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Call overview

June 18, 2026 · ~90 min · Kevin, Kyle Chau, Colin Schaap

Strong signal ⚡ Mike retires Dec 31

How it went

Really well — Kyle became a co-creator

He went from polite curiosity to finishing sentences and independently surfacing the co-prime model, ecosystem analytics, and internal nudge mechanisms. That's not someone humoring you. That's someone who sees it.

His role is the golden ticket

Kyle is acting as Sarah Lacey's de facto SA under the Ensemble contract. He's not a gatekeeper — he is the technical decision point for her. When he says he can make the intro, that's essentially him championing it internally.

Top buying signals

Crossbeam = "just a VLOOKUP"

Said unprompted. Sarah's team already unimpressed. Low bar to beat.

Deal reg is broken

He validated it independently — first-come wins, holding companies register everything, unfair.

Ecosystem analytics angle

30k-foot partner health view. Can't do this today in any PLM. "She'll like this for that reason."

Multi-brand match resonated

Saw the graph. Understood Ensemble could run six sales cycles from one login.

Kyle Ellis

VP Strategic Accounts + Partner Organization, Adobe

Indirect — senior

Who he is

Owns both strategic accounts and all partners

Kyle Ellis has the entire partner org reporting up through him alongside strategic accounts — which Kyle Chau noted makes sense, since partners should be in all strategic accounts anyway. The whole thing reporting to one owner is structurally good for DCN's story.

Why he matters to us

Ultimate executive buyer if this scales

Not a first-call target, but the person who would ultimately approve a broader rollout beyond a pilot. Reached through Sarah Lacey → Alison Webster → Ellis. The path is clear; don't short-circuit it.

He asked the right question

Kyle Chau shared that Ellis once asked: "What happens if we don't have the partner portal?" — meaning he understands the communication channel risk. DCN provides a direct, deal-level layer that the partner portal never could.

AW

Alison Webster

Head of Partner Program, Adobe (UK-based)

Took over from Tony Sanders Whole op now out of UK

Context

Recently elevated — whole program is being rebuilt

She replaced Tony Sanders and now the entire partner operation runs out of the UK. Kyle noted the whole program has been "ripped up and rebuilt." That's a window — new leadership is more receptive to new tools before they're committed to legacy systems.

Path to reach her

Sarah Lacey can introduce us up

Kyle said Sarah has the ability to "make introductions up towards the right people, to the new leader Alison Webster." Get traction with Sarah first; she champions it upward. Don't try to reach Alison cold.

Kevin's existing relationship

Kevin knows her

Kevin confirmed he knows Alison Webster — and with six months a year in Europe, the geography works. This is an asset to deploy at the right moment, not in the first meeting.

SL

Sarah Lacey

Experience + Marketing, Adobe — owns the Hub (partner portal)

✓ Primary intro path Back mid-July from sabbatical

Who she is

Owns the Hub and all partner comms

Sarah runs experience and marketing for the partner program — meaning she owns the partner portal (the Hub), all communications to partners, and anything that touches the partner experience. DCN would live in her world.

Kyle Chau has known her 15 years

Kyle is deeply trusted by Sarah — he encouraged her to bring him on as a technical adviser, and that's exactly what happened. He acts as her SA under the Ensemble contract. His intro carries full credibility.

What she cares about

Behavioral data above all

Kyle flagged this explicitly: "She likes the behavioral data. That's what she's trying to capture." DCN's engagement layer — who matched, who connected, who went dark — maps directly to what she wants. Lead with that, not AI.

Reinventing the whole partner experience

Ensemble (with Kyle Chau) is currently rebuilding the Adobe partner portal from scratch. Kyle said "why not" try DCN as part of that — low-risk, high-upside, especially if it's free to pilot.

What NOT to say to Sarah's team

Don't mention MCP, LLM, or AI infrastructure

Kyle said explicitly: "Never bring up those things to them because they're pure marketers. Anytime they lose control of that data, they hate the system." Lead with data ownership and behavioral insights. Leave the AI architecture for a later technical conversation.

Timing

Back from sabbatical mid-July

Ping Kyle on Slack this week. Brief note referencing the call. Ask him to set up the intro when Sarah's back. Don't wait — mid-July is soon and Mike Neumann's clock is ticking.

"I think she'll be interested in this… she could actually make introductions up towards the right people, to Alison Webster." — Kyle Chau

MC

Mark Chapman

Program owner, Adobe — owns Sales Center (deal registration layer)

⚠ Territorial Approach after Sarah

Who he is

Owns the program — including Sales Center

Sales Center is the Adobe Salesforce/Dynamics layer that manages deal registration, partner co-selling records, and program tracking. That's the system DCN would augment or replace. Mark owns it, which makes him a stakeholder we can't avoid — but also a potential blocker.

The challenge

Difficult to work with — described as territorial

Kyle described him as "a difficult person" who "likes to put his finger on things that aren't his responsibility sometimes" and gets into funding arguments with Sarah. He's not hostile to new things — he just wants ownership. That's manageable, but needs to be approached carefully.

