When people think about partnerships, they often focus on sales acceleration or technical integrations. But partnerships are far more than a go-to-market play. They can be one of the biggest levers for both revenue growth and long-term enterprise value.
But what’s often missed in the conversation is how partnerships also drive exits, specifically through strategic M&A.
In fact, strategic partnerships are often the X-factor behind some of the most significant exits in tech, including the record-setting acquisition of cloud security firm Wiz by Google for $32 billion in March 2025.
As MD of the high-growth startups program at Microsoft, and as VP of Partnerships at Clearbit which was acquired by HubSpot as a strategic partner, I've seen this play over and over again.
So how do partnerships actually move the needle? Let's break it down.
They Drive Top-Line Revenue Growth
Partnerships open the door to customers you might never reach alone. Cloud hyperscaler marketplaces, reseller arrangements, and co-selling motions enable businesses to tap into pre-committed enterprise budgets, scale globally without investing in local sales teams, and piggyback on the trust of an established brand.
Top-line growth accelerates when a company aligns with partners that already have deep customer relationships and a compelling reason to bring your solution into deals. For example, cloud marketplaces (AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace) give software companies access to customers with existing budgets, streamlining procurement and compressing sales cycles.
One of the most obvious benefits of a strong partner strategy is faster access to revenue. When companies plug into ecosystems like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, they’re getting access to a massive global sales engine.
Through cloud marketplaces and co-sell programs, partners can shorten sales cycles, unlock customer budgets that are already allocated to cloud providers, and win deals with far less friction. In many cases, it’s the difference between slow organic growth and exponential scaling.
They Improve the Bottom Line
While partnerships supercharge the sales funnel, they also reduce costs. Think about joint marketing campaigns funded by partners, technical integrations that reduce product development overhead, or customer success motions shared across companies.
Add to that partner-funded incentives like MDF (Market Development Funds), solution accelerators, or sales rebates, and your CAC drops significantly. These bottom-line benefits often go unnoticed in early-stage growth models, but they create the margin flexibility needed to fund expansion, enter new markets, or increase reinvestment in R&D.
Partnerships don’t just generate more revenue. They often reduce the cost to earn it. In cloud ecosystems, partners often benefit from access to credits, programs, and prioritized exposure that a solo go-to-market strategy simply can’t match.
The result is higher margins, more efficient growth, and better financial optionality.
Exit Acceleration: Partnerships as Strategic Acquisition Triggers
Here’s what most people miss: partnerships don’t just help you grow, they make you hard to ignore.
If your company is tightly integrated into the go-to-market motion of a hyperscaler or platform provider, you become part of their value chain. That makes you strategically valuable, and in some cases, a must-acquire asset. Buyers don’t just acquire IP or customer lists anymore. They acquire motion. They acquire momentum. And if your partnerships give you a defensible, revenue-generating position inside an ecosystem, you’ve built something much bigger than product-market fit. You’ve built strategic gravity.
Perhaps the most overlooked (and most powerful) result of a strong partner ecosystem is its ability to increase company valuation and trigger M&A interest. Why? Because buyers today don’t just acquire tech, they acquire traction, market position, and a scalable go-to-market engine. A company with deep strategic partnerships is not only more valuable, it’s less risky.
When a business has embedded itself inside another company’s sales motion, created joint solutions, or become the default choice inside a cloud or platform ecosystem, it’s often too valuable to be left in the hands of a competitor. Strategic acquirers know this - and they act.
Wiz: The Blueprint for Ecosystem-Led Growth and Exit
In March 2025, cloud security startup Wiz agreed to be acquired by Google in a historic $32 billion all-cash deal—making it one of the largest cybersecurity acquisitions of all time.
What made this exit so extraordinary wasn’t just Wiz’s technical strength but their ecosystem-led growth strategy through cloud partnerships.
1. Strategic Cloud Alliances Drove Top-Line Growth
From its early days, Wiz prioritized building deep partnerships with the three major cloud providers: Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These weren’t just surface-level integrations—they were co-selling, co-marketing, and solution alignment efforts that:
This led to unprecedented sales velocity. Wiz became one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history, reaching $100M+ ARR in under 2 years, largely driven by cloud partnerships.
2. Cloud Partnerships Improved Operational Efficiency
Through its alliances, Wiz unlocked go-to-market benefits like:
These programs helped reduce CAC while increasing LTV, allowing Wiz to grow while remaining operationally lean and efficient. The result? Industry-leading margins for a company at its stage.
3. Partner Moats Created Strategic Acquisition Urgency
Google’s acquisition wasn’t just about Wiz’s product, it was about what Wiz had built with the clouds. By becoming one of the de facto security partners across all three major cloud platforms, Wiz was in a rare position: deeply embedded, rapidly growing, and hard to compete with.
Any competitor or acquirer knew that if Wiz slipped into the hands of a rival cloud platform or security company, it could shift the balance of power in the cloud security landscape. That urgency and the moat created by Wiz’s cloud partnerships helped drive the size and speed of the deal.
The Takeaway
Whether you’re a $10M ARR company or on your way to $500M or more, partnerships are one of the most powerful (and underrated) levers for growth. They unlock scale, improve margins, and, when executed well, can even set the stage for transformational exits.
Wiz shows us what’s possible when you don’t just partner but you embed, align, and multiply your impact through ecosystems.
If you’re not building with partners, you’re leaving growth, and possibly billions, on the table.
Whether you’re targeting a revenue milestone or planning for an eventual exit, partnerships are the lever that multiplies your momentum. Companies like Wiz and Clearbit are proof that when partnerships are done right, they don’t just accelerate growth, they create outcomes that rewrite the rules of what’s possible.
In an era where ecosystems win, partnerships aren’t just GTM tactics, they’re strategic imperatives that you should be discussing at the board level.
In an upcoming article, I'll share what we did at Clearbit (acquired by HubSpot) when I was VP of Partnerships. If you want to learn more, subscribe here and never miss an update.
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