Moving from Product Partnerships to Revenue: Jira Cooley on Owning the Number
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In this episode of Between Product and Partnerships, Cristina Flaschen sits down with Jira Cooley, who recently joined GrowthLoop as the Snowflake Partner Lead, to talk about building a career at the intersection of product, partnerships, and revenue.
The conversation explores the shift from product partnerships into revenue-focused roles, the importance of developing technical fluency without an engineering background, and how AI is changing the way technical and non-technical teams work together. Jira also reflects on the lessons he learned helping scale hundreds of integrations, explaining why successful ecosystems depend on repeatable systems, clear signals of customer value, and strong cross-functional collaboration rather than individual heroics.
Who we sat down with
Jira Cooley is the Snowflake partner lead at GrowthLoop, focused on turning partnerships into repeatable revenue motions. His background spans product and technology partnerships across SaaS, with roles at Auth0, Okta, Iterable, and HubSpot.
Jira brings expertise in:
- Building and scaling technology partnerships and integration ecosystems
- Translating between engineering, sales, and partner teams
- Networking and career moves in partnerships
- Turning partnership announcements into measurable commercial motions
Key topics
Why Jira Moved from Product Partnerships to Revenue
Jira spent most of his career close to the product, close to the integrations, close to the customer problems. For his next move, he wanted to know if any of it actually worked commercially. He talks about the gap between the fun part of partnerships (the story, the announcement), and the harder question of whether any of it actually moves the business forward.
Networking Without the Ick
Jira's approach to networking is less about working a room and more about staying genuinely useful to those around him. He and Cristina talk about why the worst version of networking is disappearing for years and then asking for a favor, and why honesty, including telling someone a role isn't a fit, builds more trust than a reflexive yes.
Getting Technical Without a Technical Background
Jira didn't start out technical. He got into partnerships through marketing and agency work with AWS and Microsoft, then landed his first alliance role. He describes the moment a VP of product told him he'd need to get technical fast, and how he built that muscle by sitting with engineers, product managers, and solution architects until he could connect the business case to the actual architecture underneath it.
Confidence and Humility in Equal Measure
A recurring theme in the conversation is knowing when to say "I don't know" and when to say "I've got this." Cristina and Jira talk about why asking basic questions, like what an API actually is, can change the trajectory of a career, and why the willingness to ask is often more valuable than already knowing the answer.
Blurring the Lines Between Engineering, Sales, and Partnerships
Jira shares how GrowthLoop spent a full day at a company offsite pairing non-technical staff with engineers to learn the AI tools the team uses day to day, which let him build his own app for a specific problem he had. He and Cristina talk about role-swapping exercises, like putting a partnerships or engineering person in a BDR's seat for a day, as a way to build real empathy across departments.
Story, System, Signal: What Jira Learned Scaling Auth0's Ecosystem
During his time at Auth0 and Okta, Jira helped launch more than 300 integrations across 100-plus partners. That scale taught him that treating every partner as a special case creates chaos. He breaks down the framework he built from that experience: story is why the integration matters to customers, system is how you repeatably evaluate, build, and support partnerships, and signal is what tells you it's actually creating value. His rule of thumb? If a partnership can't survive 90 days without you babysitting it, it's a campaign, not a partnership.
Episode highlights
00:26 — Jira's background across Auth0, Okta, HubSpot, and now GrowthLoop
01:30 — Landing at GrowthLoop, and what the job search taught him
03:37 — Why staying visible beats cold "networking"
06:37 — What felt different about job hunting in the current AI and economic climate
09:03 — Why Jira chose to move from product partnerships into revenue
14:13 — Learning the technical side of partnerships without a technical background
17:29 — Why confidence and humility have to show up together
21:19 — Swapping seats with engineering and sales to close the empathy gap
25:38 — The Auth0/Okta chapter that shaped his "story, system, signal" framework
Key takeaways
1. Confidence and humility travel together
Knowing what you don't know, and being willing to say so out loud, is what lets you ask the questions that move your career forward.
