This week's Investible Partnerships™ podcast episode features Chris Gordon, GSI Alliances Leader at Rubrik, discussing the critical strategies for driving partner impact with Global System Integrators (GSIs) in the APAC region. Chris shares his journey from sales to partnerships, emphasizing the transformative role of self-awareness in building and maintaining successful alliances.

‍

Key Takeaways

00:00 - Introduction

00:45 - Chris’s Journey into Partnerships
Chris shares his unique journey from sales to partnerships, including his extensive experience at VMware and now at Rubrik.

03:43 - Evolving Role of Partnerships
Discussion on the significant shifts in the partnerships landscape, from traditional channels to integrated ecosystems influenced by hyperscalers.

09:03 - Strategic Frameworks for Partnership Success
Introduction of the two-by-two segmentation model to prioritize GSI partners and the “connection triangle” model for ensuring alignment with alliances, practice leaders, and sales teams.

11:24 - Self-Awareness in Partnerships
The critical role of self-awareness in partnership management, both personally and organizationally, and how it impacts strategy and execution.

13:38 - Importance of Continuous Learning and Networking
Emphasis on the value of reading, networking, and being part of professional communities like Partnership Leaders to stay updated and gain insights.

19:40 - Balancing Internal Resources and Partnership Opportunities
Understanding internal resource constraints and the importance of readiness to execute on partnership opportunities.

24:23 - Effective GSI Partnership Management
The importance of a well-mapped connection triangle model to ensure comprehensive engagement with GSIs, from alliances to sales teams.

27:27 - Value of Community and Networking
Chris highlights the benefits of being part of the Partnership Leaders community and how it helps in gaining market insights and expanding professional networks.

31:46 - Partnerships Fast Five
A fun segment where Chris shares his top-of-mind thoughts in a quick fire question and answer.

‍

‍

"Self-awareness is key to understanding where you are, what you can achieve, and how to align with the right partners."

‍

“The hyperscalers have fundamentally changed how we think about partnerships and ecosystems.”

‍

‍

Transcript

‍

Des Russell 00:00.79

Hey Chris, welcome to the Investible Partnerships podcast. It's fantastic to have you join me in this conversation and join the Investible Partnerships podcast audience so we can learn how you are being a driver of partner impact at Rubrik in your position. But the first thing I love to do is have you introduce yourself to our audience. Let our audience know a little bit about yourself and how you got into partnerships. There's always a fantastic story because no one ever studies partnerships; we kind of land or get pushed there. So I'd love to understand a little bit more about you and how you got into your role right now at Rubrik, and we'll take it from there.

Chris Gordon 00:45.67

Thank you, Des. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on this podcast. So a little bit about myself: I live in Singapore. I've been here for the past six years with my wife, soon to be two kids, and a dog. We used to live in Sydney before that. But my current role is at Rubrik, and I look after the GSI alliances, which are global system integrators for APAC. I'm looking after markets in India, ASEAN, and NZ. I've only been in the role for about three months, so I'm a newbie at Rubrik.

Chris Gordon 01:23.15

Before that, I was at VMware for 14 years—a very long time, seeing it across its multiple different stages of growth. I was in Ireland, I was in Sydney, and that's what brought me to Singapore. Before that, I was at Microsoft and Dell. So, quite a few different organizations, but about 40 years old and four different organizations. That's about right.

Des Russell 01:47.96

Yeah, kind of every couple of years. So what brought you into partnerships? I mean, how did you start in this today? What is partnerships and ecosystems?

Chris Gordon 02:04.34

Yeah, certainly. That's a good question. I still ask myself that many times.

Des Russell 02:09.63

How did that end up?

Chris Gordon 02:10.54

I remember when I announced to one of the sales leaders that I was joining in partnerships at VMware, he said, "Oh, who did you piss off in Sydney to be demoted?" That was his original response, and you know, a classic Queenslander. But really, it was intentional. I wanted to move from sales. I had always been on the sales team until I joined the partnership team at VMware.

