Used to treat partnerships as nothing more than a logo on the website. I'd see the announcement, check the box, then forget about it. Honestly, it taught me zero.

That changed when I started asking one real question: what actually gets better in the product because of this partnership?

It's a game-changer. Suddenly, partnerships that looked impressive on paper revealed themselves. Some were pure marketing noise. Others? They genuinely unlocked new capabilities or expanded what users could do.

I applied the same lens to evaluating protocols, integrations, and ecosystem plays. Strip away the hype. Focus on the mechanics. Does this partnership solve a real bottleneck or create actual value?

When you filter partnerships through that single lens, the noise clears fast. You start seeing which deals actually matter.