2. Getting technical isn't optional in partnerships
You can explain why a partnership matters for a while without understanding the architecture behind it, but eventually customers and partners will ask how it actually works. Jira built that skill by spending time with the engineers and PMs who had the answers.
3. Swapping seats builds real empathy
Whether it's an AI tooling day with engineering or a full role swap with a BDR, putting people in each other's seats for a day does more for cross-team understanding than a meeting ever will.
4. Scale requires a system, not more heroics
Once you're past a handful of partners, treating each one as a special snowflake creates chaos. You need a repeatable way to decide which partners matter and know what to build, document, and launch next.
Connect with the Speakers
Connect with Cristina: www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-flaschen/
Connect with Jira: www.linkedin.com/in/jira-cooley/
Learn more about GrowthLoop: www.growthloop.com/
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This podcast is hosted by Pandium, the only embedded integration platform that facilitates faster code-first development of integrations, allowing B2B SaaS companies to launch integrations at scale without sacrificing customization and control.
Learn more about Pandium here: https://www.pandium.com/
To access more resources and content on technology partnerships, integrations, and APIs, check out our blog and resources page below.
Blog: https://www.pandium.com/blog
Resources on Technology Partnerships, Integrations, and APIs: https://www.pandium.com/ebooks
Podcast Transcript
Sarah Elkins (00:00)
Welcome to Between Product and Partnerships, a podcast focused on bringing together product, partnership, and engineering leaders to discuss how to build, support, and scale SaaS ecosystems. This podcast is presented by Pandium, an integration platform for building native integrations.
Cristina Flaschen (00:19)
Hi, everyone, and thanks for listening to our podcast between product and partnerships, where we talk about the challenges and what it takes to build integrations, tech partnerships, and SaaS platforms. And today I am so excited to have my friend Jira Cooley, who is now the Snowflake partner lead at GrowthLoop join us. Jira, give us a little bit of intro to yourself and your background.
Jira (00:41)
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me on, Christina. It's it's been a long time coming, but happy to be here. And yeah, so just a quick intro. My name is Jira Cooley and as Cristina mentioned, I'm currently the GrowthLoop partner manager for Snowflake, focusing solely on the on the Snowflake partnership. My background in general has been always been more so on the product and technology partnerships across SaaS. So I've worked at companies like Auth0, Okta, Iterable, HubSpot, and now at GrowthLoop. So
mostly living in that fun, messy middle essentially between product partnership, sales, engineering and and now revenue.
Cristina Flaschen (01:18)
That is a fun place to be. You get to be like have your hands and a bunch of different stuff. So we could just dive right in. And this is super topical, I think, for a lot of folks. I think you just started your new role of GrowthLoop. You'll have to tell us, remind me, how long it's been. But how did you find the job search more recently? how how did it go? I feel like it's a something that's top of mind for a lot of folks.
Jira (01:41)
Yeah, absolutely. Happy to share my journey so far. Yeah. So I've been at the company with GrowthLoop now for coming up on two months, so relatively new. The the whole job search and everything was was interesting, right? Because it's a it's a funny time that we're in. And I was also, you know, unfortunately laid off in my last position at Hubspot. So you know, those always come as a surprise, right? No matter no matter where you are and kind of your
journey and career. But for the next step, you know, I was I was wanting to be really intentional what I wanted to do next. as I kind of made in my intro there is that I spent a lot of my career in product and and technology partnerships, which I love. I like being close to the product, close to the integrations, close to the customer problems. But I also knew that like for my next move, I wanted to get closer to revenue, right? To really round out my career. And
You know, that's that's kind of what made the position at GrowthLoop interesting for me. I knew that I wanted to be in some sort of position in that way. I just didn't know where quite at the moment. But luckily, you know, the Snowflake Partnership that was the position here was was just kind of a a perfect segue for my career. And that's kind of where I landed and where I started my search. It was definitely a lot of LinkedIn refreshes, connecting with network that people that you may have not spoken to in some time.
