The Dark Side of Design Partners
The distance between a "design partner" and a "formal paying partner" can be as wide as the Pacific Ocean.
Turning a design partner into a formal customer is one of the hardest sales conversions, often surprising founders—though obvious in hindsight.
Design partners navigate known unknowns with you, and shielding them from the messiness of experimentation is unrealistic.
The reason to be a design partner should go far beyond — friendship, peer pressure (i.e., someone afraid of saying no), or seeking an ‘advisory’ badge.
Design partners should be highly motivated to gain direct access to the founder as a subject matter expert/visionary, share deep insights into their previous attempts at seeking to achieve Y, and show excitement to inform (hint: not lead) the build.
A common misstep is having design partners across different Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). This pulls you in different directions and derails your roadmap—[cue: frustrated engineering team].
Aligning design partners across a consistent target market and contained problem is critical for focus—otherwise, you risk quickly becoming a services company.
Not to mention, design partnerships look very different across segments — in the enterprise (i.e., up-market), value is delivered via 'custom-ish' development services, while design partners for startups/small businesses (i.e., down-market) often receive value through MVPs.
To ensure a march towards a scalable product, you must build and refine your vision to get closer to your larger addressable market, not just your top-paying customer.
Enterprises get a bad reputation as design partners as they’ll try to get as much customization out of you as possible, but it's your job to hold a hard line and ensure your vision is not sidelined. You’re the product visionary, not them.
Finding the right design partners who deliver value without compromising your vision is a delicate balancing act. It’s critical you dig into why they want to be a design partner and their awareness of the messiness ahead.
Hint: If they’ve never been a design partner in their career before, setting expectations around what it is/what it isn’t is really, really important.
Something not so obvious early on, but the step-change from a design partner to a formal paying customer is like asking a free user to pay. The threshold to pay is higher after experiencing the messy early stages. This is why some form of payment and signing a contract during the initial stage is important.
Successfully converting a design partner into a formal customer sends a very strong market signal and is a huge feat — albeit a lot easier said than done.
Note: A design partner and a proof-of-concept (POC) are different. A POC is a later-stage engagement to test a built product, while a design partner is an early-stage partnership for learning and experimenting.
Engaging with design partners early can (obviously) lead to incredible insights and direction that align your product with their maturity — or — show how far off you/they are. Both outcomes are important.
Remember these four takeaways:
Consistency of ideal customer and problem unlocks repeatability and scale.
Early design partners are not proof of validation (but, an early indicator); there's still a lot of work to do. You must prove they will pay & stay!
Here’s a solid resource from CommonPaper for Design Partner Agreement: https://commonpaper.com/standards/design-partner-agreement/?launch-guide
