Partnerships are a growth strategy startups can’t afford to overlook, says Philly’s Bob Moore in new book

Philly tech leader and entrepreneur Bob Moore thinks leaning into partnerships can be the key to unlocking business success.

That’s the theme of his new book, “Ecosystem-Led Growth: A Blueprint for Sales and Marketing Success Using the Power of Partnerships,” which is available from Wiley publishing starting today.

“Seeing the ways in which partnerships and partner ecosystems are very often under leveraged and under utilized,” Moore told Technical.ly. “When in reality, they can be one of the most successful and prolific drivers of how a company grows.”

Embedded in the book’s 240 pages are lessons from his own lengthy career, and stories from almost 20 other tech companies about their use of partner ecosystems, specifically looking at marketing, sales and customer success use cases.

It’s much harder to raise capital these days, thanks to the end of the zero interest rate policy era and other factors, Moore said. Content marketing, outbound selling and ad sales are not as efficient as they used to be. So tech companies are looking for inexpensive growth strategies — and he’s convinced partnerships are the way.

“This is where people keep coming back to ecosystems,” Moore said, “and the power of using relationships that you have with other companies.”

Leveraging partner companies’ relationships and data makes it easier to reach customers, identify further partners and grow the company, he said.

He would know: Moore is currently the CEO and cofounder of Crossbeam, a partner ecosystem platform founded in 2018. He’s been active in the industry since 2009, when he cofounded analytics software company RJMetrics. The company was acquired by ecommerce company Magento in 2016, which was later acquired by Adobe in 2018.

Moore went on to cofound Stitch, a spinoff analytics firm of RJMetrics, in 2017. Stitch was acquired by cloud data integration company Talend in 2018 which was eventually acquired by King of Prussia-based Qlik in 2023.

His new book has already gotten positive peer reviews. “A masterclass for revenue leaders on thriving in today’s market,” Sam Jacobs, CEO of leadership community Pavilion, wrote in a cover blurb. “Bob Moore adeptly connects the dots between modern partner ecosystems, the data they provide, and the path to success in this new era of growth.”

The first part of the book recounts the story of RJMetrics and considers the differences between it and its competitor, data analytics company Looker, which was sold to Google for $2.6 billion. Looking back, Moore thinks about the fact that RJMetrics might have had more opportunities if it had focused more on partnerships, like Looker did.

Moore relished interviewing old customers and competitors to build out a full picture in “Ecosystem-Led Growth.”

“It’s just so incredibly fun to be around for long enough to have your arch rivals become your friends,” Moore said. “And to have a shared objective in building really cool things and bringing these really cool strategies to life and in a really interesting way that comes full circle.”

 

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.