Chris Gordon 02:41.97

I was really enjoying selling to customers, but I was speaking to the same infrastructure people, and I wanted to understand more about the supply chain and the partner ecosystem. What motivates them? How do they make money? And how does a vendor leverage this? And when do they leverage it to scale their own business? So it was a very intentional move to get into partnerships. I've learned a lot doing that.

Des Russell 03:11.13

Well, intentional with a little bit of a push, but you've stayed in there for quite some time. So what, for you, when you look at this industry, has been probably the most significant shift that you've seen over your time in terms of how organizations are adopting and adapting to the role that partnerships play in their go-to-market?

Chris Gordon 03:43.45

Yeah, there definitely has been a shift in the past 11 years or so. Before, it was just a channel. It was distribution to resellers, value-added resellers, and that's how it was viewed. Now we're seeing, and I think the hyperscalers deserve a lot of credit here, that people are looking at the ecosystem from product integration all the way down to the services-driven businesses. I think hyperscalers have really helped push that. Before, the platform was on hardware, essentially.

Chris Gordon 04:27.59

Now with the hyperscalers, I think it's really kind of forced people to think about these ecosystem players because the customer is always buying from multiple different parties and being influenced by multiple different parties. We've got to remember the tech industry is still fairly young compared to industries like the financial sector, manufacturing, and those sorts of things.

Des Russell 04:44.89

Oh, right.

Chris Gordon 04:51.13

So yeah, we're still kind of catching up, I would say. And I think the people now in leadership roles in headquarters are realizing it's the power of the ecosystem. And they've got the challenge of how to re-engineer their resources to leverage this ecosystem because they're so used to having a channel here, the product team doing the product integrations, and then maybe a services arm where they partner with services businesses separately. But how do they bring all that together to be more powerful within the ecosystem and surround their target audience?

Des Russell 05:32.40

Yeah, exactly. So when you think about those pockets of go-to-market, like these individualized ways in which technology vendors are going to market, whether it be through their own direct sales team, their own products team, their own customer success team. You're seeing this kind of fundamental, which we've seen from an ecosystem play, which is actually, it's an end-to-end integrated journey for these tech vendors, but also for the customers who are working with these tech vendors. Is that what you've seen as well?

Chris Gordon 07:20.17

I would say the hyperscalers have definitely fundamentally done something different to bring all this together. The fact that you have to validate your products on their platform and put them in the marketplace and the GSIs, for example, who I look after, that's where they go to work.

Chris Gordon 07:40.56

They go to work on the hyperscalers on these platforms. So if you're an ISV, you have to be on those platforms and then you have to figure out how to leverage that to your best ability. So one is the product integration. Do you just pick one hyperscaler? And then even within that hyperscaler, what are the other ISVs you plug into to make yourself much more sticky? So that's all the product integration, and that used to be done in silos. But because that's one of your strong go-to-markets, you need to have the go-to-market teams aligned to what the product integration is going on to advocate that capability to the GSIs so they can actually build whatever services they want for whatever target industry they're building for.

Chris Gordon 08:35.44

So you've got to bring that together in terms of working with GSIs, understanding that, say, the business unit within the GSI you're looking after is the FSI. What's unique to them? Then pulling down to, OK, what's in the marketplace that they're focusing on? What's the architectural changes needed? And then the product team's got to figure out, OK, who are we going to integrate with first to service the FSI market with the GSI.

Des Russell 09:03.76

Yeah, so let's bring this back to your role because I'd love to double-click on this. You're in APAC and you're responsible for the GSI landing strategy with GSIs with Rubrik in this particular region.

Des Russell 09:12.18

These GSIs operate across a whole bunch of other regions in the world. They also work with a whole bunch of other partners, hyperscalers, competitors, or people that surround the same technology problem that Rubrik is solving. So talk to me a little bit about just trying to understand or unpack this: how do you as a GSI alliances leader in APAC decide out of the 17 partners that are there, which ones to work with, which ones to go to market with in different geographies? How do you do this without working 80 hours a day or just absolutely killing yourself? And then how do you get the results? So let's start up front. How do you look at your 17 GSIs to determine which ones you are going to focus on and which ones you're not going to focus on right now?

