I think one of the interesting things about the space is anybody can start, right? Anybody can create a company, anyone can create a product and because of that you get the opportunity to see different perspectives on ways of working and like how you approach problem solving, how you approach the user story or the customer experience, right? And so one of the great opportunities of partnerships is the opportunity to be exposed to different ways of working. And so a great example actually I can tell is a story of Envato and Elementor. So very early on, I say early on it was a few years ago now, maybe not so early, but like Elementor had been working toward this thing called template kits, right? This idea of a library of templates that you can do and obviously Envato has this huge community of authors that are designers and creating demos and doing all of that kind of thing and one of the things that was really neat for me being in that story was watching the way that the Elementor crew would craft an agenda for our meetings together and being really clear about the outcomes of the meetings and disciplined around what we were going to talk about and watching that culture come through, I don't know if that's an Israeli thing or if it was just the discipline. There's a Hebrew word for that, it's tahlis. Okay. That means let's get to the point. Yeah. I heard someone laugh, so I heard the word, yeah. So for me, you know, I was in an Australian company and it's a little bit more casual, right? And things, we feel each other out a lot more and so there's that sort of like cultural dynamic as well that was really interesting getting into these conversations and being able to like, being able to go, oh, I like that. Like, I like that way of doing things because we get right to the point and we get into it. So yeah, so that was, that's from a cultural point of view that's kind of funded to be exposed. Are there any trade-offs that stand out? I think like as far as partnerships go, the trade-off obviously is that they take longer, right? And so if you are going in, expecting things to happen, in partnerships, you have to remember that the partnership is always secondary to the primary thing that's happening. So, yeah. I want to touch on it from a slightly different perspective. Sure. So with WordPress, one of the, at least for me, one of the big benefits is that you have all this, like people from very different backgrounds and perspectives and contexts coming together. WordCams to me are a beautiful example of that. So in partnerships, I think it's quite natural because of our ecosystem for people to say, oh, we should do business together. And that's a logical conclusion. Yet they're coming from a very different context or a different set of, like a different culture, different, so from my perspective, I see the benefits of that, right? Because we serve a global audience. I think the more intermixed, you can be the better. But what are, are there any trade-offs that stand out to you from a culture perspective where it's like company A is very much this way and B that way? I think being clear on what the value of the partnership is going to be, I mean, for a lot of people, it's revenue, right? Like ROI, what is this going to lead me to? And partnerships are a long game, right? And so if you get into it for a short-term thing, I think sometimes that can work and sometimes there are short-term goals, right, that you can assign to it, but there really are about the long-term value that you're gonna get out of it. So if you have misalignment around what the ROI is going to be, that's something that you really have to get clarity on right away. I think that's a good transition to the next. So Rosalind, from your perspective, what are some of the things that you look for? It's almost like, what are some of the positive indicators of a partnership? So you just mentioned the values alignment or you want similar things, but from your perspective, what do you look for? I think the starting point often is just trade customers because of what I was speaking about. Ultimately, you're really designing a partnership to create a benefit for both the companies but mostly for the end users who are actually gonna benefit from that. I think at the same time, that's not enough. And just having shared customers doesn't necessarily mean that there's a way to actually create value beyond just having shared customers. So I think for me, a lot of the time it's understanding shared goals as well between companies. What's an example of a shared goal? Like you've got a shared customer, yeah. I think a lot of the time, a lot of, so I've worked mostly in product partnerships which is quite a specific field within partnerships. And a lot of the time it is about finding shared incentives that mean that you build a better product together which ultimately benefits the end customer at the end of the day. So I think that is where things can really sort of spearhead the, we're making more than two from the one plus one. So is there opportunity available to be able to create deeper integration that we wouldn't be able to invest the resources in unless there was a way that we were going to accelerate revenue growth by doing this. And it is a long-term goal, there is a lot to that. But so I think the kind of product integration layers are a key part of that. I think there's also looking for how a partnership would benefit how you communicate the ecosystem to your customers. So a lot of what we do at WooCommerce as well is using sort of feedback of products that customers are already using and how do we elevate those and how do we position those in a way that customers are finding them better. So there's, I think it's a bit of a layering approach and you have to find that first key thing and then you kind of growth by finding, and I think often the first things for me are shared customers and then the product and then you start looking at the additional layers of how you can grow within the company. One of the things I found useful because so I agree wholeheartedly it's shared customers, this sort of shared problem set this thing that you're doing for them and then