Product Partnership Acquisition Dance
Use mutual product work to test strategic fit before pursuing an acquisition
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 94%
The acquisition dance begins with a substantive product partnership rather than a bundled sales announcement or premature transaction proposal. The companies identify an integration that creates clear value for both user bases, then collaborate on implementation, permissions, support, and launch. This work lets executives and operating teams observe technical compatibility, decision speed, cultural fit, and how customers respond to the combined experience. It also reveals whether the strategic logic survives contact with real product constraints. If the partnership works, both sides enter acquisition discussions with better evidence about integration value and organizational compatibility. If it fails, they have limited their exposure while still delivering—or attempting to deliver—a bounded customer benefit.
Origin
Extracted from Acquired while Ben Gilbert explained how Google and Slack's custom sharing integration resembled a common path from partnership to acquisition.
Core principles
- 01Test strategic compatibility through real customer value creation.
- 02Prefer product collaboration over superficial co-marketing.
- 03Use implementation work to expose teams, technology, and user behavior.
- 04Treat acquisition as a possible outcome rather than the opening demand.
How to run it
- 1
Find shared customer value
Identify a customer problem that requires capabilities from both companies. Ensure each side benefits independently from solving it.
Pro tip Choose a workflow customers already attempt manually across both products.
Watch out Do not begin with a transaction thesis disguised as a feature request.
- 2
Design a substantive integration
Specify product behavior, ownership, permissions, support, and success measures. Avoid limiting the project to bundled distribution or joint marketing.
Pro tip Select an integration deep enough to reveal real technical and organizational fit.
Watch out An oversized first project can create unnecessary risk and delay.
- 3
Operate together
Have product, engineering, legal, and go-to-market teams implement and launch the integration. Observe how each organization handles trade-offs and setbacks.
Pro tip Record integration decisions and unresolved incompatibilities as diligence evidence.
Watch out Executive enthusiasm can conceal poor working-level compatibility.
- 4
Measure the customer response
Track adoption, engagement, support burden, retention effects, and customer requests. Determine whether the combination creates more value than two separate products.
Pro tip Interview shared customers about the complete workflow, not merely feature satisfaction.
Watch out Publicity around the partnership can inflate short-term adoption.
- 5
Assess strategic compatibility
Review technical architecture, user overlap, cultures, incentives, and distribution potential. Decide whether continued partnership, acquisition, or separation offers the best outcome.
Pro tip Include evidence that argues against the preferred deal.
Watch out A successful feature does not automatically justify buying the entire company.
- 6
Open informed deal discussions
If the evidence supports combination, negotiate using what both sides learned through the partnership. Build the post-acquisition plan around proven integration value.
Pro tip Preserve the operating relationships that produced the successful partnership.
Watch out Do not let deal momentum override newly discovered integration risks.
In the wild
Google performed custom work so Slack users could understand and grant document access from within Slack. The project required executive contact and exposed both companies to each other's product, users, and implementation practices. The hosts argue that this type of collaboration often forms the relationship that can lead to an acquisition, even though Google did not ultimately buy Slack.
→ The integration demonstrated strong product affinity and created evidence for a potential strategic combination.
An analytics company and a CRM vendor jointly build a workflow that sends verified product-usage signals into sales records. After customers adopt it and retention improves, the companies use the operating evidence to evaluate whether an acquisition would accelerate distribution and product development.
→ The buyer reaches a better-supported acquisition decision with a clearer integration plan.
Common mistakes
Starting with bundled distribution
A co-selling agreement may generate leads but reveals little about technical compatibility or whether the products create distinctive joint value.
Mistaking cooperation for strategic fit
Teams can execute one successful integration without the companies being suitable for full organizational combination.
Ignoring failed-partnership evidence
Technical friction, weak adoption, or cultural conflict should update the acquisition thesis rather than be dismissed because executives want a deal.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for technology companies considering acquisitions where product integration and shared customers are central to the thesis.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for distressed sales, purely financial acquisitions, or deals requiring immediate confidentiality and speed.
From the transcript
“let's do a partnership. No, not like a bundled distribution go-to-market partnership. What's an interesting product thing that we could do that would provide value…”
“Cut companies get to know each other, they get to understand each of their user bases, and then that's the kind of thing that tends…”
“that is the typical kind of thing that forms a relationship between companies that then leads to acquisition.”
From the episode
Special: Slack + Salesforce Emergency Pod with Packy McCormick of Not Boring