Hey, thanks for tuning in to another Partner Interview at AccountsBalance.
My name is Connor Gillivan. I’m the CMO and an Owner of AccountsBalance.
We’re on a mission to help 1,000+ businesses better understand their numbers, and industry partnerships is a big way that we’re able to make it happen.
We’re all about creating win-win partnerships where we are able to grow with other companies in the agency, SAAS, and online space.
In this exclusive interview, we interview Alex Glenn from Partnerhub.
Alex Glenn is the Founder and CEO of Partnerhub, the Founder of Partnerprograms.io, and an Operator at the Partner Programs Collective and the Agency-Partners Collective. He attended San Diego State University. Alex Glenn has 2 current jobs as Founder and CEO at Partnerhub® and Founder at Partnerprograms. Additionally, Alex Glenn has had 1 past job as the User Aquisition at Businessfriend.
We hope that you enjoy the interview and that it brings value to you as an agency business owner.
Connor: Hey Alex, thanks for taking the time to chat with us here. We love getting to know our partners better so that our community can benefit from what our partners are offering and doing in the industry. To get started, can you give us a high-level overview of Partnerprograms and how it got started?
Alex: Of course. Partnerprograms Inc. was born in 2019 after I was consulting with SaaS companies on go-to-market strategy and realized few (if any) included partners in their GTM. I believed that was a mistake. So, I set out to build a service showing SaaS how to GTM with partners.
Connor: That’s awesome! Can you dive a bit more into your offers for community support, training and partner services? I’m sure our audience would love to know exactly what problems you could solve for them.
Alex: Yes. Partner programs began as a community of digital agencies, and a service side which matched them to technology companies to partner with. As we grew, some of our agency community members asked how they can manage these relationships. We tried project management tools like ClickUp, and even CRM pipelines… but there were inherent issues preventing communication and expansion.
So, we decided to build Partnerhub® – a platform built to help correct the communication and collaboration issues true partners face. It’s not an internal tool. It’s an ecosystem you apply to and partner relationships management (PRM) features to use when approved. We match you with partners based on overlapping customer profiles. And provide you with everything you need to run the partnership operation.
And, we’re proud to say we now have some of the top digital agencies and SaaS using it.
Connor: Jumping off of that…if there was one problem you’d say that Partnerhub® solves best for your clients, what would it be? Why?
Alex: The biggest challenge Partnerhub® solves for in today’s version is finding and managing partnerships. The reason it’s the best at solving this is because both user types (saas and digital agencies) are users (not just a company record as they’d be in CRM), have a free account (so they are likely to keep it open regardless of their usage, and everyone is vetted before they are admitted (so our users are great agencies and SaaS orgs).
Connor: As the company continues to grow over the next year, what are your plans for expansion? Any new products or offerings or enhancements to your current products?
Alex: We have a number of features and integrations on our roadmap, but the most exciting aspect of Partnerhub® is that you can license it for your own ecosystem management. This is ideal for large tech companies (think HubSpot, Shopify…) who have a need to consolidate, enable, and report on who their ecosystem, or, other entrepreneurs who want to launch a Partnehub® for their niche or community.
Connor: And how specifically would you say that Partnerprograms, Partnerhub, and your team is different from other similar businesses in the industry?
Alex: Partner programs are different as an organization because we started as a community before building Partnerhub®. Our community is split between partnerships teams, and digital agencies. And our platform, is actually used by top digital agencies as well as top SaaS teams (competitors – or PRMs – are mainly only used by tech companies as their internal tool).
Connor: What made you decide to get involved in the partner program space? What’s your starting online business story? From what we’ve found, a lot of business owners in the partner provider space have fun stories of how they first started…
Alex: It was three events – #1 was while I was consulting with a few startups in 2018-19; I put together their GTM strategy and one of the pillars was Partnerships. They seemed confused by this. So I started to publish the “why” of partnerships-led GTM. Then, I decided it was large enough of a need to buy a domain (partnerprograms.io) and launch a service to help other tech companies with this problem. And #2 – I had a community of agencies that really didn’t have a focus, so I decided to rebrand that community to “The Agency-Partners Collective” and do the same thing (help with partnerships matching and strategy) for them. Finally, the third event was in 2021 when someone posted to our community asking if anyone had a suggestion for how to manage partnerships. That snowballed into me raising money for Partnerhub® and launching V1 six months later.
Connor: Love it! Talking more about the online business industry, where do you see it going in the next 1-2 years? Any unique predictions that you could share?
Alex: Partnerships is changing and progressing rapidly. Soon, startups will adopt a partnerships-first approach to their org and GTM strategy. That means, starting with finding partners, then build sales and marketing operations with those partners. As opposed to the traditional progression of; get sales and marketing streamlined, then start a separate partnerships operation, and those two do not intermingle. I believe the new tech org and digital agency can be smaller, and do everything with partners, and be as successful (if not more successful) than their competitors.
Connor: Giving you an open mic for a minute, what is something you’d want the AccountsBalance audience to hear?
Alex: We’re a free platform for SaaS and digital agencies. Apply for your account today: https://app.partnerhub.app/register
Connor: Changing gears a little bit…When it comes to bookkeeping and accounting, what do you think the biggest pain points for business owners are? Feel free to speak from personal experience as well.
Alex: Taxes, internationalization, localized government needs…
Connor: As we close this out, I just have one more question. Where is the best place to find and follow you and the company online? Also, if you have one, is there any special offer that you’ll be offering to the community today?
Alex: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-glenn/
Or, find and request partnership with us inside the Partnerhub® marketplace.
