For B2B tech executives trying to drive efficient growth, the traditional GTM playbook is broken. Ecosystem Alpha is designed for leaders looking to transform partnerships into their ultimate competitive advantage. Hosted by Will Schnabel and Sebastian Hoelzl, our 40-minute interviews feature C-Suite leaders winning in the ecosystem era. We skip the fluff to uncover exact strategies that drive efficient sales, improve NRR, slash CAC, and accelerate Agentic AI adoption. New episodes drop every Tuesday to help you connect strategy in the boardroom to execution in the CRM.
Ecosystem Alpha where Strategy meets GTM Execution
Claim This Podcastby Sebastian Hoelzl and Will Schnabel
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12 episodes
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Podcast Overview
For B2B tech executives trying to drive efficient growth, the traditional GTM playbook is broken. Ecosystem Alpha is designed for leaders looking to transform partnerships into their ultimate competitive advantage. Hosted by Will Schnabel and Sebastian Hoelzl, our 40-minute interviews feature C-Suite leaders winning in the ecosystem era. We skip the fluff to uncover exact strategies that drive efficient sales, improve NRR, slash CAC, and accelerate Agentic AI adoption. New episodes drop every Tuesday to help you connect strategy in the boardroom to execution in the CRM.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
3/10/2026
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Recent Episodes
June 29, 2026
The Ecosystem-Led Product: Architecting Integration Density and the Network Moat with Agata Bugaj
<p>Most B2B SaaS companies treat integrations as a favour the product team does for the partner team. That framing is killing revenue. When product and partnerships operate in silos, the integrations that get built are the wrong ones. The ones that do get built often go unused. And the network moat that should be compounding never forms.</p><p>Agata Bugaj, Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX and former SVP of Product at FullStory, joins Sebastian Hoelzl and Will Schnabel to break down how product leaders and partner teams can work together in a way that actually moves the commercial needle.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What you will learn:</strong></p><p>▹ Why the partner team's job is not to bring a list of integration requests to product, and what to do instead to validate real end-user value before anyone writes a line of code</p><p>▹ How to choose between a large, hard-to-work-with partner and a smaller, easier partner, and why internal relationships and prioritisation willingness often matter more than market reach</p><p>▹ What it means in practice when a product manager asks your partner team a hard question, and why the correct answer is sometimes no</p><p>▹ How to build the working relationship between engineering, product, and the partner's technical team so integrations move fast without becoming liabilities</p><p>▹ The most common mistake product teams make when building toward a partnership, and how to avoid building something customers will never use</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About the guest:</strong></p><p>Agata Bugaj is Chief Product Officer at ButterflyMX, a property access technology platform serving multifamily, commercial, and student housing. She brings over fifteen years of experience leading product, UX, and engineering teams across B2B SaaS and enterprise eCommerce. Prior to ButterflyMX, she served as SVP of Product at FullStory, where she scaled the product function from Director through to SVP level.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast</strong></p><p><strong>1. No Professional Advice:</strong> The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).</p><p><strong>2. Views Expressed:</strong> The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.</p><p><strong>3. Professional Titles:</strong> Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.</p><p><strong>4. Limitation of Liability:</strong> By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.</p>
June 22, 2026
Why Your International Expansion is Failing and How the Partner Network Fixes It with JD Klausner
<p>Most e-commerce SaaS companies enter new international markets the same way: hire SDRs, spend on localised ads, and wait. It is an expensive bet that rarely pays. JD Klausner has spent his career proving there is a faster, cheaper, more defensible path — one that runs through the partner ecosystem.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What you'll learn:</strong></p><ul><li>Why the brute-force international expansion playbook is mathematically broken in 2026, and what a partner-first market entry looks like at the execution level — not the strategy deck level.</li></ul><ul><li>How to separate your GTM partners from your product partners before entering a new market, and why confusing the two is the most common reason international launches stall.</li><li>The three-step entry sequence Klausner used at Loop Returns to open the UK market — partner-first to fill product gaps, pipeline validation before hiring local AEs, and localisation only once revenue is real.</li><li>How to kill "commission breath" on your sales floor: the operating model for getting your top AEs to treat local partners as revenue accelerators rather than margin threats.</li><li>What "partner density" actually measures, why it is the single ecosystem metric worth reporting to your board, and how it predicts revenue velocity in a new geography before you have closed a deal.