partner-economics

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: partner-economics
description: Model the unit economics of one partner relationship - partner P&L, margin modeling, cost-to-serve, referral-fee and lifetime-value split, channel partner ROI, partner CAC vs direct CAC, ramp and payback - to decide whether to sign, scale, renegotiate, or exit that partner. Covers B2B channel and alliance partners plus B2C affiliate and creator economics. Use whenever the user mentions partnership unit economics, a single-partner business case, reseller, VAR, MSP, OEM or marketplace deal economics, revenue-share and margin-stack analysis, or asks whether a partner is worth pursuing, even if they never say economics. Do NOT use for ranking a portfolio of candidates - use mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@alliance-prioritization instead.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Maya-Beth Finotti
  version: "1.4.1"
---

# Partner Economics

Model one partner relationship as a small P&L - attributable revenue net of every partner cost, against partner CAC, ramp, and incrementality - to decide sign, scale, renegotiate, or prune. Two structural facts frame the whole exercise; state them plainly rather than paper over them:

- **No canonical "partner P&L" template exists.** Practitioners converge on the same revenue and cost components, but vendors publish incompatible definitions, and any claim to _the_ standard (PARTNERNOMICS-style certification included) is a proprietary product, not industry consensus.
- **Most widely quoted partner benchmarks are vendor marketing, not research.** The famous "80% of channel revenue from 20% of partners / only 11% hit incentive goals" figures are untraceable; so are the "most partners never transact" claims. Label every number's evidence class; quote nothing as settled fact without a named source. Read [references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md](references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md) before citing any figure: the graded benchmark set, plus the untraceable figures to refuse.

What the field genuinely offers:

- **Hans Peter Bech's channel-partner P&L** - model the PARTNER's own 3-5 year economics, because "it is crucial that the channel partner takes ownership of the P&L." The single most articulated practitioner method for one relationship.
- **Spengler's double marginalization (1950)** and the two-part tariff fix (Jeuland & Shugan 1983; McGuire & Staelin 1983) - the peer-reviewed root of margin stacking.
- **Blake, Nosko & Tadelis (2015, Econometrica)** - when eBay halted brand-keyword ads, 99.5% of clicks were retained, the canonical proof a channel can show strong attributed revenue while being nearly non-incremental.
- **Dyer & Singh's relational view (1998, AMR)** - "relational rents", profit neither firm could generate alone - and **Gomes-Casseres' Third Law** (_Remix Strategy_, 2015): the value split must motivate both parties to keep contributing.
- **Dyer, Kale & Singh (2004, HBR)** ally-vs-acquire, plus **Anderson & Schmittlein (1984, RAND J. Econ.)** and the 2006 AMJ TCE meta-analysis - peer-reviewed grounding for whether a partner channel is even the right mode before any economics get modeled.

## Interview

Ask before modeling anything. One question per message; offer multiple-choice options; skip whatever the user already answered.

- Partner type: referral/agency, reseller/VAR, distributor/two-tier, MSP, OEM/embed, ISV tech alliance/co-sell/marketplace, or affiliate/creator?
- Whose economics: your side, the partner's own P&L (Bech's point - the partner must own theirs), or both? The ranked answer is in Brainstorming the model; the three questions below decide which rung applies.
- Which decision must this model serve - sign / don't sign, scale, renegotiate, prune/exit - and what go/no-go threshold applies? Who signs off?
- By what date must the verdict land - a signature deadline, a board or QBR slot? Anything inside a few weeks rules out both the dual-sided P&L and any incrementality experiment; each needs partner disclosure or a read-out wind