I find that those who do well tend to focus on like some first wins. Like, okay, how do we get started? And like, because it's easy to get lost into the detail sometimes or really focus on the commercials, which are important, but like, how do we actually prove that we're creating value together for the end customers? Miriam, I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the things, and so you've had multiple vantage points over the years of what you've looked for, but in general, what do you look for in a partnership? Are there anything that you'd add or things that you think of differently? So what you were just mentioning about easy first wins is something that I very much believe in because setting up a full-fledged partnership can sometimes be quite complicated, like both sides can understand and be aware that there's a lot of opportunity there and that there's shared customers and just like they can bring more value, et cetera, but sometimes just getting things moving can be complicated and it can even be an issue of internal resources, right? Building a partnership takes a lot of time often around different aspects of it, like the planning strategy and the bureaucracy. So, sorry, I roll my eyes of bureaucracy. What's wrong with bureaucracy? Oh, I want more, just kidding, let's please. So sometimes it's worth it to start working together, also then you get to know each other and create that initial relationship in a simpler way. So one way is, let's say, to even just set up a shared Slack channel. Let's start communicating together and then we can also share with each other our own customers' experiences with each other's products and start to see what it's like to work together. I just wanna make that point real quick that for a lot of folks in WordPress you already have mutual customers and that's a great place to start, is just like, hey, and sometimes that's not obvious, we don't tend to have as much of a focus on like data analytics and sort of understanding. So for some folks who are wanting to work together, that might be exactly where you start getting a Slack room together and say, hey, let's find our mutual customers and see can we do more for them? Right, and through those conversations you can identify even more opportunities that you might not have thought of if you had just gone full speed ahead into some one idea. And then just another easy aspect of getting started is co-marketing. I'll talk about your thing, you'll talk about my thing, let's write a few blog posts, it's like pretty simple, it might not be like big wins also, but it also starts to generate reactions from your own customers. It creates momentum, yeah. So those are just some easy ways and I'm a big believer in that in terms of just getting momentum going and starting to feel each other out and understand what it's like to work together and build the relationship. So I'm seeing a couple of things. First, in looking for a partnership, so okay, you wanna find companies where you can have a mutual win. So you're looking for a couple of things. First, shared customers. I think that's gonna, I've seen people like, oh, we wanna do a partner with so-and-so. And they're like, well, you don't really have much in common. They're focused on the small business, they're focused on enterprise. You're almost, I've talked to folks who've like said, oh yeah, we tried a partnership and you asked a couple of questions like, well, that was very different audiences. So finding shared customers, finding this aligned interest and a problem set that you can solve and finding things that you can, like a good starting point. It's like, you may have a great long-term idea about how closely you can integrate, but starting with something to get the ball rolling. James, so from your perspective, like, especially with kind of what you've seen over the years, how do you measure the success of a partnership? Oh, give me the data question, great. You know, I think, so to start, if you're going for quick wins, that's probably the first place to get your first data set, right? So if you don't have any data on a partnership and you're not sure how much investment you wanna pour into the partnership, those quick wins, those easy sort of things that don't involve a lot of bureaucracy or overhead or team alignment, can be a really good way to sort of prove the value or prove the business case for why you might wanna take the next step for it. I'm a big believer in hypothesis-driven design and development, so start from a hypothesis. We think that by doing this partnership together, we are going to see maybe an x% number of visits come to that or a number of conversions. And you don't have to set it big, but just see if you can prove your hypothesis and then go from there, okay, we proved it. What's next, what's next from there? So that's a great way to start getting data and then move beyond that into the bigger ROI, which I think is around the effort scaling, right? So, from my experience, one of the things that often happens is we're already doing our thing. We've already got our campaigns going, our marketing, our activities, our products, and we've got these problems that we're trying to solve for our customers. And when somebody comes alongside us and says, hey, we can solve that problem or an ongoing problem faster than you can, right? And still enhance that. That's actually, that helps sell my product anyway. Right, so it actually increases, as Roslyn was saying, that ecosystem view of like, no, just by having other players, other partners in sharing what we're doing together and serving that customer together, increases the value for both. And then that relationship can get stronger and stronger over time as you start to see those, those synergies, I use the word, come together. It's a great word. So, I'm gonna have to say it. Roslyn, so from your perspective, so WooCommerce has quite a mature partnership program, lots of experience. Like there's a strong background doing partnerships. So a lot of folks are gonna focus initially on how to get started. We've talked a bit about that. What are some of the things from your experience that stand out in terms