Don't intro through Mark and Sarah simultaneously

If both are introduced at the same time, a turf war starts before we're even in the door. Go through Sarah first, get traction and her endorsement, then bring Mark in as an implementation partner — not a gatekeeper.

The upside

Kyle can intro us when the time is right

Kyle said "we can definitely introduce you to Mark Chapman." He knows him. The path exists — it just needs sequencing. Let Sarah create pull, then Mark comes in as the technical program owner to figure out how to integrate, not whether to.

"He's a difficult person to work with… he's kind of the guy that would drive this." — Kyle Chau

KC

Kyle Chau

Group Manager, Developer/Partner Solutions — Adobe (via Ensemble contract)

✓ On our side 25+ years at Adobe Adobe Founders Award

His actual role (the key insight)

Sarah's de facto SA — he's Switzerland

Kyle is technically employed by Ensemble, but operates as Sarah Lacey's technical liaison. He represents her in front of Ensemble architects, tells them what needs to be built, and will flag Ensemble if they're doing something wrong. He describes himself as "Switzerland." This means he'll advocate for DCN to Sarah if he believes in it — and he does.

Currently leading the Adobe partner portal rebuild

Kyle Chau is the SA on the project to rebuild Adobe's partner Hub from scratch — using React, contracted through Ensemble. DCN could eventually live inside that infrastructure. He's building the house and he's told us where the doors go.

What he validated in the call

Crossbeam is a VLOOKUP — we're not

He said this unprompted. "You could do that with Google Sheets — just take two sheets and tell it to find the matches." That's the whole competitive story in one sentence from a credible insider.

Prime + co-prime model is the right build

He raised it independently. "Build it for the AE side — it carries over to the partner side in an hour." This is a product-shaping insight from someone who knows Adobe's org structure from the inside.

Free pilot is the right go-to-market

Confirmed Adobe historically buys the tool licenses for partners (e.g. Tidwit). Give it away now, capture data, let Adobe own the first-mover discount. Charge ServiceNow and Oracle later with proof.

What to do next with Kyle

Slack him this week — Sarah intro request

Kevin still has Ensemble Slack access. Kyle said to Slack him. Brief and casual — consistent with the relationship. Reference the call, ask him to set up the Sarah intro when she's back mid-July. Don't overthink the message.

Continue the collaboration dialogue

Kyle ended by saying "let's keep in touch — Slack me." He's willing to give design feedback on the product. This is a valuable ongoing relationship, not a one-time validator. Bring him into Jon Yee conversations on the co-prime build when ready.

"This is basically scaling what a partner manager does, because there's not enough partner managers and Adobe keeps laying them off." — Kyle Chau

MN

Mike Neumann

SVP Sales, Adobe — ~$2B North America number

⚡ Retiring December 31, 2026 Window: ~6 months

The urgency

Retirement is confirmed — December 31, not "sometime next year"

Kyle Chau confirmed Mike has pulled the trigger. Last day is end of calendar year. What was a 9-month window is now a 6-month window. The pilot needs to be running and producing data before he goes heads-down on his exit and transition. Everything else queues behind this.

Q4 is already too late to start

Once Q4 hits, Mike's attention will be on closing his year, his succession, and his exit. The window to get his full engagement and endorsement is Q2–Q3. Target: pilot agreement by September, data by November.

Why he's the proof point

SVP running the $2B number has never heard of Crossbeam

This is the single most powerful competitive data point in the DCN story. Crossbeam is implemented at Adobe. Mike's org has never heard of it. That's not a feature comparison — it's proof that Crossbeam lives at the partner program layer and never reaches the sales floor. DCN targets the sales floor. This story closes rooms.

Kevin has the relationship

Direct personal relationship from the Adobe presales years. Mike called Kevin after reading his book. This isn't a cold intro — it's a warm conversation that needs to move to a concrete pilot ask before Mike's attention shifts to his retirement.

What the pilot looks like

Target: 6–12 AEs, 2 verticals, 4–5 partners

Kevin's stated ask to Mike: two regions, 12 AEs, co-prime aware. Four to five small/medium partners (not PwC). Partners load their target accounts and currency. Run it through year-end. Kyle validated this as the right scope — not too complex, not too small to generate signal.

"He's pulled the trigger. His last date is end of calendar year. So you've got influence — but use it now." — Kyle Chau (paraphrased)

🔧

Product enhancements

Build items surfaced in the Kyle Chau call — June 18, 2026

2 for Jon Yee this week 3 backlog candidates 1 guardrail

Ship before pilot — Jon Yee this week

1 · Prime + co-prime AE model

Kyle raised this independently and was emphatic: Adobe's org is built on a prime AE (owns the account) and co-prime AEs (own product specialties — commerce, marketing, analytics). Right now DCN treats every AE as equal. That breaks the match logic for Adobe.

