Ecosystem Alpha where Strategy meets GTM Execution

Sebastian Hoelzl and Will Schnabel

For B2B tech executives trying to drive efficient growth, the traditional GTM playbook is broken. Ecosystem Alpha is designed for leaders looking to transform partnerships into their ultimate competitive advantage. Hosted by Will Schnabel and Sebastian Hoelzl, our 40-minute interviews feature C-Suite leaders winning in the ecosystem era. We skip the fluff to uncover exact strategies that drive efficient sales, improve NRR, slash CAC, and accelerate Agentic AI adoption. New episodes drop every Tuesday to help you connect strategy in the boardroom to execution in the CRM.

  1. Oct 15

    Cracking the APJ Frontier: Building Brand Equity, Regional Ecosystems, and Media Alliances for Market Entry, with Carrie Mott

    Most software companies enter Asia Pacific and Japan the same way they entered Texas.They hire two reps, translate the deck and wait for pipeline to appear.Carrie Mott has spent twenty years watching that approach burn cash in a region that holds two thirds of the world's population and 33 separate sets of rules.What you will learn- Size Asia Pacific and Japan as 33 markets instead of one theatre, so your entry budget stops funding the wrong motion.- Borrow regional credibility from local partners, media and analyst relationships rather than paying for brand awareness from scratch.- Open a market with one anchor customer voice video instead of an event sponsorship, and carry local proof of return into every deal.- Stop judging ecosystem programmes on lead volume, and hold them to the measures that match how trust is actually built.- Run your riskiest go to market experiments in the region where leaner teams move faster and revenue exposure stays small.About the guestCarrie Mott is Founder and Managing Director of Flywheel Marketing. She has led marketing and sales development across Asia Pacific and Japan for FullStory, Dynatrace and PagerDuty, and she ran marketing for Asia and India at Salesforce. Earlier in her career she ran exhibitions at Gartner and business partner ecosystems at IBM.Mott is credible here because she has sat on both sides of the regional argument. She has carried a regional number inside global vendors, and she now advises the companies trying to enter. She has also filmed more than one hundred customer success stories, so her view on what earns trust comes from the edit suite as well as the forecast call.Chapters00:00 Introduction and guest background06:36 From psychology to partner ecosystems10:15 Why APJ is 33 markets, not one region15:41 Start with the customer's customer27:52 Why trust is now distributed33:20 Running the region as an innovation zone38:34 Customer voice video as the proof engine45:58 Rapid fire and closeVisit ecosystemalpha.com to book a free workshop and pressure test your regional partner model before you spend another quarter on direct hires. Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    Cracking the APJ Frontier: Building Brand Equity, Regional Ecosystems, and Media Alliances for Market Entry, with Carrie Mott
  2. Sep 28

    Operationalizing the ICP: The Bridge Between Product Positioning and Ecosystem Velocity, with Kirsten Newbold-Knipp

    Most partner strategies do not fail because the partners were wrong. They fail because nobody agreed on the customer first. Kirsten Newbold-Knipp has watched that single mistake drain pipeline, inflate CAC and make perfectly sound ecosystem bets look like bad ones. What you will learn How to spot the moment a vague ICP starts costing you retention, not just win rateWhy the ideal customer profile and the ideal partner profile belong in the same working sessionHow to separate channel, strategic product integrations and ecosystem incentives so handoffs stop breakingWhy the fight over attribution burns budget, and what to hold teams accountable for insteadHow intent based ICP plays, what Newbold-Knipp calls ABM light, now work on 20K deals rather than only on whales About the guest Kirsten Newbold-Knipp is a go to market advisor to B2B software leaders. She has held the Chief Marketing Officer seat at FullStory, the Chief Growth Officer seat at Convey and the Chief Executive Officer seat at AskNicely, and she spent three years as a Research Vice President at Gartner. Earlier she built the first product marketing team at HubSpot. What makes her view unusual is the sheer number of seats she has held. She has owned marketing, sales, growth and operations inside the same companies, so she has argued both sides of the attribution fight and the ICP fight from the inside. That range is why her advice lands as commercial judgement rather than theory. Chapters Introduction and guest backgroundWhy a fragmented ICP breaks partner strategy firstCustomer profile and partner profile belong in the same cycleWho actually owns the partner portfolio inside a companyThe HubSpot agency channel and the segment call that unlocked itAttribution, pipeline ownership and incentive alignmentThe joint selling deal that became the largest in the firm's historyRapid fire: overrated metrics, ABM light and who to listen to next Listen and actHead to ecosystemalpha.com to book a working session on turning your ICP into a partner strategy that holds. Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    Operationalizing the ICP: The Bridge Between Product Positioning and Ecosystem Velocity, with Kirsten Newbold-Knipp
  3. Sep 7

