I liked the comment about "You can't grow bigger than your partners." This is very true of small firms starting with small partners. If you want a 5 person consulting firm to resell your product, you get a lot of attention, but not a lot of traction. The opposite has a danger too though - if you sign up IBM or Accenture as a first partner, you may be too small for them to care. The ideal is finding a way to sign up with one set of partners that allows you to outgrow them if needed.

What exactly does a partnering company get if the escrow is triggered? They obviously get your source code, but the question is what are they allowed to do with it...

Generally they just get a limited, non-exclusive license to use the code for their own purposes. e.g. they can't resell it so someone else, just use it the way they would have had the escrow not been triggered.

This is a really useful article on a rarely covered aspect of running a small start-up. Thanks.

Thanks! Glad you thought so

This article is incredibly useful and timing cannot be more right for us. Thanks for sharing !