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Design Partner Programme

A small cohort of early customers building the product with you: a clear partner profile, a fair agreement, a working cadence that keeps them engaged, honest triage of their requests and a planned route to paid contracts.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Then open the Marketplace in the app, search for Design Partner Programme, and click Install. It goes into your own files, and works offline from then on.

What it installs.

1

Pillar

1

Area

50

Projects

200

Starter tasks

🚀 Founding & Startups

Design Partner Programme

Recruiting a handful of early customers as design partners, agreeing expectations and building the product closely alongside them.

  1. What the design partner programme must prove
  2. Ideal design partner profile
  3. Design partner value exchange offer
  4. Cohort size and partner cap
  5. Target list of thirty candidate partners
  6. Design partner agreement drafted with a lawyer
  7. Feedback ownership and confidentiality terms
  8. Partner data handling and security answers
  9. Partner kickoff pack and success plan
  10. Design partner recruitment pipeline
  11. Weekly partner working sessions
  12. Partner feedback log and tagging
  13. Weekly product update note to partners
  14. Partner usage and health tracking
  15. Partner request triage
  16. Shared partner channels and response times
  17. Monthly partner commitments check
  18. Quarterly design partner programme review
  19. Partner champion and stakeholder map
  20. Writing the design partner pitch
  21. Facilitating a partner working session
  22. Separating cohort signal from one-partner requests
  23. Prototype walkthroughs with partner users
  24. Problem statements from partner feedback
  25. Saying no to a partner and keeping them
  26. Spotting a partner going quiet
  27. Paid or free design partnership decision
  28. Conversion terms written into the agreement
  29. Time to first value for new partners
  30. Replacing a disengaged design partner
  31. Cohort mix and bias check
  32. Choosing tools for partner feedback and support
  33. Logo, quote and case study rights
  34. First design partner kickoff meeting
  35. Partner roundtable day
  36. First live rollout with a design partner
  37. Ninety-day partnership checkpoint
  38. Conversion to a paid contract
  39. Programme graduation and reference customers
  40. Design partners as a solo technical founder
  41. Enterprise design partner with procurement
  42. Design partners for a hardware pilot
  43. Design partners for an AI product
  44. Design partners during a fundraise
  45. Partners from a former employer's network
  46. Design partners in a regulated industry
  47. Co-development and joint IP arrangements
  48. Product vision shaped by the cohort
  49. Second cohort designed from first cohort lessons
  50. Design partner playbook for the team

Where it starts.

Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.

What the design partner programme must prove

Founders often recruit design partners because it sounds like the right thing to do, then cannot say after six months what the programme taught them. Writing down the two or three bets the cohort must confirm or kill, such as whether a finance team will replace its spreadsheet workflow, turns every later session into a test rather than a chat.

First tasks

  • List the product assumptions you most need real customers to test
  • Pick the two or three bets that would change the roadmap if wrong
  • Write the evidence that would confirm or kill each bet
  • Agree the programme end date with your co-founders

Ideal design partner profile

A design partner who is too big will drown you in procurement, and one who is too small will never become a real customer. A short profile covering company size, the role of the champion, the pain they feel weekly and their appetite for unfinished software stops you signing whoever says yes first.

First tasks

  • Write the company size band and industries you will accept
  • Describe the champion role and who approves their spending
  • List three must-have traits and three disqualifiers
  • Score five real companies against the profile and revise it

Design partner value exchange offer

Partners give you hours of senior time, access to their workflow and honest criticism, so they need to know what they get back. Spelling out the exchange, such as early access, direct founder time, roadmap influence and a locked conversion discount, makes recruiting easier and stops partners expecting a free product forever.

First tasks

  • Estimate the partner hours per month the programme will need
  • List every benefit you can genuinely deliver to a partner
  • Write the half-page offer in plain language
  • Ask one friendly prospect what in the offer would worry their manager

Make it yours.

Install Design Partner Programme, then tell Aurum the date you're aiming for. It checks whether the plan fits the weeks you actually have.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Blueprints are general information to help you organise your own work. They are not medical, financial, legal or other professional advice. See the Terms.