Asher✨Catalyst USA 2026 is Aug 25/26✨Mathew

AI was supposed to reduce work. It is doing the opposite. In Episode 46, we break down why AI is increasing the pace, scope, and expectations of work across every company. Shailesh Powdwal (VP, Partnerships at Forsys Inc) joins the pod to unpack what this shift means for services firms (SIs, Agencies, Advisory firms). We cover: • Research showing AI is intensifying work, not reducing it • Anthropic’s momentum and what it signals for the AI market • HubSpot and Salesforce reshaping partner programs for an AI first world • McKinsey’s shift toward agents and new operating models • How services firms are moving from time based to outcome based work • Why hardware demand is rising with AI adoption • CEOs stepping in as Chief AI Officers • Why partnerships must shift to owning AI driven revenue The takeaway is simple. AI is not an efficiency story. It is a performance escalation. Companies are not doing less. They are being asked to do more, faster, with higher expectations. Companies discussed: Anthropic, HubSpot, Salesforce, McKinsey & Company, Sandisk. P.S. The biggest shift we are seeing is not in tools. It is in expectations. Apple: lnkd.in/gc5MYWQd Spotify: lnkd.in/g-3Z2AkT

@ighose Best news of the week for the partnerships industry!

Delighted to share this! The Claude Partner Network is live - with $100M committed this year to the organizations helping enterprises actually adopt Claude. Training, co-investment, dedicated technical support, certifications, and a new Code Modernization starter kit. Partners are how AI moves from proof of concept to production. This is us doubling down on building that together, which truly matters in India. If you're bringing Claude to enterprise customers or building a Claude practice, go ahead and apply now! anthropic.com/news/claude-pa…

Something interesting is happening in deals right now. In the past week I spoke with four services companies. Each told me the same thing. Customers are asking for the partner manager to join deal calls. Why? Because the deal no longer involves just one vendor. There are multiple companies delivering the outcome: • The platform • The services partner • The software (think app) partner • Sometimes even the data or AI provider Customers want someone coordinating the ecosystem. Not just selling the product. That role is increasingly falling to the partnerships team. If this trend continues, it changes how we think about partnerships. Partner managers are no longer behind the scenes. They are becoming the orchestrators of multi-party deals. (I know James Hodgkinson will love this one). I am curious if others are seeing this too. Are customers asking for partnerships teams to be present in complex deals? Pre-Close? Post-Sale?

+1

@mbrendan1 +1

TIL the head of economics at Anthropic has < 1k followers on X. Seems like an important thinker to follow!

Here’s an interesting partnerships role.

@real_Ivn Me too

Do you know where the term ISV came from? The origin goes back to 1969. In the early days of computing, companies like IBM sold hardware and software together. If you bought the machine, the software came with it. Software was not a separate product category. It was bundled into the system. Then in 1969, under antitrust pressure, IBM announced it would unbundle software from hardware. Software would now be priced and sold separately. That decision reshaped the industry. Once software could be sold on its own, new companies began to emerge. They built programs that ran on IBM systems but were not owned by IBM. They were independent businesses whose primary product was software. The industry needed a term to describe them. Independent Software Vendor. Independent because they were not owned by the hardware manufacturer. Software because that was the core product. Vendor because they sold it commercially. The term stuck. As the market expanded into personal computers, operating systems, and eventually cloud platforms, ISV became the standard label for companies that build software on top of someone else’s infrastructure. Independent Hardware Vendor followed a similar logic, but from the hardware side. As computing matured in the 1970s and 1980s, more companies began specializing in components. Graphics cards. Storage devices. Network equipment. Processors. These firms were not the original system builders like IBM, and later Dell or HP. They designed and sold hardware that worked across broader platforms. By analogy to ISV, the industry used the term Independent Hardware Vendor to describe them. There was no single defining moment like IBM’s unbundling. The term evolved as hardware specialization increased. These terms are really just snapshots of where value lived at the time. In the beginning, it was all about the machine. Then software stepped out from behind the curtain and became the main act. Eventually, platforms became the stage, and everyone else built on top of them. History in tech tends to rhyme.

Build. Market. Sell. Serve. Partnerships summed up in 4 words.

🎟Secure your spot here: link.joincatalyst.com/asher-early-bi…

24 hours until the Catalyst 26 early bird rate closes. The strongest partnership leaders benchmark themselves against peers. For calibration. The ecosystem is shifting quickly. AI is compressing product cycles. Services firms are moving upstream. Platforms are competing on ecosystem depth and distribution leverage. Executive teams are asking harder questions: • Where do partnerships drive measurable revenue? • How do ecosystems increase win rates? • What does maturity actually look like? 1,000+ partnership and GTM leaders in one place. Working sessions. Practical frameworks. Real examples. Ecosystem strategy requires proximity to other operators. Early bird ends tomorrow. See you in NYC.

My exact system for spotting which companies will make sales reps rich 12 to 18 months before everyone else figures it out. This has helped 200+ clients position themselves at companies like Snowflake, DoorDash, Samsara, and more recently Tractian before the herd showed up. Here's the blueprint:

Usually Build. Sales sees deals. Marketing sees reach. Service sees retention. Product sees tradeoffs. Integrations compete with roadmap. Partner asks can feel like distractions. Ecosystem value shows up later as stickiness, not immediate revenue. That makes it harder to feel in the moment.

Build. Market. Sell. Serve You should be able to explain the value of partnerships in these four words. Especially to your CEO / CFO.

@handotdev Thanks for this pov! Interesting to see that HR / Recruiting isn’t mentioned at all

what I would be working on if I started another company today

This morning we focused on AI in Partnerships in our members only monthly webinar. We talked about CEO priorities and how partner teams can support them. If you are a CEO, are you fully leveraging your partner team to support you? If you are a partnership leader, is your CEO talking about AI ARR? If yes, how are you helping him drive it?

@saranormous @harvey Isn’t that how all partnerships work? You recruit them?

finally settled the question of what @harvey's named for turns out you can just recruit the partners you want

I would add Chief Partner Officer, the exec that helps you operationalize the Partner function in the Build, Buy, Partner framework that CEOs use. This exec will help you prioritize and optimize partners who can help the company grow through Build, Market, Sell and Serve activities.

Every company will become ecosystem-native. The only question is whether you build the capability now or get forced into it later.

This week on the Unlearn Podcast, we zoom out. What happens when AI turns companies and even countries into platform businesses? Ajaz Ahmed Siddiqui (@Microsoft) joins us to unpack why services firms and system integrators are now at the center of the AI economy. We cover: • @DavidSacks at Davos and the idea that America is becoming a platform company • How @lumentechco repositioned itself from telecom provider to AI infrastructure backbone • Why System Integrators must redesign their models in the AI era • Anthropic hiring a revenue owning SI leader at $250K plus OTE • New budget data from the 2026 State of Partnership Leaders report • @salesforce confirming partner selling is nearly universal The takeaway is simple. Platforms win through ecosystems. Ecosystems win through execution. Companies discussed: @AnthropicAI, @lumentechco, @salesforce , @awscloud, @McKinsey, @Wipro, @BCG. @Spotify Link: open.spotify.com/episode/09PLVE… @Apple Podcasts Link: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unl…