of like, because a good partnership is gonna be long term, right? It's gonna go for a long time. So what are some of the things that you think about beyond the initial start? Maybe like year after the first year and beyond. What are some of the things that, the way that you think about long term? I think that often has to come down to seeing things from both perspectives. So a lot of the time how I approach kind of growth conversations or, and a lot of the time it's just about, let's have a discussion, let's, and this is where the relationship side of partnerships comes in really is understanding and kind of what I was speaking about before, understanding what our shared goals are. Like everything's evolving in the economy all the time. So being able to reevaluate and go, okay, well have our goals changed, have our customers changed, have which things have changed from the basis of what we started from and then how do we look at those again? I think a bit of an analogy, but I do some handstand training and I kind of see it as a little bit of it. Like you're constantly tweaking, like you have to find your foundation. And a lot of the time that foundation is pretty solid and actually remains consistent the whole way through the partnership. So the basic fundamentals of like where you're generating revenue, what the actual like foundation of that partnership agreement is, is pretty consistent. And that's around finding or share customers and making sure that you have like aligned incentives. And then beyond that, the way that I approached this and what I was saying is like, if you are trying to understand what you would want to do next with a partnership, seeing it from the other person's perspective and going, what would be a win for them? And then looking at it from the other side and going, okay, if that's the win for them and understanding what that is, what are things that I could do on my side that are not a huge cost or things that I'm doing already that would benefit that goal? But you kind of have to put the other person's hat on to go because they don't know what you have to offer. You don't know what they have to offer, but you sort of have to play both sides to be able to figure out how you find growth within that. I think this is especially relevant in like roadmap discussions where, okay, you have a current state, you have some that's working, but you're both gonna grow. And I like that you like, this is part of why having that strong foundation of aligned interest matters because if it's loose and like you're focusing on one audience and they're focusing on another, then odds are you're gonna become even more separated, whereas if you have that same shared interest, yeah, that's... So, Miriam, what about from your perspective? When you think of past that initial stage of a partnership, so you have the quick wins, if you think about long-term success, what are some of the things that you look at as like indicators that this is gonna work well for the long-term? Well, it really is about making sure that each side feels like they're winning, not just feels, sometimes it is about feeling. Sometimes it is. Like in everything, but it's actually winning. And it is important to keep your partner in mind all the time and make sure that you understand what it is that they want to achieve and also really to focus on what it is that you want to achieve and be clear about that. And then keeping an eye on it, is it working for us? Is it not? What can we improve? Or is it really just not meant to be? And parting ways is hopefully as friends, which it should be as friends because it was like an attempt to make each other more successful. And if it didn't work, it's just not necessarily anyone's fault. I wanna touch on that for a moment because I think a lot of folks at least, and maybe it's just because we're still learning how to do this, like you set something up, but people tend to not like ask questions or so like have a frank, it's like, oh, we created a partnership, especially if you're public about it. But in your experience, Miriam, like when something's not working, why, yeah, like how do you think about that? Yeah, so actually in some cases, I said that it's not necessarily anyone's fault. Sometimes what happens is expectations aren't aligned and the expected efforts from both sides is not just communicated properly. And so, they'll set out on a journey together with expectations that each will do X, but actually that's not what they all each understand. So communication is really important. Something else that can be tricky is if one of the players is a much stronger company than the other and I mean stronger, maybe just like, yeah, more experience, larger, more resources. Maybe a marketing team versus not having one, yeah. And what can sometimes happen there is not what you would expect, what you would think is that that, because they're larger, they can put more resources towards it, but because they're larger, they might be working on many, like have their fingers in many pies or whatever, I don't feel like that, I don't want to say, fingers in many something is in pies. Everyone wants to have fingers in pies. Yeah, it's all about pies. So, blueberry, whatever. Anyways, so, so a large organization might not put in the effort that the smaller organizations thought that they could or would because they're big. Just because someone's big doesn't mean that that's how it's going to be. And so it's really important that if you're like the smaller player to really, really make sure that you are demanding in some way, that both parties are putting in some kind of equal effort. Having said that, sorry, just one more thing. Sometimes working with a larger entity that's putting in less effort still has a ton of value for a smaller company because they've aligned themselves with the brand of the larger company. And so in that way, but at least in that way, the expectations are aligned. I'm aligning myself with you. Now my brand is seen with your bigger brand and just that on its own practically gives me value. So anyways, communication expectations. James, so I want to talk a bit more about this like when things aren't