Always Top-of-Mind with Partners

Even though Netenrich hasn’t acquired or been acquired, Crotty said he’s still fielding questions of whether it could head in that direction sooner than later.

“We have a lot of partners during the sales cycle that’ll ask us, ‘What’s your plan; what assurances can you give me?'” he said. “There’s nothing nefarious happening, but it could happen. But I think that communication with the partner of, ‘We’re going to take care of you,’ is important. Partners have been with us for years, but they’re starting to … they’re almost getting gunshy in many cases. ‘What is your plan if you get bought? What’s going to happen? How do I protect the access to technology or the IP that I build on top of it? How do we handle that?’ So it’s an interesting pre-sales conversation that typically happens. I mean, it’s almost 90% of cases now.”

With longer deals, partners want some sort of written protection in there, especially as it relates to IP that they may want to build on top of platforms, Crotty said.

“But they also want to know, ‘Hey, are you in it for the long haul?'” he said. “‘If I make a big investment and we do this together, we want some assurances that you’re not going to cut and run.'”