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How Snowflake Built a Partner Ecosystem That Competitors Can't Copy
Description
In this episode, Lucas and Luna unpack Snowflake's controversial decision to build its own data-sharing protocol rather than rely on existing industry standards — and how that bet created a partner ecosystem worth over a billion dollars in revenue. They trace the story from Snowflake's early days as a cloud data warehouse to its current position as an interoperability gatekeeper, examining the strategic trade-offs between open standards and proprietary lock-in. Along the way, they discuss why partner ecosystems fail when they prioritize breadth over depth, and how Snowflake's Data Cloud marketplace turned customers into collaborators. Lucas explains the concept of 'network effects for data' with a concrete example from the healthcare sector, and Luna pushes back on whether this model creates genuine value or just vendor dependency. The conversation closes with a lesson for any startup or enterprise thinking about building its own partnership ecosystem. A Fexingo Business podcast episode.