From Zero to Dozens: Inside April’s Enterprise Sales Playbook for Fintech Partnerships
Landing enterprise partnerships as a startup is notoriously difficult. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, April co-founder Ben Borodach revealed their systematic approach to securing partnerships with major fintech platforms like Gusto and Acorns.
Starting with Network-First Sales
The conventional wisdom says startups should growth hack their way to initial traction. But April took a different approach. “Any of our customers were either people that I already knew, or that folks around the table already knew,” Ben explains.
This wasn’t accidental. April deliberately built their investor syndicate to enable warm introductions: “We’ve surrounded ourselves with great cap table of investors from teammate and treasury and QED and Nica and others. And so we leveraged my network, the network that we put around the table, in order to build trust and relationships over time.”
Identifying Strategic Verticals
Rather than targeting every potential partner, April focused on three specific verticals where tax integration creates clear value:
“We’re seeing a wide array of adoption across different finance apps,” Ben notes. “I think the ones that we’re focused on heavily today are in the banking credit space… seeing a lot of traction in the investment category… and then third is going to be payroll.”
Building the Value Proposition
April’s pitch to partners centers on enhancing their existing customer relationships. As Ben explains: “It allows them to offer a service to their customers that they couldn’t previously offer… Because tax is the largest expense item that most american families have on par with housing.”
This positioning as an enabler rather than a competitor is crucial. Ben notes they can “come kind of as that independent player that’s a true infrastructure provider” – a stark contrast to potential partners like TurboTax with competing interests.
The Implementation Playbook
Their recent Gusto partnership demonstrates their execution approach. “We’ve recently launched a very exciting product with Gusto that actually allows an employee on their platform to constantly track their tax situation in real time based on their Gusto payroll data,” Ben shares.
This highlights a key element of their strategy: deeply integrating with partner workflows rather than just offering superficial connections.
Balancing Growth with Focus
While building momentum, April maintains strict discipline in their partnership approach. Ben emphasizes: “I think you’ve got to be willing to try lots of things, but on the same time, you’ve got to have real focus and discipline. What you end up with is if you try too many things in too many places, you find you get spread too thin.”
Results and Validation
The strategy is working. April has secured “dozens of companies on the platform” with “hundreds of thousands of users.” Their NPS scores “in the high fifties and sixties” validate that the integration strategy delivers real value to end users.
Key Lessons for B2B Founders
April’s enterprise partnership playbook offers several insights:
- Build your investor syndicate with strategic introductions in mind
- Focus on specific verticals where you can deliver clear value
- Position yourself as an enabler rather than potential competitor
- Deeply integrate with partner workflows
- Maintain discipline in partner selection and scope
For founders targeting enterprise partnerships, April’s journey shows the power of combining strategic network building with focused execution. Rather than trying to boil the ocean, they’ve built credibility through careful vertical selection and deep integration with partner needs.
The broader lesson? Sometimes the best path to enterprise sales isn’t through traditional outbound tactics – it’s through strategically architecting your company from day one to enable warm introductions and compelling partner value propositions.
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