Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:01:09 PM
Hi everyone !!

We had a great opportunity October 4, 2018 to ask Nidhi Jain, Director of GTM Strategic Partnerships at Box (LinkedIn) anything in our Slack community.

Nidhi is a wealth of executive experience at not just Box, but also at Intuit and her prior career in capital investment.

Want to schedule 1:1 time with Nidhi? Ask for an introduction to Nidhi through our Advisors program.


How has a background in VC shaped your partnership roles?

Jake Wallace
October 04, 2018 02:01:12 PM
@Nidhi Jain Tell us about your journey that led you to box, how'd you get into partnerships from the Investment banking world?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:03:34 PM
Jake - thanks for your question.. for me investment management and partnerships are quite similar. In the investment banking world one invests $, in partnerships one is investing engineering, marketing and sales resources. So it seemed like a natural extension of my skill set plus I came from a tech background so it was natural for me to come back to it
Kimberly Jefferson
October 04, 2018 02:01:20 PM
@Nidhi Jain How has your background in VC shaped your view of partnership ecosystems?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:04:55 PM
great question !! From my VC background, I had to look at market landscape and figure out trends and which companies would be the future winners. I apply the same rigour when prioritizing partners @Great question
Kimberly Jefferson
October 04, 2018 02:09:17 PM
Thank you! I'd imagine you're also comfortable with a certain amount of risk, and that comes in handy.
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:10:36 PM
Yup absolutely, from the VC world I know that there is a high percentage of failure when you are relying on some external entity for your success.. great point

How do you prioritize partnerships?

Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:01:38 PM
@Nidhi Jain How do you prioritize what partnerships to focus on? Box must have a lot of partner action.
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:07:32 PM
yeah, we are fortunate at Box to have more partners than we can handle. We think of partners in different buckets - some have light weight integration which the partner primarily works on, some have GTM benefits in terms of the brand value and some have real pipeline/ARR associated with it.. For each one of these categories we use a different prioritization framework
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:10:32 PM
That’s interesting.. how do you value brand partnerships? how do you value ARR partnerships? how do you pick between a brand vs. revenue partnerships if you had to choose?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:11:45 PM
For Brand partnerships, we think about how much of resources we have to put behind the partnership. It's a constant ROI discussion
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:12:40 PM
typically for brand partnerships, we try to (1) constant ROI evaluation (2) create templates so we can reuse them, whether it be be for press releases, API integrations etc
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:14:13 PM
If I had to prioritize between the two, I would pick revenue partnerships for sure. However, as you and I both know, revenue partnerships are a bit of longer term.. so we typically have a lot of brand partnerships and a small number of revenue partnerships that we are laser focused on
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:15:06 PM
I had a simple philosophy at FreshBooks; the “logo everywhere” strategy… I assumed revenue would follow (it did)
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:15:35 PM
But focusing on comarketing to get more revenue was a second hustle.
Jake Wallace
October 04, 2018 02:16:18 PM
haha that's how we are @Sunir Shah and also we wanna make sure we "have a seat at the table"
Tyrone Lingley
October 04, 2018 02:10:47 PM
@Nidhi Jain can you expand or share your prioritization framework? what is the process and data you use to validate/prioritize the partnership opportunities that come your way?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:32:38 PM
Hi Tyrone - we use a number of data points for prioritization of technical integrations (1) brand value of the partner (2) how many sales requests are we getting - meaning our sales reps think this is important for them to close the deal (3) engineering resources required to do the integration (4) GTM benefits we are going to get by doing the integration - press release, potential revenue
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:33:30 PM
Of course lots of these factors are subjective, but having a framework creates a shared understanding amongs the internal stakeholders on which partners to priortize and put resources on
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:35:41 PM
For revenue generating partners, in addition to the technical integration framework we also consider (1) how much is Box valuable in closing the partner sales rep deal (2) is the partner willing to open up their sales channel
Scott Brooks
October 04, 2018 02:06:54 PM
@Nidhi Jain I have a question: I don’t have a partner strategy yet, i have no partners yet … so how do i pick and target my first 5
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:09:38 PM
even before i work on my partner strategy, I work with the key stakeholders to understand what is the goal/key metrics. Once we know the goal - whether it is gap filler or generating pipeline it's a bit easier to figure out the partner strategy.. Can you provide a bit more detail on your company and I can provide some specific feedback
Scott Brooks
October 04, 2018 02:36:23 PM
Hi Nidhi, So I am the founder of a company called timehero.com, we are an AI scheduling tool that automatically plans tasks for you and your team around meetings. (changing when your day changes) So ideally I want partners who want to add scheduling to their tools for their customers.
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:50:44 PM
Got it.. I don't know enough about this space, but seems like timehero.com would want to be where folks are setting up meetings, so outlook and gmail calendar.. I know that they have plugins and apps stores where one can get listed
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:52:38 PM
I would start with one or two partnerships and see how that goes.. before doing too much at one go.. In the early days of a company, I would pivot more towards awareness and adoption of your brand/tool before thinking about revenue.. my 2 cents
Scott Brooks
October 04, 2018 02:53:34 PM
Appreciate the insights ! cheers Scott

What tools do you use to manage partnerships?