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>JD Klausner is VP of Global Partnerships at Commerce (BigCommerce). He previously served as SVP and General Manager, International at Loop Returns, where he led the company's expansion into European markets, and before that as VP of Partnerships at Yotpo. He has spent the better part of a decade building partner ecosystems and channel operating models across e-commerce, martech, and global logistics infrastructure.</p><p><strong>Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast</strong></p><p><strong>1. No Professional Advice:</strong> The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).</p><p><strong>2. Views Expressed:</strong> The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.</p><p><strong>3. Professional Titles:</strong> Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.</p><p><strong>4. Limitation of Liability:</strong> By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapter overview:</strong><strong>00:00 </strong>– Introduction & why the old international playbook is broken<strong>~05:00</strong> – The e-commerce macrocosm: AI, API-first platforms, and adjacent verticals reshaping the competitive landscape<strong>~13:00</strong> – The Loop Returns UK case study: separating GTM from product partners<strong>~21:00</strong> – Executing the partner-first motion: beg, borrow, steal and applying FOMO to executive buy-in<strong>~31:00</strong> – Curing commission breath: getting AEs to co-sell through the ecosystem<strong>~39:00</strong> – Transforming mature ecosystems: M&A integration, breaking silos, and the standalone partner org<strong>~46:00 </strong>– Rapid fire: the most overrated metric, partner density, and what to read next<strong>~50:00</strong> – The revenue receipt and closing alpha takeaway</p>
June 11, 2026
The Agency Moat: Why Service Partners Own the Customer with Ivan Stegic
<p>Most SaaS vendors assume their software sells itself. Ivan Stegic has spent nearly two decades proving otherwise. As CEO of TEN7, a Drupal agency whose mission is to Make Things That Matter, he has built a business on a different premise: that trust — not technology — is the real currency in any ecosystem. In a world where the % of spend on B2B software and tech services continues to increase, the agency that own the client relationship owns the deal.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What you'll learn in this episode:</strong></p><ul><li>Why the agency's role in a SaaS partner ecosystem is not to sell software but to act as an unbiased trusted advisor — and why that position is commercially more powerful than any reseller arrangement.</li><li>How open source technology, specifically Drupal, creates a structural cost and flexibility advantage that proprietary all-in-one suites (Adobe, Sitecore) cannot match — and how to make that case to a non-technical CEO.</li><li>The mechanics of a co-sell win: how TEN7 and Pantheon jointly replatformed a health system client, transferring trust from agency to hosting partner and closing a deal neither could have won alone.</li><li>Why Ivan is sceptical of agentic AI at scale, and why he believes open source will dominate the digital experience market by 2030 — including what that means for how agencies and SaaS companies should be hiring right now.</li><li>How a values-driven partner selection process — built on shared mission and ethics, not commercial incentives alone — produces stronger, more resilient client relationships and higher NRR.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Ivan Stegic is the Founder and CEO of TEN7, a Minneapolis-based Drupal agency with a mission to Make Things That Matter. A physicist and psychologist by training, Ivan has led TEN7 since 2007, building a fully distributed team that designs, builds, and cares for Drupal-powered digital experiences for mission-driven organisations across healthcare, education, and nonprofits. He is also a Strategic Board Advisor at Augmentum Global and a longstanding contributor to the Drupal community.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapter overview:</strong></p><p>00:00 – Introduction & Ivan's background</p><p>04:30 – Why SaaS vendors need service partners to unlock enterprise</p><p>10:15 – The agency as trusted advisor: unbiased evaluation in a noisy market</p><p>17:00 – Open source economics: TCO, flexibility, and owning the code</p><p>24:30 – Values-driven partner selection and the ethics of co-selling</p><p>31:00 – The TEN7 × Pantheon co-sell: a health system replatform</p><p>37:45 – AI scepticism, agentic risk, and what open source dominance looks like by 2030</p><p>42:00 – Rapid fire: hiring, predictions, and who to interview next</p><p><br></p><p>If the operating model underneath your partner programme was never designed to succeed, start with a conversation. Visit ecosystemalpha.com to book your investment audit.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Legal Disclaimer for Ecosystem Alpha: The Podcast</strong></p><p><strong>1. No Professional Advice:</strong> The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice (legal, financial, tax, or otherwise).</p><p><strong>2. Views Expressed:</strong> The opinions expressed by guests on this program are their own. Ecosystem Alpha does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by guests, and their appearance does not constitute an endorsement of the guest or the entity they represent.</p><p><strong>3. Professional Titles:</strong> Guest titles and business affiliations are provided as of the date of recording. Ecosystem Alpha makes no representation regarding the current status of a guest’s employment or their authority to bind any mentioned third-party entities.</p><p><strong>4. Limitation of Liability:</strong> By listening to this podcast, you agree that Ecosystem Alpha and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this program.</p>
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