Chris Gordon 10:29.41

You know, there's a couple of frameworks I use because, like you say, it's a very big task. There is a lot of market coverage and these GSIs are huge as well. And within the GSIs, there's probably about 10 different business units that I should be targeting and working with. This revised version corrects the text and grammar for clarity and readability. And then if you think about where I've come from, I've been in the business for 14 years at VMware. So then I've got probably a lot of biases and lots of things that have stuck with me that I need to shake off. So I always think about the first principles thinking. And so what that means really for me is kind of questioning every assumption that I've got. So just because something works in Australia, I need to drop that assumption. And does that work in Indonesia, for example, and vice versa, and then for India. So even though I've got maybe thought of what would work, I've got to question every assumption because what I do is I've got to be able to create a new solution and doing business with these GSIs in those countries.

Chris Gordon 11:35.88 So I've got to always bring it back to the first principles and what's the company's objectives. Then I've got to think about the kind of market in terms of which GSIs are going to service a market versus creating a market.

Chris Gordon 11:51.59 We know some GSIs are a bit more innovative and more nimble than others. Now that could be a broad statement and then when you overlay it with which country, they're going to be more innovative in a particular country versus another one and you've got to be able to meet them, understand them, understand how they think. And you go, actually, that person who looks after Australia is actually not as innovative as the person in say Indonesia. So I'm actually going to lean into the person in Indonesia, even though the Australian market's bigger. because what you're looking for is somebody who's willing to move with you, especially when you're a challenger, I feel like Rubrik, and then the willingness to partner with us.

Des Russell 12:33.73 Yeah.

Chris Gordon 12:40.02

So you put these 17 in that kind of two by two metrics. And you can only really focus on three properly. And then you've probably got another five that you can do a lot of discovery work, keep warm. And so that's how I'm splitting my focus and time is using those frameworks before I get to the next stage of partner development.

Des Russell 13:04.57

Okay. How did you learn those frameworks? Was that just your experience in the industry? Was this something that you learned from others in the industry? Because you know these are the things that experienced operators have an advantage of when we kind of think about entering partnerships and ecosystems, which is, you know, how can someone else learn this particular model?

Chris Gordon 13:38.41

So it is experience, and it's hard to replicate experience. But one thing you can do to fast track it is read. A lot of things I get from books. Actually, I don't physically read the book. I listen to Audible. So a lot of business books are great. Then speaking to other people within the industry as well, just like we are right now, there's always little gems that I pick up from listening to your podcasts or many other podcasts as well.

Chris Gordon 14:06.98

Then the other one is really just understanding as it comes down to self-awareness. I think self-awareness of who you are, where the company is and where the market is, allows you to think a bit more clearly. And the more you have some self-awareness, the easier it is to execute.

Des Russell 14:30.31

And from a self-awareness perspective, are you talking about understanding what you know and what you don't know and then filling that particular gap, knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are? What is self-awareness to you?

Chris Gordon 14:44.85

It's everything. So it touches on more of a personal topic as well. When I moved into a leadership role at VMware, one of the best leaders I've witnessed were definitely people who were very self-aware. So I was like, OK, I'm going to invest in that. So I personally invested in a lot of different things to be more self-aware, to understand myself and how to respond in certain situations. That's really important.

Des Russell 15:16.55 Hmm.

Chris Gordon 15:18.38

And then I think the other aspect is, I think a lot of companies struggle with this, is to have some self-awareness of where they are as well. So if we have a look at it, Rubrik has an amazing business, and it's very focused on the enterprise, and they're doing huge deals in healthcare, FSI, in Europe, and government. In APJ, we're just starting, right? So if you think about the people who are leading the business over in HQ, they've got to have the self-awareness to realize that APAC is different because it's almost like the final frontier. If they're creating a global program they've got to be self-aware to realize, actually, we are going to change this rule, because it makes sense in America and Europe.

