partnerships
Sixty-nine percent of companies plan to increase their investment in partnerships this year, and only 42% of them have any reliable way to measure whether those partnerships are generating revenue. That gap, between commitment and accountability, is where most partnership strategies quietly collapse. The data comes from PartnerStack'
partnerships
Sixty-nine percent of B2B companies are increasing their investment in partnerships this year, and only 42 percent of them can tell you which ones are generating revenue. That number comes from PartnerStack's State of Partnerships in GTM 2026 report, and it deserves more attention than the headline
partnerships
The founder who built the most productive partnership pipeline this year almost certainly did not have the largest network in the room. They had the most consistent process for converting their existing connections into structured, revenue-generating agreements, and that process is what produced the outcomes. A 2026 PwC survey
partnerships
Most founders think about partnerships in one of two ways: "let's do a co-marketing post" or "let's build a referral program." That is not a partnership strategy. That is two tactics from a list of nine categories, which means most founders
partnerships
When Enterprise BD Teams Move, Pay Attention Enterprise business development teams are conservative by nature. They move slowly, they run multi-vendor comparisons, and they are accountable to metrics that make experimentation uncomfortable. When an enterprise BD team reports a 10x increase in qualified leads from a single platform and
partnerships
The Numbers Are Not Debatable Anymore The marketing playbooks that dominated the last decade are producing worse results every year. Cold outreach response rates are collapsing, paid ad conversion costs have risen to the point where many channels are no longer viable for early-stage companies, and the era of
partnerships
When a founder's partnership pipeline is thin, the instinctive diagnosis is almost always the same: "I need a better network." So they attend more events, optimize their LinkedIn profile, join more communities, and get better at small talk at industry dinners. Then, six months later, the
partnerships
The industry is betting more on partnerships than ever before. The failure rate has not moved. What the data reveals about scaling a motion before fixing the thing underneath it.
partnerships
Founders are announcing partnerships the way they used to announce funding rounds — with the same language about synergy and aligned values, and the same conspicuous absence of revenue attached to any of it.
partnerships
Sixty-nine percent of companies are increasing partnership investment this year. Only 42 percent can tell you which ones are generating revenue. That gap is not a measurement problem. It is a decision problem.
partnerships
For leading B2B companies in 2026, strategic partnerships account for 30 to 50 percent of total revenue. The founders making those decisions are still using the same informal process they have always used.
partnerships
When survival anxiety drives partnership decisions, founders select for availability rather than alignment. The Wilbur Labs 2026 data reveals a crisis in founder confidence — and a precise mechanism behind most failed deals.