But it was it was definitely an interesting part of reflecting back on past relationships, past networking,
Cristina Flaschen (03:07)
Yeah, how do you
think about that? Cause when I talk to folks, I mean, being like a founder and startup being and all this stuff, like I feel like the networking is always an important thing, but it is a little bit nebulous. And I especially for folks where it doesn't come maybe as naturally. Like I've known you for a few years at this point. I feel like you're a very approachable, like friendly person. But I think for some folks it can be really intimidating. Like, what
I guess how did you attack that networking angle and like rekindling some of those relationships? What advice would you give folks about that if they're heading into that kind of phase in their career?
Jira (03:38)
Yeah, totally. I mean, I try to make networking feel less like networking because networking as a world is kind of terrible, right? It's kind of daunting in a little bit. For me, it's really just saying and staying in touch with people, right? So being curious about what they're building and trying to be useful before I need anything. So so the worst version I think of networking is when someone disappears for four years, right? And then suddenly it comes back and, you know.
Hey, long time no talk, can you refer me? You know, nobody loves that message. So I try to stay visible in a in a smaller, more natural way. So if I see someone made a move, I'll congratulate them. If I come across a company or partner that might be relevant to someone, I'll send it over. If someone is working on something I've seen before, I'll offer a thought or make an intro. And it's also just, you know, being being truly genuine about you know connecting with folks, right? I mean, you might not think that I mean it's easy to get lost in like once you, once you move on from
position and you used to work with someone for for a time being, you kind of just lose that naturally, right? But it's it's also part, I think, of the world that we live in in partnerships is that you are really connecting with folks all the time. You're always looking for new relationships, fostering old relationships. So it's like the best thing to do there is just to just to keep kind of proactively, you know, being genuinely naturally interested in in folks and in general. So that's
That's what I did most part and and I think that's what helped me too in in in my job search this this last time around.
Cristina Flaschen (05:01)
Yeah, and the the software
world like can feel really big, I think, but it's also so small. Like when I look at folks like hopping, you know, to new gigs or kind of getting new positions, there's always at this point in my life, and I'm sure it's like this for you too, I'm like one degree away from almost anybody, I feel like at this point. Like, and I always tell folks like it's so important not to burn bridges. And that doesn't
It doesn't necessarily mean like don't, you know, like flip a table on your way out, which obviously don't do that. But just like to your point, being like a naturally curious, like kind person will go so far. And I think especially in the current landscape,
being top of mind and being someone who you're like, I mean, I can't tell you the amount of times I've had someone reach out to me and be like, this person used to work at a customer of yours. Did you work with them? And I could say like, you know, I don't know that person and like I don't know their work super well, but I can say that they're like a cool person who was responsive and seemed like a genuinely nice person. And that's like enough, right? Sometimes to get that resume a second look. I wonder if like the way that you're networking or with your job hunt this time around, if there was anything different about it.
Given the current technology landscape with AI and economic uncertainty, and there's obviously a lot of macro kind of economic things at play. Like, do you have any advice that's like really specific to this time or was anything like really different for you? Because you've been, I mean, you've been in this space for what, like 15, 20 years at this point? Not to I don't want to put too much age on you, but but I'm just thinking about it.
Jira (06:32)
Yeah,
not quite twenty years, but yes. I think, yeah, this time round, I think every job opportunity that I came from or any time that I had an interview came from networking, honestly. So if I had any advice to someone younger in their career, someone that's just coming up and just kind of what you said there, it's just like being genuinely honest to people as well. It's like if someone if someone asks you for a referral, it's okay to say no because you're not sure exactly of like the person.
