I've seen people take this lesson too serious and too lightly.

One was a company that refused to ever be accused of requited love. They would look for any excuse whatsoever to decide the other party "wasn't serious." A number of partnerships and buyouts passed them out until they had to be sold in an emergency, and they still acted like everything was totally out of their control up to the end.

And I've also seen lots of "partnerships" where one party really doesn't care at all.

You need to be willing to get rejected, but get rejected fast.

The more customers or partners pay when funding a custom development or implementing a solution, the more interest they will have to make it succeed. If only not to look like an idiot to their boss or management peers. Whereas if something is 'free' it can be quietly swept under the rug much easily.

I wonder how much of this story directly relates to customers though. Free Trials, do enable questioning customers to come onboard. But at the same time, customers may not be "invested" enough to care to really evaluate your product.

However, how does one determine at which point the customer has invested enough? If I pay a dollar for an app on the appstore, I'm not nearly as invested in it as spending $30 or more.

I feel like I'm in a similar place with my product. It's meant for businesses, but the rational side of me wants to make it a freemium model so the maximum number of people get to know how awesome it is. On the other hand many business owners may not be taking my product as a serious contender as it's free.

This is a good and relevant article based upon my experience (last company was SaaS company with 60% of revenue from partners). I would add that partners generally won't care much about your business (they care about their's, rightfully so) but when they decide to care (e.g., if a customer asks them for integration with you), you need to be top of mind and easy to work with. This is why I'm a huge fan of thinking of partners like customers - using drip marketing techniques to continue to stay on their radar, making partner content really easily available online (videos, etc.), giving them self-service options and so on.

This is one of the best things I've read on HN in some time. (And, to add to the effect, it's pithy and makes its point quickly.)

What ever happened to Onyx, btw?