Insights
Writing
Everything here is written from the dataset on this site. Where a claim rests on a count, the count links to the rows it came from.
The corpus, and what it can answer
Before the pieces, the map. Knowing the shape of what has been read is the difference between a claim you can rely on and a claim that happens to be true of one publication.
| What | Count | What it can and cannot support |
|---|---|---|
| Arrangements read in full | 1420 | Counts within the corpus. Not a census, so not market shares. |
| Counted as distribution | 1091 | The rest are technology purchases, recorded and never counted. |
| Companies appearing | 150 | Company level facts. Absence means unread, never absent. |
| Types in the taxonomy | 11 | Definitional claims, which do not depend on coverage at all. |
| Named lists with a stated basis | 4 | Gap statistics against a population somebody else can rebuild. |
The single largest source is one payments trade publication, and that shapes what the corpus is good for. Type mix and any single company's share reflect its coverage as much as the market: three in five arrangements it covers are one company supplying a capability to another, against closer to three in ten in company newsrooms. Claims about the shape of the supply side survive that. Claims about who leads it do not, and are not made here.
Pieces
- Why distribution partnerships, and when they are the wrong answer A partnership answers one narrow question: is reaching a customer through somebody who already has them cheaper than acquiring them directly. Three cases where the answer is no.
- How to start a distribution partnership programme The first partnership is a different problem from the tenth. The sequence that works when you have none, and what a first year actually looks like.
- How distribution partnerships actually make money Four economic shapes cover almost every arrangement here. Which one you are in decides what to negotiate and which single number predicts renewal.
- Playbooks by arrangement type What to do differently depending on which type you are running, including the one that is not a partnership at all and is announced as one constantly.
- What counts as a distribution partnership, and what does not Ten types, one question each, and the boundary that decides whether an arrangement is counted at all. Written because most partnership counts do not say what they counted.
- The supply side is a long tail Most companies that supply what moves appear exactly once. What that shape means for anyone deciding who to approach.
- How to read a partnership announcement The direction is the thing announcements leave out most often, and it is the thing that decides what the arrangement is worth. A practical guide to the sentence that matters.