Chris Gordon 16:19.74

And that's maybe changing partner incentives, etc. And then they leave APJ because they realize we're probably about 18 months behind. And I've actually seen them do that. So it's good to see that at Rubrik. Some of the vendors I've worked for didn't do that. They just blanked it out and said, here's the incentive program.

Chris Gordon 16:43.98

So that's one good thing I see here in my short time at Rubrik. They actually are quite self-aware and they're willing to admit a mistake and change the mistake quickly as well. I've noticed that in the short time I've been here. So it's a pretty impressive organizational self-awareness.

Des Russell 17:00.58

Yeah, I love that thinking, that self-awareness piece, because there is a mindset part to that, which a lot of people talk about, but I like the framing of that from a self-awareness perspective. Now let's look at self-awareness: knowing what you're good at, knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are, but also knowing where you're not so good. And I think in partnerships, I'd love to get your view here. We kind of

Des Russell 17:32.59

Enter partnerships, you've got 17 GSIs. You've mentioned these three GSIs you're probably going to work with right now. There's five or so GSIs that you're going to continue to build capability with or build an engagement with and lead them towards being execution-focused. When you think about this from a self-awareness piece, how does it feel as a partnership professional when you are aligned on the self-awareness piece with a partner where you know your strengths, they know their strengths, you know there's opportunities or areas that you're not going to operate in. So how does it feel

Des Russell 18:18.95

When you're working with a partnership like that? How does it feel when you're not working with a partnership like that? What are the things that you are always dealing with? Because that's what we go through all the time.

Chris Gordon 18:32.26

There are two different things around partner alignment with an ISV and then the self-awareness thing. Self-awareness is understanding, do we have the resources available to us to actually partner? So if we have a look at some of these GSIs, they're absolutely massive. They're going, OK, you've got great technology. You've got something different, huge big tech. We can build services around it. Are you ready to partner with us? And that's why we've got to have this self-awareness, because you look at this large partner, and you're drooling at the mouth, thinking, hey, this is going to be absolutely amazing for us. Then you look around internally, and you realize,

Chris Gordon 19:40.53

Actually, we don't have the resources to partner with this GSI properly in the region. That's the self-awareness piece. Then, that obviously, if you have that, you know which partner to align with.

Chris Gordon 19:54.44

So they are slightly different, and then that partner alignment, what it looks like and what it doesn't look like. I mean, the first one, especially when you're starting in a position like we are in Rubrik and we're still building the market, the willingness to partner is very important. Who's responding? Who takes kind of two months to respond or who responds quickly? Who's got a goal that they need to achieve and they can leverage you to achieve that goal?

Chris Gordon 20:30.01

There are certain GSIs that made investments and have acquired regional SIs. Now, when that happens, that's a really good opportunity for an ISV because they put some money down on the table, they've committed to X amount of growth. So if they've acquired a particular company, say in Australia or somewhere else in the region, you know, after the first part of the integration, they want a return on investment to use an ISV aligned to their capabilities and what they're good at, the industries, etc., all the kind of standard stuff. Then you can lean into that because they're probably hungry for business. Now with GSIs, generally, we pull them into deals. But when there's an external factor like that happening within your partner ecosystem, that's something an ISV can use to get more willingness to partner.

Des Russell 21:38.51

Yeah, I love that distinction. That is a really good distinction between the self-awareness and the alignment piece. What we're doing in partnerships is we're trying to bring the rest of the organization to see what we see.

Des Russell 21:53.16

And a lot of the time there is an element of data. There's always an element of the strategy that you're trying to connect with. So in the instances where you have to be truthful with yourself and go, well, actually, internally, when I look internally, we're just not ready to execute on this partnership, how do you reconcile that with, well, actually, I'm a you know, we can't execute internally, but I've actually got a job to do. How do you reconcile this as a leader in your organization? Is there something you just

Des Russell 22:34.80

Push to the side or do you have a way of helping others understand how they can actually go internally and help them understand what this opportunity is so we can build capacity or build the resources?

