I had two of these moments, both with former top 3 tech giants (they were both far removed from the top by the time we talked).
The first gave us all sorts of access to their products first, presumably to see how our product would utilize them. And we used this as selling point to customers, not recognizing that we were kind of doing advertising for that other company as well as removing a barrier to customer acquisition. Nearly eight months in and that relationship petered out.
Second was more exciting. They came in loud and excited and had recently made some 9 figure acquisitions. They wanted to move quick so they started some technical evaluations. Tons of questions, requests, ideas, meetings, handoffs, etc. After four months of this we kind of got sick of doing their bidding without any timeline for how the process might go. After pressing a few times, they went cold. Our assumption was they were initially interested in a deal but moved into make-it-feel-like-we'll-be-family-soon-so-they-share-way-too-much mode.
I believe the second group was intent on just replicating what we had but I watched them closely and nothing materialized. I suspect given the resources they devoted the project collapsed there or was repurposed to a subsidiary.
The first gave us all sorts of access to their products first, presumably to see how our product would utilize them. And we used this as selling point to customers, not recognizing that we were kind of doing advertising for that other company as well as removing a barrier to customer acquisition. Nearly eight months in and that relationship petered out.
Second was more exciting. They came in loud and excited and had recently made some 9 figure acquisitions. They wanted to move quick so they started some technical evaluations. Tons of questions, requests, ideas, meetings, handoffs, etc. After four months of this we kind of got sick of doing their bidding without any timeline for how the process might go. After pressing a few times, they went cold. Our assumption was they were initially interested in a deal but moved into make-it-feel-like-we'll-be-family-soon-so-they-share-way-too-much mode.
I believe the second group was intent on just replicating what we had but I watched them closely and nothing materialized. I suspect given the resources they devoted the project collapsed there or was repurposed to a subsidiary.