We Partnered with the Wrong Platform (What It Cost Us—and What We’ll Never Do Again)

The partnership looked great on paper. It turned out to be one of our most expensive decisions.

In the early days, like most SaaS companies, we were hunting for leverage.

We had a strong product. Momentum was picking up. We were solving real problems for customers. But distribution? That was still the missing piece.

So when a well-known platform approached us for an integration partnership, we saw it as the unlock.

They were in our space. Their customer base overlapped with ours. They promised a simple integration, a co-marketing push, and exposure to thousands of potential leads.

It seemed like a no-brainer.

We signed the deal.

What Happened Next

The integration kicked off… and things immediately felt off.

At first, it was manageable:

• The API wasn’t as clean as advertised.

• Their dev portal hadn’t been updated in months.

• Basic endpoints returned inconsistent data.

Still, our team is experienced. We adjusted, created middleware where necessary, and kept moving forward.

But soon, the real issues emerged.

1. There was no ownership on their side.

No one drove the project internally. We were following up constantly—on timelines, tech fixes, go-to-market coordination. It felt like we were carrying the full weight of the relationship.

2. Support slowed to a crawl.

We’d raise issues affecting live customers, and wait a week for a vague response. When we escalated, we got silence or a deflection.

3. Our customers were frustrated.

The worst part? End users began to notice. They’d try to use the integration and encounter sync errors or bad data. In their eyes, we were to blame—not our partner.

That’s when I knew this wasn’t just a “rough start.”

This was a bad partnership.

What We Missed (And What We Now Watch For)

Looking back, the signs were there. But we were so focused on what could go right, we ignored the subtle cues that something might go wrong.

• We were chasing a logo.
  We mistook brand recognition for operational readiness.

• We relied on promises, not proof.
  Demos and sales decks showed the vision. The reality was buried in outdated docs and under-resourced teams.

• We didn't ask hard questions.
  We never asked, “What does success look like for you?” or “How do you prioritize third-party developers?”

Those questions might have saved us months of internal effort, reputation damage, and lost trust.

The Real Cost of a Bad Integration

When a partnership goes wrong, it doesn’t explode.

It leaks.

And the leak is slow, quiet, and deeply expensive.

• Developer hours are redirected from building core features to patching external issues.

• Support teams absorb frustration they didn’t cause.

• Product managers lose momentum.

• Leadership spends more time in reactive conversations than strategic planning.

• Customers start to lose faith—quietly, at first. Then in churn.

This isn’t just technical debt.

It’s relational debt.

And it compounds.

How We Partner Differently Now

We’ve since rebuilt our internal process for evaluating integration and channel partners. Here’s what that now includes:

✅ Technical Proof Before Paperwork

Before we even talk about GTM plans or announcements, we test the integration internally. No clean sandbox or fast prototype? We walk away.

✅ Alignment on Customer Outcomes

We map out, with the partner, exactly how this improves the user experience. If the only benefit is co-marketing or logo swaps, it’s not worth doing.

✅ Designated Owners on Both Sides

We ask: who is the point person driving this forward, technically and commercially? If they can’t name one, it’s a red flag.

✅ Shared Metrics (or No Deal)

We don’t move forward unless there are shared success KPIs. This usually includes:

• % of customers activated through the integration

• Support ticket volume

• Net retention or usage uplift

Everyone must have skin in the game.

The Quiet Power of Saying “No”

There’s a quote I think about often now:

“Most of your problems come from saying yes too quickly and no too slowly.”

In hindsight, we said yes to that partner too quickly.

And we held on too long—hoping it would get better.

It didn’t.

And once we ended the partnership, it was like someone flipped a switch. Our team got time back. Customers stopped complaining. Our roadmap moved faster.

Sometimes, the highest-leverage move is subtraction.

Final Thought: Don't Chase Potential—Chase Proof

If you’re building in SaaS, especially in B2B, the temptation to partner fast and scale wide is everywhere.

But here’s the lesson I had to learn the hard way:

It’s better to go slower with the right partner than faster with the wrong one.

Because your brand doesn’t just live in your product.

It lives in the experiences you create through your ecosystem.

And no integration is worth trading away your reliability.

If you’re exploring a new integration or platform partnership and want the checklist we now use internally, just reply or shoot me a message. Happy to share what’s helped us avoid repeating that $100K+ mistake.

More soon,

Angelo