    From Behavioral Marketing to Agentic Orchestration: Architecting AI Solutions and Ecosystem Automation, with Riaz Kanani

    Most AI projects start with the tool. That is exactly why so many of them return almost nothing. Riaz Kanani flips the question, and the answer changes what your team does on Monday morning. What you will learn Why starting with the growth blocker beats starting with the tool, and what that does to your returnHow to escape the sameness trap so your content stops sounding like everyone else'sWhere corporate IP leaks when teams work through base models, and what MCP servers changeWhat it actually took to find a 42 percent saving on one operational processWhy an IKEA chatbot ended in a new billion dollar revenue line instead of 6,500 job cuts About the guest Riaz Kanani is Consultant and Founder at Connected Paths, an AI implementation consultancy based in London. He spent nearly nine years as CEO and Founder of Radiate B2B, the intent data and advertising platform, after building behavioural email and marketing automation at Silverpop and Lyris. His view carries weight because he ships the thing most people only discuss. He builds MCP servers, runs client transformation work, and reports the numbers on both sides of the ledger. That mix of operator scar tissue and current build experience is rare among people talking about agentic AI. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and guest background 08:16 Building two sided ecosystems from video advertising to ABM 10:05 Escaping the AI sameness trap 19:13 How AI thinks, and why you have to challenge it 23:27 Protecting corporate IP and expert knowledge 29:00 MCP connectors and the move to an AI operating layer 46:10 The revenue receipt, 42 percent saved and the IKEA turnaround 56:34 Rapid fire and pay it forward Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    From Behavioral Marketing to Agentic Orchestration: Architecting AI Solutions and Ecosystem Automation, with Riaz Kanani
  4. Aug 11

    Demystifying the Last Mile of AI Data Adoption, with Rishi Bhatnagar, CEO at Quaeris.ai

    Every enterprise has spent heavily on AI and analytics, yet most executives still pick up the phone to get a straight answer. Rishi Bhatnagar built and sold a sixteen year systems integration business before founding Quaeris to close that gap, and he argues the friction between digital data and human decision makers is costing companies billions every day. This conversation unpacks why adoption stalls long after the technology already works. What you'll learn: - How to spot when a partner conflict is actually protecting your customer relationship instead of harming it. - Why only 5 percent of enterprise AI initiatives reach full adoption despite 85 percent getting started, and what closes that gap. - How token based agent architectures quietly inflate AI costs, and what a learn once agent design does to your bill instead. - Why meeting users inside tools they already use, such as Microsoft Teams or WhatsApp, drives higher AI adoption than building a new destination. - What separates an empathetic partner from a partner who protects only their own margin. Bhatnagar is the founder of Quaeris, an AI driven data search and BI platform that helps executive teams get direct answers from their business data. He spent sixteen years as CEO of Syntelli Solutions, an analytics systems integrator he grew to seventy five people through early partnerships with Tableau and Spotfire, before founding Quaeris in 2020. His perspective carries weight because he has sat on both sides of the partnership table. He has sold analytics services as an integrator, built products designed for integrators to resell, and now designs agent architecture around token cost and enterprise governance rather than the growth metrics that benefit the AI labs the most. Chapters: Introduction and guest backgroundFrom Ernst and Young to Tableau: the first partner betHorse and jockey: managing channel conflict without losing the customerThe last mile problem: why speed of data is not speed of decisionsBuilding Quaeris: headless BI and meeting users where they already areWhy most enterprise AI pilots never reach full adoptionToken costs and the case for agents that learn onceRapid fire and closing thoughts Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    Demystifying the Last Mile of AI Data Adoption, with Rishi Bhatnagar, CEO at Quaeris.ai
  5. Jul 28