Jake Wallace
October 04, 2018 02:07:04 PM
@Nidhi Jain What tools do you use to successfully manage your partnerships?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:21:20 PM
At Box, we try to use our dogfood so to say - so we leverage Box too much
Jake Wallace
October 04, 2018 02:21:58 PM
So you don't use a Partner Management Tool of some time?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:22:04 PM
and so use Box in combination with Salesforce
Jake Wallace
October 04, 2018 02:22:44 PM
ahh gotcha!
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:23:12 PM
we do use salesforce community for partner portal, but no other tools.. It would be a good thing to use a number of newer partner portals in the market nowadays
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:24:08 PM
what do you use for referrals and resellers?
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:24:20 PM
all salesforce? affiliate links too?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:25:54 PM
yes we tag partner deals in salesforce(referrals) and for resellers we have a seperate salesforce community built on top of our salesforce instance. My sense is we are bit behind on the tool tech curve here

How do you measure ROI on a partnership?

Mark Cohen
October 04, 2018 02:24:24 PM
@Nidhi Jain was curious around whether you had an ROI framework that you'd recommend when evaluating partnerships on the table (eg. how you to allocate internal/financial resources).
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:38:38 PM
At Box we have the philosphy to build API's that partners can then build on.. so we generally try to get the partner to build on our open API's.
Mark Cohen
October 04, 2018 02:40:05 PM
Thanks @Nidhi Jain - we are looking to do the same here.
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:40:13 PM
We usually will plot partners on two axis - engineering resources required vs the perceived benefit (product differentiation or revenue) we will get out of this
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:40:51 PM
great @Mark Cohen what's the name of your company?
Mark Cohen
October 04, 2018 02:41:17 PM
@Nidhi Jain TradeGecko - inventory/order management - targeting the SME space (before you're ready for Netsuite).
Mark Cohen
October 04, 2018 02:41:25 PM
Gabe Caldwell
October 04, 2018 02:08:26 PM
@Nidhi Jain What mousetraps do you use to attribute partner revenue?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:24:24 PM
Hi Gabe - can you please elaborate on your question, not sure I completely follow
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:32:27 PM
I think Gabe is asking how (mechanically speaking) do you track and measure revenue from partnerships?

It’s a bit of a thorny problem because partners often generate revenue indirectly… either through changes in adoption/retention or because customers don’t necessarily click on links and buttons even if they heard about Box from partners.
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:42:06 PM
yeah.. that is a really tough problem to track as partners as well as Box sales reps will forget to enter data in salesforce
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:43:02 PM
Yeah, the usual, eh? If only I was working on a permanent solution for this problem with AppBind.com; if only. simple_smile
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:43:18 PM
we have a field in salesforce that shows that the partner was influential in closing the deal, however, once we reached a certain scale reps forget to do so.. One of the ways we have tried to enforce this by putting in a referral fee so reps are incentivized to check that box in salesforce
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:43:30 PM
however, we have had limited success
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:43:47 PM
Yup, absolutely, whoever can work on this problem will be golden
Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:44:47 PM
aye, you need a real PRM for lead registration though.

How do you attract developers to build on your API?

Natalie Kerns
October 04, 2018 02:12:53 PM
How do you attract developers to contribute to your marketplace if you’re not a name brand?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:16:19 PM
That's a tough one.. In such a situation, I would like to leverage other developer platforms like Twilio, AWS etc to promote your brand in some way
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:17:01 PM
It's like asking your friend to talk about you in a positive light so other folks want to be friends with you
Cooper Marcus
October 04, 2018 02:20:58 PM
@Natalie Kerns to seed your marketplace, you can build the first few integrations yourself, with the blessing and perhaps with a little support from the partner, and brand it with the partner’s brand (while making clear that you support it, not the partner) - you can see an example of this on a program I manage at https://docs.konghq.com/hub/ - have a look at the Datadog and Loggly listings - they were built by my company, but they have the effect of making our marketplace appear to have involvement by name-brand partners (note that they were built a long time ago, and now that we’ve got the virtuous cycle going we are able to attract contributions by third parties simple_smile

Is it better for a partnership to bring a new customer or serve an existing one?

Cooper Marcus
October 04, 2018 02:16:51 PM
@Nidhi Jain when you think about technical integration partnerships (maybe you don’t have any other kind) do you more… 1. Work from the assumption that you already have a Box user, and the partnership will benefit the partner by bringing them new users, and benefit Box by increasing retention, or 2. Work from the assumption that the partner already has the user, and the partnership will benefit Box by bringing you a new user, and benefit the partner by increasing retention?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:19:51 PM
Hi Cooper - yes it can be both of the scenarios you described.. generally the one building the integration is the one who might get a new customer or a very large upsell and/or customer retention
Cooper Marcus
October 04, 2018 02:21:35 PM
is there one kind or the other that you strongly prefer?
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:28:39 PM
I would say if Box was to get a new customer, it's easier to win the internal engineering resource battle.. however, given our size, we probably need a # of new customers to justify the engineering ask

Thank you!

Sunir Shah
October 04, 2018 02:48:34 PM
@Nidhi Jain Thank you so much. This was really incredible.
Jake Wallace
October 04, 2018 02:48:54 PM
Thank you sooooo very much @Nidhi Jain! This has been awesome!!!!
Nidhi Jain
October 04, 2018 02:54:21 PM
Thanks everyone for your questions !! Please feel free to ping me separately (contact Nidhi here), if I can help clarify anything i said here or in general you think I could be a good sounding board to whatever you are doing or going through.. Thanks !!