What to build: When an AE registers, they designate themselves as prime or co-prime and optionally link to a prime. The match view for a prime surfaces all partner matches across their entire account set. The match view for a co-prime surfaces matches relevant to their product specialty only. Kyle's kicker: "Build it for the AE side and it carries over to the partner side in an hour" — larger SIs like PwC and Deloitte also have prime/co-prime structures internally.

2 · AE onboarding + offboarding flows

Kyle flagged this as a real friction point: AE account lists change every year. Q4 pipeline suffers because reps stop building for the next person's Q1. When someone leaves, their match history and deal context evaporates.

What to build: Structured offboarding — when an AE leaves or gets new territory, their active matches can be transferred to the incoming rep rather than dropped. A lightweight account-reassignment wizard. On onboarding, new AEs should be able to see historical match quality for their inherited accounts (deal outcomes, partner ratings) without re-discovering everything from scratch. This also solves the "co-prime hold-over period" Kyle mentioned — 30/60-day transition windows where both reps share access.

Backlog — design before Q4

3 · Deal registration layer (deal reg replacement)

Kyle called deal reg "stupid — it's a one-to-one model." First-come-first-served means the partner who registers first wins regardless of who did the work. The current system is being gamed (shell deals opened, rotated, closed).

What to build: DCN already knows who engaged with whom and when — the trust timeline and match history is the natural deal reg record. Surface a "claim this deal" moment when a match progresses to Level 3 (full CRM share). Both parties confirm. CRM heartbeat (close-won, close-lost) closes the loop automatically. This is deal reg reimagined as an outcome of collaboration rather than a gate that precedes it.

Note: This touches Mark Chapman's world — don't lead with it to Sarah's team. Position it as a reporting/analytics output, not a system replacement.

4 · Partner ecosystem analytics dashboard (leadership view)

Kyle spent significant time on this: "The 30,000-foot level of the entire partner ecosystem — what partners are doing, what, where, when, how." Sarah Lacey currently has more behavioral data than she knows what to do with. DCN's activity layer is the missing piece: who's matching, who's connecting, who went dark.

What to build: A leadership-only view (VP+ tier) showing: partner engagement scores over time, which AEs are actively using DCN vs ghost accounts, deal velocity by partner type, match-to-connect conversion rates, and partner health scoring across the ecosystem. Kyle also surfaced an internal nudge concept — automated alerts to AEs who have high-value matches but haven't connected yet ("You have 4 matches on Nike. You haven't connected with any of them."). This is the VC story too — this data doesn't exist anywhere today.

5 · Multi-brand match visualization (the graph)

Kyle saw the multi-brand graph Jon built and immediately understood the revenue implication — Ensemble supporting both Adobe and Microsoft means they can surface matches against both brand AEs for the same account (Nike), doubling potential revenue streams from one partner login.

What to build: Make the graph a first-class feature, not a back-office visual. When a partner logs in, show them a live view of how many active brand relationships they have and how many concurrent match opportunities that creates. "You support 3 brands. You currently have 14 live match opportunities across those brands." Kyle's reaction was that this alone would get a partner's attention.

Guardrail — what NOT to build yet

Don't target holding companies (WPP, Publicis, IPG)

Kyle was direct: "This falls apart fast" with holding companies. They're structured so differently — competing divisions, internal politics, no clear prime — that the trust model breaks before it starts. Even PwC and Deloitte compete with themselves, though he noted PwC is actually more manageable than the big holding cos.

Implication for product: Don't build complexity into the partner onboarding or currency model to accommodate holding company structures. Keep it clean for the SMB SI world (Ensemble, Slalom, regional boutiques). The Gradial cautionary tale Colin raised earlier still applies — don't overbuild for edge cases that aren't your pilot audience.

Technology notes from Kyle

Adobe's partner portal is built entirely in React (by ATS)

The Adobe Technical Services team (ATS) — former engineers turned internal consultants — built and maintain the partner Hub in React. They work on Jira ticket → story → epic cycles, which Kyle summarized as "which means never." This matters for integration timelines: don't plan for a native Adobe portal integration in any near-term pilot. Phase 1 is spreadsheet upload. Phase 2 is API. The React infrastructure is a future opportunity, not a current path.

Adobe will never give direct Dynamics/Salesforce access

Kyle confirmed: "Adobe is never gonna let you connect right into Dynamics." DCN needs to be a middle system. CRM heartbeat (the deal status feed Kevin already designed — forecast → commit → closed won/lost) is the right architecture. Don't design for a direct CRM integration in the pilot; design for the heartbeat callback and let that be the proof of concept for deeper integration later.

SDR HyvE integration is a natural next layer

Kevin mentioned the SDR HyvE (Granola API → Anthropic → MEDDPIC scoring) and Kyle found it interesting. DCN produces the match and relationship layer; SDR HyvE produces the call quality and handoff layer. These are naturally sequential — a well-scored SDR call that advances to an AE could feed directly into DCN to trigger a partner match search. Worth a design conversation with Jon on how the two products hand off to each other.

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