working. And I like to focus on the positive, but I think if you, by asking good questions and by anticipating like how you deal with that. So in your experience at Envato, you were sometimes in the position of having to like disappoint, communicate disappointments. And sometimes. So what are some of the ways that anything besides some perhaps scar tissue, anything that stands out from that experience of like when things aren't working, like how do you deal with it? How should people think about it? I think the first thing in anything is just remember you're talking to humans. You're not talking to machines. And so there are feelings involved no matter, we can say it's just business, but it is just people. And that to me, I think is the number one thing to remember. And you know, Rosalind said relationships, Miramah said relationships. It's all relationships. Our community is too small to let failures in these experiences get in the way of good, healthy relationships. So sorry, I'll get that rant out of the way. But failure, I wouldn't say failure or I would say like learning opportunities is maybe a better term to describe that. Let me put it as specific examples. Especially as a larger company. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you look at it like a policy change, for instance. You look at like, okay, we need to make an adjustment. Maybe you started out, you have like 10 partnerships and then you take a step back. WooCommerce is an element. As a larger company, you look at this and say, okay, we need to make a change. And that change, it could have a negative effect on a smaller partner. Yeah, so we deal with that a lot at Envato. And one of the things you just have to do is first of all, be direct about it. Like don't beat around the bush. One of the challenges we had at Envato is your communications are often scaled. So when we would make a policy decision, we weren't impacting one and two. We were impacting tens of thousands. And not just tens of thousands, but those might be the individual authors, but there's the employees of those author teams. There's their families that, and so it's very easy for a motion to get involved in that. So you need to be direct, right? You need to be clear about what the change is. You need to be clear about the why. But you also have to keep your eye on the North Star. What are you working toward? And if ultimately the reason for the policy change is the overall health and growth of the entire ecosystem or the entire experience or the customer experience, you as the primary of that partnership, I guess, have to just own that and be okay with the flak. And you're gonna deal with it, right? We deal with it in WordPress all the time, right? Our livelihood comes out of this. And when our pull request doesn't get accepted for something in a new version release that's really gonna impact our business, we get emotional. So it's very similar, yeah. Rosalind, from your perspective, for folks who are starting out, let's take an example of a product company. If they're new to partnerships, and I think, especially for folks here, there is probably already this general sense of the value of collaboration and working together on things. But let's say they wanna say, okay, we want to grow. We want to do something more formal. We wanna find our way to align interests. Where would you suggest someone start? How should they think about it? Where should they focus their initial efforts? Is it they're brand new? It's very hard to get that specific. I sort of feel like a lot of the time it's just about being curious about the initial conversation. And acknowledging that not everything needs to be a yes. I think part of what I've experienced a little bit with people that are trying to enter into a partnership discussion is a little bit of that of, well, we have aligned, we have shared customers. So it must work. There must be something there. And you sort of, I think partnerships when they work are quite obvious, actually. I think they don't require a huge amount of digging. You shouldn't need to try that hard. If you're having to set up new things and set up new structures and try that hard, you probably just have not found the right one. And I think you wanna start with something small. I would say you probably wanna start with companies of a similar size. And you wanna start in a space where you are already winning. And I think this is also part of what I've seen go wrong is partnerships are not a good way for you to enter a market. This is an important point because, yeah. Yeah. And it is because in order for you to benefit each other, you both need to be bringing a certain value within that same concept at the same time. So you can't be the launch partner for something. That's more of an affiliate kind of style thing where actually what you're looking for is inbound people coming towards you to start a new section. So I think it's something that you're already winning in that somebody else is already winning in to the similar degree. And then you can start branching out to potentially working with bigger companies or bigger companies. I think that's a great point. So for like products, let's take small products, move some small plugins. What I'm hearing you say is that they might start by saying, okay, let's work with others of similar size of similar complements and be able to introduce each other to each other's customers. Like we can sort of work together that way and gain some experience and increase the degree to which they're winning. Yes, yes. And sort of if I'm winning in, I'm doing really well, we're both doing really well in the European market and you're tackling point of sale and the other person's tackling payments or something. So you're working with the same customers, you're working within the same product line, but you're both winning within each of those areas and you can support each other to make a better product for the customer but I think getting too complicated and trying to dig too deep to find exactly how you're going to find new customers is too hard to start. And I wanna make that, think of that point too. It's like, it needs to be a two-way thing. So