Chris Gordon 22:50.14

Yeah, certainly. So you have to have the ears of the power internally, but you've also got to understand their requirements to run a business as well, right? So we might be kind of going, hey, you've got to invest in partnerships, but they've got other areas they need to invest in too. So it is something that you've really got to be clear on what the market opportunity is. And you've got to be damn certain that you can execute on that. You know, because there's a lot of times I've seen that people throw these huge numbers.

Chris Gordon 23:23.61

Yeah. If we work with this partner, they're doing X amount with our competitor and it's hundreds of millions of dollars. So if we just hire these five people, we'll be able to capture that market share. And that's just really bad math because it doesn't always work.

Des Russell 23:39.05

That looks like hope. Hope is not a strategy kind of thing.

Chris Gordon 23:43.49

But it can be dressed up and look like a great strategy because it's data-driven. Data can be used, like numbers can be used to lie, right? So I think about it as a bit of a triangle when I'm connecting with the GSI. I can't be reliant on one person or one business unit.

Chris Gordon 24:03.69

That's a terrible strategy.

Des Russell 24:03.76

Yeah.

Chris Gordon 24:05.97

And we know there's a lot of people who are like, yeah, I know this person, they can do this for us. These organizations are huge. So I look at it from a connection triangle. So I have alliances in one corner. And that alliances could be a number of different champions as well. So they don't necessarily have to be in an alliance team at these GSIs, but just somebody who's going to really advocate for you.

Chris Gordon 24:30.13

Then you've got to be across certain practice leaders, whether that's, you know, the Microsoft practice, or AWS practice, Google practice, or the database practice, or digital transformation practice, whatever it is, whatever you're doing as an ISV, you've got to be across the practice leaders, and they've got to be bought in as well. And then the last bit, which is probably the most important piece, is their sales team. The sales team sometimes is the client director, for example, or it's the person who actually gets paid on the technology system.

Chris Gordon 25:08.11

Sometimes the GSI account manager is not necessarily the best person, but there's going to be a team around them who also get paid and they have a number on their head, whether it's consultants, managed services, etc. And I'd put them there. So you've got to have that mapped out. Then you might have had one or two wins. Then you can go back to the business and go, this is the market opportunity. This is why I know I can execute. And these are the people I know. Even if that person leaves, I've still got a fallback.

Des Russell 25:42.93 Yeah.

Chris Gordon 25:43.86 So it's definitely an investible partnership. And that's just on the GSI piece. The next piece down is internally and that mindshare. And that starts from the ground up and it starts with your sales team all the way up to the execs who have the money to then invest in the partnership.

Des Russell 26:03.78

I love it. I love it. So we've got two key models here, which I'm sure our audience are going to absolutely hit you on, which is your segmentation model, your two-by-two model to determine which GSIs by how to prioritize your time, energy and investment. And then there's this triangle model, which I absolutely love. I love models. So this is something that I definitely would love to probably unpack with you as well for the audience. So as a partnership professional,

Des Russell 26:37.49

Yes, you've got to have a lot of hard work and experience on your side, but you are also a member of the Partnership Leaders community in the APAC region. So why partnership leaders? Why belong to a community of professionals? What value do you get out of that? How does that actually help you in your role? And what are some of the things you've received from that community that makes it a worthwhile investment of your time? You actually lead the APAC, the Singapore chapter as a host. So you invest time and energy. Tell me how you're using the community.

Chris Gordon 27:27.26

Yeah, certainly. So like I mentioned earlier, it's kind of like, where do you get all this information from? Partnership Leaders is a huge component of that. It's helping me connect to the wider partnership leaders within Singapore and the region, which is great. That's where you get the little tidbits of information on how they operate, which partners are doing what. No one's sharing any trade secrets, but just kind of, you know, you get to realize which partners are actually moving the market. The thing I love about hosting it is I just get to learn.