But if you do know the person, you can at least give them a little bit of tidbits of like what the role is, share a little bit of information. I think every interaction that you have in partnership roles in general, it's like you there's some sort of value exchange that needs to be happened. Same thing when you go with networking, especially from a business context. It's like there's some sort of value exchange there, right? Like and a lot of times just being honest with people too.
That's what I did was, you know, I reached out to folks that I work with, that had good relationships with
knowing if they seeing if they had kind of any opportunities that might have popped up but that they're aware. But then also not like making it just like, hey, can you send me this referral? Also tell them why you think they're a good fit, right? Tell them especially like what this position means to you, things like that. So have a story of like, you know, what your past is, what where you want to go, and then why you're gonna be a good fit for the company makes a total ton of sense.
And if it's someone that you've worked with in the past and you have a good rapport with anyways, that's just going to come out and that's just going to be natural for them to say yes or no, you know, if this is not a good fit. And I appreciate the honesty. I mean, I had a few folks
that I spoke with, and if you're listening to this, you know who you are. And I really appreciate the candor of like, hey, this role for you right now is not a good fit. And the here's XYZ reasons why.
Cristina Flaschen (08:06)
Yeah, and I mean if if there is an opportunity for referral as a candidate, like everybody wins, right? Like just like thinking about partnerships generally, it should be a win for the candidate, it should be a win for the referring partner, it should be a win for the company getting the referral. Because as someone who was hired not that long ago and got flooded with like 900 applicants for one role, like anytime I can filter through some of that, I'm happy, right? So everyone should should win if it's a good fit.
Just to go back to what you said previously, you mentioned that you wanted to get closer to the the kind of revenue generating s maybe sales side of the house with this next phase of your career. Why? Why do you want to do that? Why do you think that's important? Why do you think that's the best thing for you right now?
Jira (08:50)
It's funny. I actually had a few folks that I was speaking with that were my past bosses and peers and were saying the exact same thing. It's like product partnerships is a great place to be and why would you want to go to the sales side? Yeah. Why
Cristina Flaschen (09:03)
Yeah, right. Get a quota? What? Like
Jira (09:06)
would you put that on yourself? And fair, fair enough, fair question. I think for me I got to a point where I spent a lot of time building the partnership story and the product connection and I wanted to get closer to whether it actually worked commercially.
Because in partnerships, the story is usually the the fun part, at least for me. Everyone gets excited. The companies make sense together. The integration sounds good. The announcement goes out. Everyone posts the same LinkedIn post with slightly different wording, right? But then the
Cristina Flaschen (09:29)
Mm-hmm.
Jira (09:30)
real question is like what happens after that? Do sales care? Does the partner field teams care? Do customers understand the value? Is it showing up in pipeline? Is it helping moving deals? Is it driving adoption or expansion?
And that is why I think revenue responsibility felt like the right next step for me. It forces you to really care about the system and the signal, not just the story. And I still love the product integration side of things. But I really wanted to build the muscle around turning partnerships into repeatable commercial motions. And I think that's where partnerships become really valuable. and it was just to be honest, it was just an area of my career that I just I haven't really flexed that muscle. So for me, it was just like this is a good opportunity for me to really
to take the time, reflect and then go and and do something that I haven't done and put myself in uncomfortable situations, which is exactly what I'm doing now, which is great.
Cristina Flaschen (10:19)
It's so funny too, because I feel like that transition is what you're experiencing is the inverse of what a lot of people experience, which is like they get really stuck in the RevGen side of partnerships. Like they're hired into biz dev and then they just continue to like roll into a CRO or a CMO or maybe strategy forever and always wanna go or want to fill things out by having a more technical background, which I think is
maybe a harder, not harder from like a skill set transition, but can be a more difficult career change to make, I think. Like to have someone who has a sales background then take a job that's more product focused. I imagine, in my sense, is that that's actually like what you're doing is more of like a unicorn type of thing. It's like, hey, I actually have the technical acumen, like I understand the tech, I understand how to make the product and like the interoperability and the internal alignment work. And now I want to be
more on the sales side is less common, I think, than the inverse of that, which is like, hey, I've been doing this on the biz dev side. Like I'd like to, you know, maybe not have that amount of pressure or like just bone up on the on the technical chops. I don't know. I'm just thinking about it now. Like, I don't know if that aligns with what you've seen. I mean, you've obviously had people that report into you and like you've been in the space for a long time.
