hardCase StudyScenarioSeniorStaffLead
A large retailer wants to white-label your product and sell it to their own customers. Do you do the deal?
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15Target archetype: Enterprise Captive, Product Startup
Answer
Short answer
Work out who owns the customer after the deal, because that decides whether this is distribution or the slow loss of your product. Price the engineering the partner's requirements will consume, and set the conditions under which you would walk away before you see the revenue figure.
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Likely follow-ups
- The partner will not let you see which of their customers use the product. Does the deal still work?
- How would you structure this so you can exit in two years without losing the revenue overnight?
- They ask for exclusivity in their vertical for three years. What do you trade for it?
- Two years in, they are 40 per cent of revenue and asking for a discount. What did you fail to do at signing?
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