We’re experimenting with partnerships as a B2B growth channel
One thing we’ve realized while building Trackly is that getting the product in front of the right businesses can be harder than building the product itself.
So we’re trying a different approach: building a small partner network with people who already work with growing teams.
The idea is simple:
- Refer a business that could benefit from Trackly
- If they become a customer, you earn 20% recurring revenue every month
- You continue earning for as long as they remain a customer
We’re especially interested in connecting with HR consultants, recruiters, agencies, B2B consultants, and SaaS founders.
If you’re interested in exploring it, leave a comment below and I’ll share the details.
For other Indie Hackers: have partner/referral programs actually worked for your SaaS? What made partners start referring consistently?
Too early on the "consistently referring" part for us — literally just building the channel and haven't landed a single referral yet, so I don't have proof it works. But since you're building the same thing right now, here's what we found evaluating options: the paid directories (JVNewsWatch, WarriorJV) wanted upfront ad spend before anyone even saw the offer, so we went with the free evergreen listing route instead — cheaper way to test whether the concept generates interest before spending anything.
One thing I'd flag from research: a lot of advice assumes partners are actively hunting for offers, but most of what we found suggests the real unlock is a dead-simple, low-friction way for the partner to prove value FAST to their own audience — a free tool/lead magnet that funnels into the paid product, rather than asking the partner to pitch the $ product cold. Curious if that matches what you're seeing with Trackly — are you leading with a free trial for the partner's referrals, or straight to paid?
The cold-start problem is real, so tapping into existing trust via consultants and agencies is a solid bet. Looking forward to seeing how this scales for you—keep us updated!
I can turn this into a 30-day partner activation plan with the target partner profile, outreach script, activation milestone, owner, lead-quality threshold, close-rate target, and exit criteria. The focused 20-minute session is $75. Book the Startup Advisory call here: https://calendly.com/dontae-threeum-nsuo/startup-advisory-call-20-min
The key metric I would watch is not partner introductions, but partner-sourced opportunities that reach a defined activation milestone. A simple partner scorecard with audience overlap, trust level, time to first qualified lead, and close rate will quickly show whether this is a real channel or just friendly activity.
That’s a really good point. We’ve been thinking about this too, an introduction by itself doesn’t mean much unless it actually moves toward activation.
I like the idea of tracking audience overlap, time to first qualified lead, and close rate. We’ll definitely keep those in mind as we build the partner network. Thanks for sharing this!
"Getting the product in front of the right businesses can be harder than building the product itself" felt that line more than I expected to.
Haven't tried a partner/referral program myself, mostly leaning on genuine community engagement and content so far. Curious what made you pick partnerships over, say, direct content or community-first distribution was it a deliberate bet, or did the other channels just not work as well as you hoped?
Yeah, exactly 😄 We’re still experimenting with different channels, including content and community engagement.
Partnerships felt worth testing because HR consultants, agencies, and B2B service providers already have relationships with the kinds of businesses we’re trying to reach. So rather than starting every conversation from zero, we’re testing whether trusted introductions can make distribution easier.
That makes sense trusted introductions skipping the cold-start problem is a real advantage, especially for something like Trackly where the buyer probably already trusts their HR consultant's judgment more than a random SaaS ad.
I'll be curious to see how it plays out feels like the kind of channel that's slow to prove out (SkillIssue's point about tracking activation, not just introductions, seems right) but compounds well once a few partners actually start referring consistently. Good luck with it, will keep an eye on how this thread develops.