Hi Bojarajan
Congratulations to getting to revenue and being bootstrapped - I take my hat off to you!
Sadly, my experience is that partnership channels don’t work at your size. What often happens is someone comes along and says “we’re going to sell you and we have thousands of customers” and you think “brilliant! I can get someone else to make me rich without doing any of my own sales and marketing”.
We thought exactly that. One reseller in particular promised to completely transform our fortunes overnight. So we spent time and money on this, we even hired a partnerships manager. But we were too early. The sad truth is that resellers are there to make themselves successful and if they have a huge arsenal of products then they have a better chance of having something they can sell to a customer. But they aren’t going to go out of their way to sell your product. Once customers start asking for your product then it may be worth their while, but they aren’t going to take a gamble on you or invest their own money for you. Why should they?
So my advice would be, if someone has a customer already and they can resell you then great. Work out a reseller price and tell them what it is. But don’t bank on them being a key driver for your business and definitely don’t agree to any exclusivity.