About Platform Partnerships
Hi, I’m Hugh 👋
I've spent more than a decade building platform partnerships, products, and ecosystems for some of the world’s leading technology companies. From co-founding Facebook's Marketing Partners program (now Meta Business Partners) to launching and scaling HubSpot's App Marketplace from 150 to 1,200+ partners, I've been fortunate to work with and learn from people that helped create competitive moats worth billions.
My career has been defined by multiple 0-1 moments. At Facebook, I was part of the founding team of the program that grew Facebook’s Ads API partnerships from $100M to $Billions, contributing to over 30% of Facebook (now Meta) revenue.
At HubSpot, I designed, launched and led the App Partner program, scaling it to over 1,200 App Partners - a key competitive differentiator against competitors like Salesforce. I recruited and managed a team of amazing program and partner managers that launched accelerators, co-marketing initiatives, and enablement programs.
“I was incredibly fortunate to persuade Hugh to join me in 2017 to lay the foundation of our App Partner Program at HubSpot. Hugh is one of the rare individuals who understands both the product-side and the partnership-side of successful platform ecosystems.”
Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and Editor at chiefmartec
I joined the early team at Intercom, where my remit was to “launch a developer platform.” We had a few thousand customers, a few integrations with ‘Market Maker’ platforms like Slack and Stripe, and - at the time - no App Store, developer hub, or platform policies. I led the platform team during a hypergrowth phase: from $17M to $50M+ ARR in 18 months.
Along the way I’ve learned the real magic isn't in the big numbers or outcomes - it's in understanding how platforms, partnerships, and ecosystems actually work at a tactical level. And how human relationships will always have a huge part to play in building and scaling successful platform partnerships.
How do you convince platforms like Meta, Atlassian, HubSpot, Slack and Stripe to build partnerships with you when you have a fraction of the customers they do? What's the difference between partnerships that become immediate revenue drivers versus those that create utility value and long-term engagement for customers? How do you design marketplaces and ecosystems that create distribution value for everyone involved?
These are the questions I couldn't find good answers to when I started on my journey. I made a lot of mistakes along the way - that’s part of the learning process. But I also learned the hard way how to prioritize partners, create incentives that work, and - most importantly - how to say “no” to opportunities that partnerships that simply won’t create value for customers of the business. I also learned the value of sweating the unsexy operational details that make or break platform partneship growth.
“Hugh introduced me to a ways of thinking about platforms that I've carried forward in my work to this day.”
Elizabeth McGuane, Director of UX at Shopify
Today, I'm still learning. Although it’s been 75 years in the making, technology is having it’s “AI moment” - which presents challenges and vast opportunities for platforms and the people that support their growth through partnerships. New business models create new ways to create and exchange utility, distribution, and revenue value. And, of course, AI presents new opportunities for partnerships teams to scale - and prove - the impact of the work they do.
This blog is where I share the tactical lessons, fun (and not-so-fun) lessons, and contrarian takes you might not find in other partnership places. Whether you're building your first integration or scaling a global platform ecosystem, my goal is to help you avoid the mistakes I made and quickly discover what works best for you.
Questions? Reach out on LinkedIn.
