All posts tagged: partnerships

Why Partnerships Fail, and How to Break the Cycle

Why Partnerships Fail, and How to Break the Cycle

Published by Jenni Sidey

The partnership looked perfect on paper: complementary skills, aligned industries, and shared ambition. Eighteen months later, it ended in silence, blame, and a legal dispute neither founder anticipated. Unfortunately, this outcome is far more common than it appears. Since 2020, statistics show there has been a surge in new business formation, and a significant share of these ventures involve two or more founders. Partnerships are being formed at unprecedented rates, and a painful share are quietly falling apart. To understand why, I spoke with Kyle Kane, Co-founder of onSpark and an entrepreneur who has built and advised high-growth ventures and spent years examining patterns of partnership failure across founding teams. He previously built one of America’s fastest-growing companies, reaching Inc. 500 status in less than 18 months, which gave him direct exposure to how early-stage partnerships form, strain, and break under scale. The pattern he describes is not rare; it is increasingly visible in a startup landscape that has expanded rapidly since the pandemic. What the Research Says About Partnership Selection Research helps explain the …

Le Monde CEO urges publishers to sign AI partnerships

Le Monde CEO urges publishers to sign AI partnerships

Published by Sam Flores

Louis Dreyfus, CEO of Le Monde. Picture: Delporte Publishers should be signing AI licensing deals to ensure “strong competition” in journalism, according to Le Monde chief executive Louis Dreyfus. The French daily newspaper and website has seen a “significant amount of new revenue” including via conversions to paid subscriptions after signing three AI partnership agreements. Le Monde shares 25% of revenue from its licensing deals with OpenAI, Perplexity and Meta with its staff journalists. Publishers are currently split between suing AI firms and signing deals, as tracked by Press Gazette since 2023. Le Monde signed a multi-year agreement with OpenAI in March 2024, the first for a French media organisation. The deal brings in “significant” revenue for Le Monde in exchange for its content being used both for training and in response to prompts in ChatGPT. This was followed by a partnership agreement with Perplexity in May 2025, which allows the use of Le Monde’s content to generate answers in response to questions but does not include training. Then in December Le Monde was among …

Psychologists identify nine core habits associated with healthy non-monogamous partnerships

Psychologists identify nine core habits associated with healthy non-monogamous partnerships

Published by José Betancourt

A recent study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests that people who maintain multiple romantic or sexual relationships use specific communication and boundary-setting practices to keep their partnerships healthy. The research provides evidence that openly discussing jealousy, sharing resources, and managing sexual health tends to improve relationship satisfaction for both non-monogamous and monogamous couples. Consensual non-monogamy involves having more than one romantic or sexual partner at the same time with the informed consent of everyone involved. This includes relationship styles like polyamory, open relationships, and swinging. The research team, a large international group of relationship scientists and therapists, conducted the new study to investigate how some individuals successfully manage the complicated dynamics of having multiple partners. They wanted to identify the specific habits that reduce conflict and build trust when more than one partner is in the picture. The goal was to create a psychological questionnaire that measures these relationship maintenance habits accurately. “Early in my career, I developed an interest in how people in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships make multiple relationships work. …

Nokia expands partnerships with TIM Brasil, Deutsche Telekom in AI technology push

Nokia expands partnerships with TIM Brasil, Deutsche Telekom in AI technology push

Published by Sam Flores

March 2 : Nokia said on Monday it was expanding partnerships with TIM Brasil and Deutsche Telekom, as the Finnish 5G gear maker seeks to capitalise on adoption of AI-based technologies worldwide. These deals, which follow last week’s announcement of a multi-year contract with Telefonica to provide network solutions for data centres across Spain, highlight how artificial intelligence enabling technology is creating new revenue streams for Nokia. It will expand the network partnership with TIM Brasil—which previously covered 5G network modernisation and its preparation for AI-based services in the state of Sao Paulo—to a further 14 states across four regions, reaching around 42 per cent of Brazil’s population. The partnership enables TIM Brasil to offer AI-driven services to business customers using Nvidia’s AI-RAN platforms, Nokia said in a statement seen by Reuters ahead of its scheduled publication. In an earlier statement on Monday, Nokia and Deutsche Telekom said they would expand their collaboration to speed up development of cloud-based, disaggregated and AI-native radio access network (RAN) technology. This will lay down building blocks for programmable …

Penn Entertainment narrows Q4 losses as bets reshape strategy after costly partnerships

Penn Entertainment narrows Q4 losses as bets reshape strategy after costly partnerships

Published by skeptic

Penn Entertainment closed out 2025 with a noticeably smaller loss, buoyed by stronger showings at its brick-and-mortar casinos and a long-awaited breakthrough in its online division. For the quarter ending December 31, revenue climbed to $1.81 billion, up from $1.67 billion a year earlier. The company still posted a net loss, but it shrank to $73.4 million compared with $133.8 million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA across the business rose to roughly $225.8 million from $165.2 million, while diluted loss per share improved to $0.55. PENN Entertainment's online sports betting platform generated an 8.8% hold percentage in FY 2025, an improvement of 237 bps from its 6.4% hold in 2024, per earnings release — Ryan Butler (@ButlerBets) February 26, 2026 Jay Snowden, Penn’s chief executive officer and president, pointed to steadier performance across the portfolio, especially in its traditional casinos. “PENN’s diversified retail portfolio delivered a solid quarter during which retail adjusted EBITDAR grew year-over-year, after adjusting for poor weather in December,” Snowden said in the company’s announcement. Penn Entertainment’s digital pivot …