Jira (11:35)
I mean, you probably have spoken with more partnership folks than I have.
So you probably
Cristina Flaschen (11:38)
Yeah.
Jira (11:39)
have, with with your role and what you do. I didn't know that, but now I'm kinda learning that it's probably the case. which is cool. It's just it's unique. Everyone has their own story, right? Of their background and how they and how they kind of grow up in a professional role. And I guess this is my route. So
Cristina Flaschen (11:54)
Yeah, and how did that for the folks that are listening that are doing maybe what you did early in your career, which is like to go from maybe that business development side to a more technical version of that role, like how did that happen for you? Did you just decide you wanted to learn? Did you take classes? Like what did you how did you make that that journey happen?
Jira (12:15)
Yeah, so my background is definitely not technical. my background has always been actually it started, you know, oddly enough, on the marketing side of things, that's kind of where I got dipped my toes and got my feet wet was working at a agency that essentially ran a couple big partner programs for AWS and Microsoft. And that's essentially how I got started in the partner world. That's how I learned about partners and I learned how exciting it can be.
And then I slowly kind of graduated my way into just landed into my first kind of alliance position as a very junior alliance, you know, professional. And then it just kind of happened pretty gradually, right? I will never forget when the VP of product management of that company, K2 Software, told me very quickly that you're gonna get technical very quick. And I was like, "Okay, great." That was very intimidating, but
Yeah, I mean I like I said, you know, I started more on the business development and side of the things on the marketing of it really. And then the more I got into the the tech partnerships, I realized that you you cannot just you're not gonna be as useful if you don't understand, you know, the the how it all works, the plumbing and all that kind of great stuff. So, you know, at some point, you know, customers and partners are gonna ask you, like, how does this actually work, right? What data moves, what system is the source of truth, what happens during implementation, what breaks, right?
And so early on I could explain why the partnership mattered, but I did not always understand the architecture underneath it, right? And that was that's a really weird place to be because you can feel useful and also useless at the same time. So you know you know why the customer cares, you know the business problems,
Cristina Flaschen (13:50)
Mm-hmm.
Jira (13:51)
and you know why the partnership matters. But if someone asks, okay, how does the integration actually work? Suddenly you're you know, you're tap dancing a little. And then eventually I got tired of tap dancing. So I started learning the the basics of it and spending more time with
different product managers, engineers, solution architects and customers. And then over time I just got better at connecting the business value to the technical reality.
Cristina Flaschen (14:13)
I'm curious, you said that that that boss said you're gonna get technical very quickly or very fast or something like that. What do you think he saw in you that made him say that? He or
she
Jira (14:22)
I think you
could see into me right away is that I can do well when you're in uncomfortable situations and you know how to ask the right questions, right? And I think it's okay when to be very honest when you don't know things, right? And be very clear of like this is totally over my head, guys. Like just help me bring back down. This is what I know. And then just being very, I think genuine in that way.
I'm trying to find the right word that essentially that he did say to me, but I can't think of it right now. But it was something along those lines. It's just like you you could tell that I would be able to take those questions and just being naturally just honest and just it's okay to not know.
Cristina Flaschen (15:02)
Yeah, it's it's funny. I totally agree with you. And and what we talk about here at Pandium is having like the confidence and the humility to like ask questions. It's like the humility to say, like, I don't know what is going on. Can someone explain it to me? And the confidence to continue that sentence with like, and I think I can figure it out, or I trust you to take care of it, because I'm not gonna be able to figure it out. And I think like the shorter version of that is never being afraid to ask why and like.