Chris Gordon 28:07.01

Tomorrow I'm going to be hosting somebody from Accenture and somebody from Salesforce, and they're going to be talking about how they met and how they built their professional relationship and how they built the business together with Salesforce and Accenture. It's just an amazing story and it's exactly what we're doing here right now, but I get to do that in front of an audience full of people from Singapore. There are people who are part of the Partnership Leaders community. They're actually in town from India and they're going, I'd love to join that meetup as well.

Chris Gordon 28:42.33

So you really expand your network, and for someone in partnerships, networking is very important. Not just to know who's who and where they all are, but to really get a sense of what's going on because you can't know everything. It's impossible. And this is such a dynamic market as well. It changes all the time. I mean, when I first jumped into partnerships, AWS was tiny.I remember when I was in Ireland and I was being headhunted by AWS in the UK years ago. I was like, who are they? I'm not trying. Probably the biggest financial mistake I've made in my life, but yeah, it's so dynamic. The more you can branch out your network and be connected, the more you get a finger on the pulse of the industry and where it's going.

Des Russell 29:38.37 Yeah, it's kind of like the role of partnerships, right? Nothing's ever the same. You're working with different partnerships. Yes, you might be executing a particular go-to-market strategy, which is the same customer segment and product, but the reality is you're working with different types of partners, which require a different type of strategy, which also require a different type of relationship, which also requires different types of other partners that you surround that particular relationship with as well. And you know, the Singapore chapter, and I know we've got Anurjan in India growing that chapter as well for Partnership Leaders, but it's really just an important

Des Russell 30:26.42

I think it's a fantastic and important part of the ecosystem, particularly here in APAC or APJ or ASEAN, because as you mentioned earlier, it's like the last conquered territory for any of the organized ISVs or hyperscalers or anyone who's looking for market share and revenue growth. It is the last kind of space. And we need this kind of help and we need this type of community to help you go a little bit faster and also contribute a little bit more, which is great. What's a community of contribution, not competition?

Des Russell 31:10.79

‍I think I didn't coin that phrase, but I absolutely love that as well.

Des Russell 31:16.60

So, Chris, we'd like to have a bit of fun on our podcast as well. So there's a thing called Partnerships Fast Five. Aaron passes it and everyone wins it. But it's a way for us to just get what's on top of your mind. So I'll throw you a couple of statements, and I just want the first word, just finish off my sentence with whatever comes to mind as well. Ready to go?

Chris Gordon 31:46.06

OK, ready.

Des Russell 31:47.88

‍Partnerships thrive on.

Chris Gordon 31:52.92

People.

Des Russell 31:55.67

Partnerships embody.

Chris Gordon 31:59.02

Trust.

Des Russell 32:01.88

Through partnerships, you can.

Chris Gordon 32:03.69

Grow rapidly. Execute.

Des Russell 32:14.77

‍ Partnerships spark.

Chris Gordon 32:19.74

Ideas.

Des Russell 32:21.64

And last one, partnerships succeed through.

Chris Gordon 32:26.82

Commitment.

Des Russell 32:34.52

Love it. Well, that's Partnerships Fast Five done. Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. I think there's always something that our audience can learn from operators in partnerships, but I think in particular you've got a great story, right? A global ISV now a public company, a lot of pressure, in a new region, creating a market. So I'm sure our audience would love to understand how they can connect with you, learn a little bit more about your segmentation model or your triangle model. So how best can our audience connect with you and understand a little bit more about what we've discussed today?

Chris Gordon 33:26.82

Well, the best networking tool is LinkedIn, so they can reach out there. And if they're part of the Partnership Leaders community, they can reach out to me on Slack.

Des Russell 33:35.77

OK, excellent. Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure having you join me in this conversation today and share your story of how you've been a driver of partner impact.

Chris Gordon 33:47.77

Thank you. Thank you again for having me.

‍

END