    The Revenue Reality: Balancing Short-Term Quotas with Long-Term Ecosystem Moats with Lance Buchholz

    Blue Triangle spent three months testing whether automated outbound still works. Thousands of calls produced one answer and zero sales conversations. Lance Buchholz explains what he does instead, and how he funds a long term partner strategy while carrying a quarterly number. What you will learn ▹ Why thousands of automated calls produced one answered phone and no pipeline ▹ How to run near term, mid term and long term revenue at the same time ▹ Why partner sourced revenue and partner counts mislead a board ▹ The single ecosystem number that predicts churn before the renewal ▹ What to do when a buyer takes your demo and builds the product with AI Lance Buchholz is Chief Revenue Officer at Blue Triangle, where he owns the full number and answers to the board for it. He has spent roughly 25 years in partnerships, from a billion dollar business with thousands of signed partners to small companies with no partner motion at all, and he has been through a couple of exits on the partner side. Buchholz moved from partner leadership into the CRO seat, so he now approves the discounts he once had to argue for. That is what makes his view useful. When he defends partner investment, he defends it against his own quota and his own board conversations, not from the sidelines. Chapters Introduction and guest backgroundBear's Paw and the reason it existsThe automated outbound experiment and what it returnedNear term, mid term and long term revenue in one planWhat AI changed about buyer conversationsThe warning signs that a customer is about to leaveThe revenue receipt: an OEM partnership that opened a new marketRapid fire: overrated metrics, attach rate and book picks Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    The Revenue Reality: Balancing Short-Term Quotas with Long-Term Ecosystem Moats with Lance Buchholz
  6. Jul 14

    The Gamechanger Playbook: Engineering Partnership Big Bets and Transforming the Business with Gautham Pandiyan, Global Head of Partnerships at Pendo

    Most partnership leaders spend their careers optimising for incremental referral volume. Gautham Pandiyan has spent his building the kind of ecosystem bets that show up in a balance sheet. This conversation is about the ones that transform a business and how to know which partnerships deserve that level of conviction. What you will learn: ▹ Why partners amplify product-market fit rather than find it, and what that means for how you pick your strategic bets. ▹ How to build a fail-fast framework that lets you evaluate a major partnership in five months rather than eighteen, and pivot without destroying the relationship. ▹ What a clear value exchange looks like in practice, and why expectation misalignment kills more strategic partnerships than bad fit does. ▹ How Gautham's team scaled to $150 million of revenue through AWS Marketplace at Qualtrics, and the cross-functional effort required to get there. ▹ How to build the perception umbrella inside your business so executives and stakeholders see partnership momentum, not just end-of-year results. Gautham Pandiyan is Global Head of Cloud, SI & Affiliate Partnerships at Pendo, where he leads the company's Hyperscaler, GSI, and consulting partner motions. He previously spent four years at Qualtrics scaling the AWS partnership to nine-figure Marketplace revenue, and has held senior alliance roles across multiple high-growth SaaS businesses. Chapter overview: Introduction and guest backgroundHow to choose the right strategic partners: product-market fit and natural pullThe difference between push and pull in channel-first versus overlay modelsEvaluating failures and knowing when to pivotHyperscalers in practice: the Qualtrics and AWS storyExpectation setting, the perception umbrella, and managing internal stakeholdersRapid-fire round and recommended voices Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    The Gamechanger Playbook: Engineering Partnership Big Bets and Transforming the Business with Gautham Pandiyan, Global Head of Partnerships at Pendo
  7. Jul 8

    The International GM’s Mandate: Re-Architecting GTM for EMEA Resilience and NRR with David King-Harris VP Sales EMEA at Optro