Being like, hey, like I remember the very first time I asked an engineer to explain what an API was, like in like 2008. I was like, I don't know what that word means. I keep hearing it. I sort of conceptually understand what it's kind of doing, but like what is it? I remember exactly where I was standing in an office and who it was that explained that to me. And like, you know, that like changed the trajectory of my entire career, honestly. Like asking that question and asking it to somebody who would take the five minutes to explain it to me, right?
So yeah, what your story what you're saying like resonates a lot. That sort of like, hey, like knowing when you should ask, knowing when, even currently, like I'm not an engineer and I work with engineers all day. I know when to be like, You guys got this. I don't need to ask that question. Like, you don't need to explain that to me. But
Jira (16:12)
Yeah.
Cristina Flaschen (16:12)
there is a s I think a level of confidence that you have to have. And you could fake that confidence for a period of time until you know enough to be able to ask those questions.
Jira (16:21)
Totally.
Cristina Flaschen (16:21)
Yeah,
it's it's it's interesting and it's you know, this is like I could nerd out about this all day. This is what I love, right? Is like that combination of the commercial side of the business, the customer value, and the technology part, I think is really is really fun. And I personally think it's like a superpower. If you can combine those things, like being able to understand what customers actually need.
having enough of the tech mindset to be able to like speak competently and know when to bring someone else in and having the commercial side of it, like that makes you like a real secret weapon, I think, in an organization.
Jira (16:58)
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, that's for like my family, my wife, my parents, things like that that are that always ask what I do. A lot of times it's confusing already to folks that are already in tech, but it's all think about
Cristina Flaschen (17:08)
Mm-hmm.
Jira (17:09)
how confusing it is to someone that's not in our world whatsoever. And they're like, What do you do? Well, really, I'm just the translator between engineering and sales and in between, right? You do everything in between. You kind of know enough about everything, but you're not an expert in anything.
And
so that's where it's like being comfortable with the ambiguity of the role, I think is huge as well. And as you mentioned, like a couple of things you said there, it's like I remember back in the day when I would be in meetings and I would just like have to write down terms because I did not fully understand what they were and then have to look them up afterward, you know, like APIs, totally webhooks, authentication. I was in security for a while, cybersecurity a while with Okta and Auth0. So it's like
Cristina Flaschen (17:50)
Mm-hmm.
Jira (17:50)
that whole world is completely different to Martech, right? So it's like
even more confusing in a lot of ways. And yeah, so there's just a ton of stuff to learn. And I think as long as you're learning, you're always gonna be learning. But as long as you're continuously having that mindset, you're always gonna do well. You're always gonna find new ways to do things different and better.
Cristina Flaschen (18:10)
Yeah, I agree. I think the the natural curiosity and and it also helps. Like you're, again, I said before, like I think a very kind, like approachable person. And I do think there is something about that sort of demeanor that can also help. Like when you're asking, like, hey, senior engineer, you keep saying API, and I don't know what that word means. Like, I'm genuinely curious and like I actually want to know is I think there's a special way to ask these kinds of questions too, to be able to like get that type of information.
But I'll say at my at my last company where I met my co-founder, it's a company called Handshake that was acquired by Shopify, one of my engineers on my services team, did like a little API and integration boot camp and asked like the entire company, like sales team, CX, like, come learn what an API is. And he had a conference room full. He did like a three or five week session. And it was really cool to see like our our BDRs, like.
You know, 'cause they hear about this stuff all day. They're they they know the talk track of what to say about the API, but they don't know what it actually means, you know, and how it works. It was really it was really cool to see him like want to help and see the response. We were like, maybe like it'll be like just three of us, but there was a full room, like probably fifteen or twenty people out of a company of fifty. So you know it.