X updates paid partnerships policy banning gambling related promotions on platform

X updates paid partnerships policy banning gambling related promotions on platform

Published by skeptic

Social media platform X has rolled out a significant change to its Paid Partnerships Policy, drawing a clear line around gambling content and how it can be promoted. The revised rules, now posted in the company’s Help Center, spell out that gambling-related businesses can no longer use paid partnership posts to reach audiences on the platform. Under the updated guidance, gambling appears on a detailed list of industries that are barred from participating in paid partnership promotions. In the policy’s “Prohibited Industries” section, X states: “Gambling products and services (including lotteries, social casinos, sports betting, and other gambling related content)” are not eligible for Paid Partnership promotion. X updates its Paid Partnerships policy: #gambling products & services (lotteries, sports betting, casinos) are now banned from organic paid partnership posts pic.twitter.com/sZRAw7yvH9 — Suswati Basu (@suswatibasu) February 17, 2026 In practical terms, that shuts the door on influencers and creators striking compensated deals with betting companies, lottery operators or similar services for posts that appear in their feeds. Even if a creator clearly labels a post with …

The Hidden Contracts That Destroy Cofounder Partnerships

The Hidden Contracts That Destroy Cofounder Partnerships

Published by Jenni Sidey

The fights aren’t what kill cofounder partnerships. It’s the conversations you never have. Most business conflicts trace back to invisible agreements. Psychological contracts neither of you consciously made. You’ve unconsciously negotiated who handles emotional heavy lifting, who absorbs what kind of stress, and how you’ll respond when things fall apart. These silent deals work until they don’t. Then the resentment spills out as arguments about strategy, hiring, and equity splits. What looks like a business problem is usually a relationship problem in disguise. I’ve coached hundreds of founding teams. The pattern repeats. Partners fail because they never question the unspoken rules governing their relationship. The strongest partnerships actively challenge these hidden contracts before they calcify into chronic tension. Why Smart People Make Unconscious Deals Your cofounder relationship occupies strange psychological territory. You’re more intimately involved in each other’s daily lives than most married couples. Every decision carries stakes that affect both your futures. Under this pressure, you form what psychoanalyst Henry Dicks called “unconscious working agreements”—implicit bargains where each person’s emotional needs and defense mechanisms …

A path towards sustainable partnerships

A path towards sustainable partnerships

Published by skeptic

Irene Paoletti, EU Project Manager, Energy Efficiency in Industrial Processes (EEIP), explains how urban industrial symbiosis connects cities and industry to share resources, cut energy use and emissions, and build resilient, competitive local partnerships that support Europe’s sustainable energy transition. Industry in the EU is decarbonising and, at the same time, becoming more resilient and competitive to meet long-term EU climate and energy objectives. Yet the role of industrial symbiosis, often overlooked in industrial and energy policies, remains underexploited. By effectively connecting industry and cities, urban industrial symbiosis offers a powerful pathway to reduce energy demand, strengthen resilience and unlock systemic efficiency gains. Symbiotic relationships powering Europe’s energy transition No one said the EU’s climate and energy transition would be simple, and it’s not. Still, this transition is opening many opportunities to explore for long-term, wider societal benefits. One opportunity remains. To practically connect industry and communities to work together in the development of a symbiotic relationship in sustainability. Urban industrial symbiosis transforms locality into a partnership. It unlocks structured exchanges in which one actor’s …

Wikimedia Foundation announces new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and others

Wikimedia Foundation announces new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and others

Published by skeptic

As part of its 25th birthday celebration, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a series of new partnerships with AI tech companies that are now customers of its commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. Developed by the foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise allows large-scale reuse and distribution of Wikipedia content, as well as content from other Wikimedia projects. In addition to the previously announced partnership with Google in 2022, the organization shared publicly for the first time that it has formed other partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity over the past year. Other partnerships, like Ecosia, Pleias, and ProRata, have been mentioned before, but are also included in this announcement, along with Nomic and Reef Media. These deals give Wikipedia another way to sustain itself in an age where much of its content is being picked up and reused by AI models and other technology products and services to provide quick, factual answers to consumers’ queries. As an enterprise product, Wikimedia Enterprise isn’t just about getting tech companies to pay for their use; it also provides them access …

PDC Darts chief lauds integral partnerships with gambling companies

PDC Darts chief lauds integral partnerships with gambling companies

Published by skeptic

With the 2026 PDC World Darts Championship underway at Alexandra Palace in London, top-ranked players such as teen sensation Luke Littler, Luke Humphries, and Michael van Gerwen are vying for the bumper £1,000,000 winners’ prize and the Sid Waddell trophy, but they will have plenty of competition.  The game of darts has never had it so good.  This year at Ally Pally, as the London venue is colloquially known, a record-breaking £5million prize pot is on offer, including the winners’ cheque.  Other incentives include a £60,000 spot prize for any player to make a nine-dart finish, while the same amount will be won by a lucky fan in attendance, with a matched amount being donated to Prostate Cancer UK.  The charity has received more than £2 million from Paddy Power over the last two editions of the biggest show in darts. @paddypower will remain title sponsor of the World Darts Championship until 2031! Their game-changing charity campaigns have already raised over £2m for @ProstateUK so far. Next stop: Ally Pally, Dec 11 Jan 3. pic.twitter.com/xGtawDPw4R …