    Growth at all costs is over. Boards no longer ask how many people you hired. They ask how efficiently you can grow, and that question is reshaping how revenue leaders scale across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. What you will learn: ▹ Why treating EMEA as one market inflates customer acquisition cost, and what to do instead ▹ How to trade a share of AE headcount for partner headcount without losing quota on the street ▹ The give to get motion that keeps local partners active long after referral business dries up ▹ How to match global SIs, regional integrators, and boutique consultancies to the right customer segment ▹ A real example where going partner first lifted conversion by up to 50 percent in six months Guest bio: David King Harris is VP Sales EMEA at Optro. He has led European, EMEA, and global teams through both the growth at all costs era and the efficiency mandate that followed, with earlier roles across martech leaders and IBM. He speaks in commercial terms because he carries the revenue number himself. Chapters: Introduction and guest backgroundWhy EMEA is a collection of markets, not oneLocal partners and the last mile of trustMatching partner types to your ideal customerWhere partnerships should sit in the organizationThe efficiency pivot after COVIDThe revenue receipt: partner first resultsRapid fire and close Rebuild your EMEA go to market around efficiency. What you will learn: ▹ Why the partner team's job is not to bring a list of integration requests to product, and what to do instead to validate real end-user value before anyone writes a line of code ▹ How to choose between a large, hard-to-work-with partner and a smaller, easier partner, and why internal relationships and prioritisation willingness often matter more than market reach ▹ What it means in practice when a product manager asks your partner team a hard question, and why the correct answer is sometimes no ▹ How to build the working relationship between engineering, product, and the partner's technical team so integrations move fast without becoming liabilities ▹ The most common mistake product teams make when building toward a partnership, and how to avoid building something customers will never use About the guest: Agata Bugaj is Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX, a property access technology platform serving multifamily, commercial, and student housing. She brings over fifteen years of experience leading product, UX, and engineering teams across B2B SaaS and enterprise eCommerce. Prior to ButterflyMX, she served as SVP of Product at FullStory, where she scaled the product function from Director through to SVP level. Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    The International GM’s Mandate: Re-Architecting GTM for EMEA Resilience and NRR with David King-Harris VP Sales EMEA at Optro
  8. Jun 29

    The Ecosystem-Led Product: Architecting Integration Density and the Network Moat with Agata Bugaj

    Most B2B SaaS companies treat integrations as a favour the product team does for the partner team. That framing is killing revenue. When product and partnerships operate in silos, the integrations that get built are the wrong ones. The ones that do get built often go unused. And the network moat that should be compounding never forms. Agata Bugaj, Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX and former SVP of Product at FullStory, joins Sebastian Hoelzl and Will Schnabel to break down how product leaders and partner teams can work together in a way that actually moves the commercial needle. What you will learn: ▹ Why the partner team's job is not to bring a list of integration requests to product, and what to do instead to validate real end-user value before anyone writes a line of code ▹ How to choose between a large, hard-to-work-with partner and a smaller, easier partner, and why internal relationships and prioritisation willingness often matter more than market reach ▹ What it means in practice when a product manager asks your partner team a hard question, and why the correct answer is sometimes no ▹ How to build the working relationship between engineering, product, and the partner's technical team so integrations move fast without becoming liabilities ▹ The most common mistake product teams make when building toward a partnership, and how to avoid building something customers will never use About the guest: Agata Bugaj is Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX, a property access technology platform serving multifamily, commercial, and student housing. She brings over fifteen years of experience leading product, UX, and engineering teams across B2B SaaS and enterprise eCommerce. Prior to ButterflyMX, she served as SVP of Product at FullStory, where she scaled the product function from Director through to SVP level. Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast 1. No Professional Advice: The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise). 2. Views Expressed: The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent. 3. Professional Titles: Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities. 4. Limitation of Liability: By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.

    The Ecosystem-Led Product: Architecting Integration Density and the Network Moat with Agata Bugaj

About

For B2B tech executives trying to drive efficient growth, the traditional GTM playbook is broken. Ecosystem Alpha is designed for leaders looking to transform partnerships into their ultimate competitive advantage. Hosted by Will Schnabel and Sebastian Hoelzl, our 40-minute interviews feature C-Suite leaders winning in the ecosystem era. We skip the fluff to uncover exact strategies that drive efficient sales, improve NRR, slash CAC, and accelerate Agentic AI adoption. New episodes drop every Tuesday to help you connect strategy in the boardroom to execution in the CRM.