Jira (19:29)
Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean you're you're fostering essentially the the capability or allowing a space for people to be open to it. I think a lot of times like when you think about there's there's two types of people in the room when when someone's teaching, someone's asking something, there's the people that raise their hand right away and admit like they don't know, or the people that just kinda hide it and try to fake it, right?
But if you're fostering a a culture at your company that's like open to all that, open to learning lunch and learns, things like that, that's what I think would really help accelerate all this and then kind of really break those walls down. That's pretty cool that you did that.
Cristina Flaschen (20:01)
What you
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious what you what you think about that concept. And I agree with you with like the now like everyone's an engineer sort of like vibe coding. Like, how do you I can see it personally in myself, I can see it going like both ways to like it actually fostering a lot more
You
know, like I'm not even gonna say interdepartmental, but like interpersonal interest in training and stuff like that. Like what you know, what you're describing, like raising a hand in a meeting. But I can also see a rift growing potentially between like the real engineers and these like fake engineers. I don't think we're deep enough yet to know for sure, but I'm curious like what what do you think?
Jira (20:41)
Yeah, that's interesting. So at GrowthLoop here, my second week that I joined the company, we actually had our first team offsite. And so I was actually able to join the team in Portland for the week. and then it's a mix of engineers, sales, very small marketing team, all that great stuff with our co-founders all there. But I would say one full day we spent just going through all the different AI tools, all the different systems that engineering teams use now.
And then have them paired up with folks that are not on the engineering team or not on the product team. So sales, myself and partnerships, and then talk about like day to day what we want, what we do, and then how we can make things better. So it was like a, I don't know if this is answering your question, but it was a very good, like kind of company learning moment where we got together and we could, you know, really kind of solve things and figure out like different tooling, stuff that they can use. Long story short, I was able to build an app,
by myself for a very specific problem that I had that I use and it was fantastic and it was great. And I wouldn't have done that, been able to do that without having some of the team members do it, right? Or there with me, coaching me through it. Like sure, you can use Claude to build apps for you now. But it's like, does it need to be deployed on Vercel? Does it need to be deployed on Netlify? Like how does this actually work? Is it just one
Cristina Flaschen (21:53)
Yeah, yeah.
Jira (21:54)
HTML doc that's gonna live on your terminal or do you want to actually use this with other folks on your team, right? How do you do that? And so
that was just really cool to have that. And our engineers were super happy just to be able to like walk us through, teach us these things and all that kind of great stuff. And now I feel like I have a very good foundation, even more so in what I already had, to be able to do that on my own. So
Cristina Flaschen (22:15)
Yeah, I love that. And I've worked places where they've done like day in the life where you basically like switch roles with somebody. Like someone from the engineering team goes and sits with the BDR and a BDR goes and sits with the engineering team and
That is also, I think, a really cool exercise to like, especially I think for people that have never been in sales or customer support, like going and sitting in those seats, like, hey, I know
Jira (22:41)
Yeah.
Cristina Flaschen (22:42)
and I am a tech person, like, but I know everyone's complaining about the sales team asking for stuff. But like, you know, get on the phone with that guy or that gal that's making 80 calls a day and like see what that's like. And now you'll understand why, like.
That blue button being blue is like really important to them, you know?
that like empathy.
Jira (23:02)
Yeah. I feel like that was a definitely
Yeah. I feel like that was definitely a thing in business school, right? You always learn and talked about like folks maybe you didn't go to business school. I did. But you always learn about like the the kind of the cross pollination, getting into someone else's shoes, learning about that. And it hasn't happened for me in real life yet. But so I think like now that just happened in the most recent experience I had that helped work for it. But it's so valuable to have that someone completely out of their
you know, realm of what they do day to day and put themselves in someone else's shoes. So yeah, totally makes sense. I think that we should do that more often.
Cristina Flaschen (23:37)
Yeah, it's interesting too, because again with the AI stuff, like and partnerships is a great example of this, of like roles kind of blurring a little bit too, where it's like now
Jira (23:46)
For it.
