Bottom-Up Partnership Model (Riley)

The Bottom-Up Partnership Model is the North Star revenue target and the category mix, built up from the drivers the client can defend rather than handed down from the top.

The Bottom-Up Partnership Model: North Star revenue, the category mix, and a Top-Down vs Bottom-Up vs Variance comparison.

What it is

A REPORT deliverable in the Board Pack (Partnership Playbook). It is computed, not hand-written: it reads from the Bottom-Up Partnerships Worksheet and rolls the drivers there up into a revenue target and a mix across partner categories. Because it is derived, you do not edit this page directly. To change what it shows, fix the worksheet and the model recalculates. Riley builds it on Alex's published Opportunity Map. The page is headed "HOW we get there, bottoms-up partnerships."

What each section means

North Star revenue. The headline target the model builds up to (the live

example shows a revenue figure at the top of the page). This is the number the board is being asked to believe, assembled from the category drivers rather than asserted.

Category mix. The partner categories, each with its share of the target. The

live page lists the canonical categories (Strategic/Alliance, Reseller, Marketplace, Referral, OEM/Embedded, Channel, Affiliate, Technology). The mix tells the client where the growth actually comes from, so a category carrying an outsized share is worth a second look at its drivers.

Top-Down vs Bottom-Up vs Variance comparison. A table that sets the

top-down ambition against what the bottom-up drivers actually produce. Its columns are Metric, Top-Down, Bottom-Up, Variance, Status. The Variance is the gap between the two, and the Status flags whether the bottom-up build supports the top-down goal. A large variance means the drivers and the ambition disagree, which is exactly what this page exists to surface before the board sees it.

The exact arithmetic the model uses to turn drivers into the target is not exposed. Describe it at the level the worksheet page states, projected partners times win rate times average deal size, adjusted for ramp time and summed across categories, and do not quote a more precise formula to a client.

Reviewing it before publishing

The worksheet is right first. This page only reflects the drivers. If a

number looks wrong here, fix it in the Bottom-Up Partnerships Worksheet, not on this page.

The variance is explainable. Check the Top-Down vs Bottom-Up comparison. If

the Variance is large, either the ambition or the drivers need revisiting, and you should be able to say which.

The category mix is believable. No single category carries a share the

client cannot picture. An outsized category usually points to an optimistic driver in the worksheet.

The North Star sense-checks against today. Compare the target to the client's

current revenue. A jump the client cannot picture is a signal to revisit the drivers before publishing.