sometimes it's like, folks will rightly see partnerships as a great growth opportunity, because it is. You have to make sure that you've done some initial work, that you've done the work that you are winning to an appropriate degree where you're proving that you have value versus just seeing someone with an audience already and say, hey, can I tap into that without having something to bring? You have to do work as part of that partnership and I think that's the point of this. It's a two-way street on both sides. You have to bring value but you also have to actually do work. It can't be a one-way street. Miriam, what about you? For someone who's new, they like this idea of partnerships, they wanna get started. Where do you recommend they think? Where should they focus? I guess one way to start is to analyze their own data and just their own interactions with their customers or clients and understand what other products they're using. So yeah, look at that and then... Looking at support is a great way to do that. Support. What shows up most often? Yeah, those types of questions and interactions. And just start to look at that. If it's a product that can bring more value to your customer's current setup with you, that's a great win potentially. Something that you're not doing. In my experience, when it's something that doesn't overlap at all with what we are doing, whatever we is. And I'm talking about in the previous, everything. And then it's also much more comfortable. So in the WordPress space, there is the ability and the opportunity to partner with competing companies. And it happens all the time. It's just more complicated and it demands a certain level of expertise to make it work in a way that everyone is comfortable with it while retaining their own brands and protections and this and that and clients and customers. It's just, it's a whole thing. So if you can start with something that has no overlap in any way, then I think that also can be an easier way to get started. Cool. James, what about from your perspective? For someone brand new, where should they start? Start by getting to know people, I think is good, building relationships and adding value without expecting anything in return. But James, what if I have to make money? Don't start with money. Don't start with money. If you're fresh, don't do that. Because that's not what you need, actually. Well, let me step back from that. We all need money, I get that. We all want revenue. But when you're getting started, the most important thing that you can get is audience and credibility. And in WordPress, relationships are the way to grow audience and credibility. So finding those people that are complimentary to you, that are maybe at the same size as you, or in the same kind of like vein as you, is good, learn from them, figure out what the problem space is like and then finding ways to be able to solve the problem together is good. I like what Miriam said about not being, you know, like doing the same thing first. Like you might go to their party, but it's probably not a good idea to do something necessarily with them that might be a little bit rough to start. But, you know, like there are complimentary things that you can do that can support it. So that's where I would start. Excellent. And from my perspective, what I would just add, like one of the themes that stands out, just the importance of continuing to be curious. One thing I'm listening to you as it stands out to me, I like your point about like it shouldn't be complicated, like it's being simple. And I've talked to quite a few folks where there are partnership opportunities that are actually really obvious and they're like looking in harder places. Or, and I like the idea of seeing what your customers are already doing because if you're like, your customers can often tell you and then all that you're really doing is starting a relationship. You say, oh, this plugin shows up a lot with my customers. How about we go talk to them? And then at that point, like you were saying, it begins, okay, maybe we can find ways that we can integrate to provide more value in that context. Last but not least, from my perspective, just want to encourage you guys to try things, right? Like be curious, start with small things and now between now and the next WordCamp then you can tell us about some of the things you've worked on. Thank you each for your time. Appreciate it very much. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of our WordCamp. Thank you. Before you guys race off, I think if anybody has just a quick question, we can squeeze in one or two. There's microphones on both sides. I will stall by saying thank you with these. Yeah, if anyone wants to jump up to that mic, if not, then. Yeah, if we have time, we can take a couple questions. Yeah, why not? Just like one or two, yeah. Sure. We can take one or two questions. Are there? Do you guys have anything? Yeah, all right. I don't know, guess not. I think we were at the time, right? Yeah, it's okay, but it's okay. If you guys have questions afterwards, you can try to catch these fine folks. Oh, there's one? All right. We'll take one. Who is WordCommerce currently partnered with? They have lots of partners. If you go look at our marketplace, a lot of those people, yeah, so we partner in various categories, payments, marketing, shipping, tax. Sort of the core products that are not part of core, of the core product of WordCommerce, I guess acknowledge and realize that we can't solve all the problems that we don't intend to, so the core product solves the basics of what you need in order to run a store, but there are huge around nuances needed, country-specific solutions, so a lot of those solutions are partners in various different forms, but yeah, our marketplace and kind of all of the products that are available in there is a good source to understand kind of like where we look for partners that would be in that. And one of the benefits of being at WordCamp, there's a great WordCommerce booth, so you can go and check it out and ask them. Yeah, so, cool, thank you guys. Yeah, let's give one more round of applause for our wonderful panel, thank you.