Cristina Flaschen (23:47)
like engineers, like forward deployed engineers are sort of CX people and kind of salespeople and partnerships, you know, can sit in like any part of the org and like you know, there's obviously like some "silos", but there's a lot more of kind of like mushiness like between departments in a way that I hope it brings a
know that it brings up that cross pollination more where it's not like everyone is kind of staying in their lane. because I think it's value I think it's valuable for businesses, right? For humans it's also fun, but like it's great for a business too. And I think creates like an open and effective kind of culture. So we are coming up on time. Unfortunately I could talk to you forever, which you are probably aware of, but I did want to ask in closing one final thought. because your career has been cool.
Can you think back on like one specific moment or project? Like what sticks out in your mind as like something that taught you a very important lesson? And it could be something related professional, like personally, developmentally, it could be something, you know, for your actual KPIs, but like what pops into mind?
Jira (24:50)
Yeah, it's probably too early right now to talk about my time at GrowthLoop and on the sales side of things. So I wouldn't use that as an example. But I say one project or chapter I think that really shaped me was my time at at Auth0. And then we were acquired by by Okta. And that's where I got exposed really to the ecosystem scale in a real way. So at the time, I think during my tenure there, we launched over 300 integrations with more than a hundred partners and
when you're working at that volume, you learn pretty quickly that you can't just manage partnerships through heroics, right? So early on,
Cristina Flaschen (25:21)
Yeah.
Jira (25:22)
I think it's tempting to treat every partner like a special snowflake, right? But and sometimes they are, but in every integration, every launch, every enablement motion, and every partner request is completely custom and you eventually create chaos. And that's something that we learned. And I think that experience really taught me that a great ecosystem needs a needs a system behind it. You need a way to decide.
Which partners matter. You need a way to understand what customers are actually asking for, and you need patterns for how integrations get built, document, and launch. All the good stuff that a lot of the folks in our world understand, like yourself. Because otherwise you just end up with a big marketplace and no real sense of what is driving value. right? And and that is probably where my thinking around I think the system that I came up with is like three things, like story, system, and signal, right? The story is why does this integration matter to customers? The system is how do we repeat
the evaluate, build, launch and support those partnerships. And
then the signal is that, you know, what tells us this partner integration is actually creating value. So I think my time there at Auth0, Okta taught me that ecosystems are not just about having a lot of partners. At some point the question becomes, you know, which ones matter, which ones move the business. And then at the end of it, if a partnership can't survive, you know, 90 days without you babysitting it, then it's it's not really a a partnership. It's more of a campaign. right? So
Cristina Flaschen (26:40)
Yeah, that that is a good point. It is. It's a relationship of some sort. Well, this has been super fun. Again, I think I could talk to you about this stuff forever. really appreciate you taking the time. We'll drop your LinkedIn so folks know where to find you. For our listeners, if you want to learn more about integrations, partnerships, APIs, what's a webhook? We have a blog about it. We got worksheets, we got
ebooks, we got all kinds of stuff on our website, pandium.com. check out our YouTube channel. We've got great guests such as Jira, a bunch of shorts, all of our podcasts are recorded. Jira, anything you wanna plug before we before we hop off here?
Jira (27:16)
I just want to say thank you so much, Christina, for the time. Thanks for being, you know, providing this medium essentially for folks all throughout whatever kind of journey they are on their careers and learning about partnerships, learning about product, learning about all the great stuff. And you've provided a an awesome platform to do this. So thank you so much.
Cristina Flaschen (27:34)
Thanks, Jira. Well, thanks again for spending some time with us. Audience, I hope you tune into the next one and we will see you out there.
Sarah Elkins (27:42)
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed our content, subscribe to our channel and give us a thumbs up. For more content on tech partnerships, integrations, and APIs, check out our articles, eBooks, and other resources in the description or visit Pandium's website.

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