# Partnerships Channel

> Assess, pilot, and govern referral, co-sell, implementation, reseller, OEM, distribution, and strategic-capital partnerships. Use when a startup needs an evidence-gated partner motion, not when it only needs a sales pipeline or customer-delivery plan.

- Skill: `vaibhav0806/partnerships-channel` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 5 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add vaibhav0806/partnerships-channel`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/vaibhav0806/partnerships-channel/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: DevOps & Infra
- Author: vaibhav0806 (https://skillmd.com/u/vaibhav0806)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/vaibhav0806/partnerships-channel

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# Partnerships Channel

Turn partner interest into a bounded, attributable route to a customer outcome. Do not let a logo, introduction, meeting, proposal, sandbox activity, or verbal enthusiasm imply a partnership or commitment.

## Workflow

1. Establish the desired customer outcome, target segment, motion, partner role, one decision owner, decision deadline, and whether the request is internal analysis, a draft, or an authorized external action. Keep a referral, co-sell, SI/implementation, reseller, OEM/white-label, distribution, or strategic-capital motion distinct; use more than one only when the roles and economics remain separately accountable.
2. Classify consequential evidence as `observed`, `inferred`, `proposed`, `stale`, or `conflicting`. Record `source | source_date | maturity | confidence | permitted audience/surface`; label missing information `unknown`. A planned capability, customer introduction, investor meeting, or signed-looking draft is not proof of commercial or delivery readiness.
3. Read [partner-fit.md](references/partner-fit.md) for motion selection, scorecard, negative-fit gates, diligence, conflicts, and decision ownership. Stop the affected recommendation when a negative gate or unresolved material conflict applies.
4. Before upgrading any relationship beyond a hypothesis, require one real customer or use case, named implementer and buyer, success criteria, timeline, delivery and support owner, and a plausible economic path. State which element is missing rather than creating a status label around it.
5. Read [pilot-economics.md](references/pilot-economics.md) to design a reversible pilot, define attribution and economics, and apply pilot-to-scale gates. Keep assumptions separate from observed results.
6. Read [enablement-governance.md](references/enablement-governance.md) when preparing enablement, deal registration, incentives, launch planning, permissions, or operating cadence.
7. Return the diagnosis, fit and open-gates register, recommendation and alternatives, a bounded pilot or operating artifact, required approvals, and one owner, deadline, success metric, and review date. Route customer acquisition to `b2b-sales`, delivery/health to `customer-success`, pricing or strategic choices to `startup-strategy`, and operating commitments to `founder-operations`.

## Boundaries

- Do not announce, use a logo, make joint claims, disclose a customer, grant live access, or make a commercial commitment without supporting evidence and explicit authorization for that exact action. Planning or drafting approval is not authorization to execute.
- Default to least-privilege data and access. Do not request or retain customer, partner, financial, security, or personal identifiers unless necessary for the immediate authorized decision; keep reusable artifacts free of private identifiers.
- Do not silently resolve conflicts in attribution, incentives, account ownership, exclusivity, pricing, support, reputation, or compliance. Name the decision owner and hold the affected stage.
- For legal, privacy, competition, tax, sanctions, securities, regulated-industry, or jurisdiction-specific issues, use current primary guidance for the applicable jurisdiction, cite its review date and scope, and require qualified review before a consequential conclusion or commitment.