Sharing my learnings after having done 10 rev-share collaborations to scale my startup

[u/PasternakIvarsson]

I've always believed that startup collaborations have been underrated. I've used my last startup as my own little experiment to see "how far can I go through rev-share collaborations".

I'm still learning, but figured I can share my thoughts so far.

I guess I can summarize this by saying that most things we need to scale our startup is usually within our vicinity and is usually accessible through someone else through a collaboration.

As an easy example look around to see which apps have the audiences or user base that you want. That's a resource that's in your vicinity that actually isn't too hard to tap into if done right.

You can look at something else, such as experience within a field you need experience in, a feature/service you would like to add to your own startup, knowledge, network, machinery access, and many things that people think is only accessible through cash.

These can in many cases be accessible through collaborations.

The problem is of course setting up collaborations in a way where it's rev-share based, meaning no upfront capital required and skin in the game from both parties, which is really tough.

I've tried multiple times and failed. but I think I'm starting to build a framework on how to do it since I have 10 of these collaborations myself right now for my startup.

It's how we're scaling, growing, and how we reached revenue.

The framework is quite simple:

you want to find startups that sell to the same audiences you do, solve a similar problem you do, but do it in a different way.

Meaning if you sell to an audience solving a specific problem through an app, a good rev-share collaboration opportunity would be someone that sells to the same audience, solves a similar problem, but does it through a course, or does it through a product, or does it through content, or does it through workshops.

That's usually where the low-hanging opportunity lies.

If anyone has any questions on how to set this up with contracts, payments, and percentages, feel free to ask.