Market Momentum: Building Success Through AWS Marketplace - Six Five On The Road

How can technology companies successfully accelerate growth and customer adoption through go-to-market strategies on the AWS Marketplace?

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From AWS re:Invent 2025, host Alex Smith is joined by Teleport Vice President Channels and Alliances, Phil Simpson, for a conversation on how Teleport, recently named a 2025 Rising Stars Partner of the Year, transformed their go-to-market strategy through the AWS Marketplace, addressing their key challenges and leveraging core AWS tools to build momentum.

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Key Takeaways Include:

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🔹Strategic Go-to-Market Shift: Teleport pivoted its sales approach by adopting AWS Marketplace (AWSMP) as its primary channel, enabling broader customer reach and streamlined procurement.

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🔹Overcoming Go-to-Market Challenges: Initial challenges included scaling quickly and enhancing discoverability, which AWSMP helped address through optimized product listings and built-in ecosystem tools.

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🔹Leveraging AI and Machine Learning: Integrating AWS’s AI and machine learning capabilities into Teleport’s platform helped improve solution intelligence, driving greater customer engagement and adoption.

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🔹Impactful Tools: AWS Marketplace features like private offers, co-selling with AWS, and analytics were noted as key drivers for measuring and accelerating Teleport’s growth.

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🔹Forward-Looking Marketplace Strategy: Teleport aims to deepen its AWSMP partnership and recommends emerging partners focus on early adoption of AWS tools, building strong vendor relationships, and using marketplace analytics to guide strategy.

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Learn more at Teleport.

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Alex Smith:

Six Five On The Road here at AWS reInvent. I'm Alex Smith with the Futurum Group, and I'm joined by Phil Simpson of Teleport. Thank you for joining us today, Phil. Great to be here, Alex. So we're in this series, we're talking about the AWS Marketplace and, you know, partner's experience on the Marketplace. But first, before we get there, tell us a little bit about your company.

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Phil Simpson:

Sure. So Teleport is an AI infrastructure identity company. So what we do is we help engineers access and protect all their infrastructure, both traditional and especially now in our new AI world, across all identities for AI as well.

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Alex Smith:

Right. And now presumably you were born on the marketplace, you existed, you had a business before that. Tell us a little bit about the transition going from, you know, your other sales channels to embracing the AWS marketplace.

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, absolutely. So we've been partnering with AWS closely now for about four years. When we first started working with them, we were primarily a direct selling company, which obviously brings a lot of friction to our customers. Teleport is built on AWS. Most of our customers run on AWS, and we're also hosted in AWS for them. So it's a natural partnership for us. And what AWS does for us is it really allows just a simpler procurement and just allows us to really meet where our customers want to go to procure our software.

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Alex Smith:

So anytime, and I've spoken to a lot of ISV partners that, you know, they might've started as direct or through kind of, you know, normal VAR distribution channels. Yes. And then moving through the marketplace. What are some of the kind of, I guess, challenges that you had to overcome to, you know, shift? shift business that way?

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, it's a great question and it was a pretty big switch for us. I think the biggest thing, you know, obviously getting a marketplace listing is the first step. That's just table stakes. Really the key behind any successful go-to-market with AWS, it starts with executive sales sponsorship. So we really needed to change the culture within our company around selling direct or with other partners to lead with a cloud first marketplace approach. What's interesting is sometimes your biggest challenge is your own sellers. And so what we really focused on was showing them why by partnering with AWS, not only can they go higher and wider in their accounts, but it's actually oftentimes the preferred procurement process for their own customers. Again, our customers are running on AWS. Many of them have cloud commits with AWS. By buying Teleport through Marketplace, it allows them to retire those cloud commits and just really ends up being a more frictionless sales process. And so getting the sellers on board with seeing that is really important. So it starts with executive sponsorship internally at the top. First thing that we did is we drove comp neutrality so that our sellers made the same amount on a deal, whether it was sold direct or sold through the marketplace. We also instituted some really interesting sales incentives for them to really see how this can benefit them. Again, the process is really seamless. Sometimes they just need to see it for themselves. And so by getting on board the marketplace and, you know, pushing their deals through the marketplace. They saw that their deals closed faster, but it's a matter of just, you know, getting their toe in the water to speak. And so you really need to think about how you motivate your sellers around that as well.

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Alex Smith:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can remove barriers, but then if you kind of put incentives to kind of really encourage, you know, changing behavior and then you always have to land it in the hands of sellers. It's one thing to kind of sit on an enablement kind of training videos, but until you're actually kind of transacting in that way, you don't really get a feel.

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, absolutely. And then it becomes second nature, right? It becomes sort of the default procurement path, if you will, so that when they're engaged with customers and prospects early on, they'll ask them, hey, do you, you know, do you buy through the marketplace? We've got a great partnership with AWS and, you know, AWS helps us a ton on, on, on CoSell. They help us understand where their customers are on their journey around their various IT programs, et cetera. They have very good account control. They're very customer obsessed. So they help us understand what their customers and our prospects are really trying to achieve. They also help incent us around credits and things like that to try to get deals done in a more timely fashion. For my team, what we're really trying to do is remove friction on the procurement side. and really align where these customers want to go. And oftentimes that's with Marketplace.

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Alex Smith:

Yeah, absolutely. And I also understand a big part of that journey too is that kind of the deal desk that you need to have to kind of understand the tooling, understand the actual process side of things once the transaction's happening. So is that something that you've instituted as well?

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, absolutely. My team actually submits all of our private offers. We work closely with our deal desk and finance team across the board to make sure that the process is seamless for our sellers. There's also third party tools that you can leverage, that we leverage. We use a company called Sugar to help manage our listing and also submit our private offers. It really helps streamline everything. And it also helps us from a finance standpoint, just sort of understand the disbursement and the whole deal flow of each deal.

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Alex Smith:

So you're a few years into this journey from being direct to now kind of going through the Marketplace. Are there any metrics you can share of that journey?

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, absolutely. So the main metric that we count is our percentage of our ARR business that sold through Marketplace versus all at business. So we're proud today when we started this journey four years ago, I think we did two private offers for 50k in total. Four years later, we'll probably do over 200 private offers this year. We're doing half of all our revenue through AWS. And they're really, it's successful because they're helping us enable that growth. Because again, we're meeting where our customers want us to be, which is great.

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Alex Smith:

I mean that last one, half of revenue through AWS as well is quite the metric as well. And I also think congratulations, I think you won an award this week.

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, absolutely. So reInvent's been a whirlwind. It's been awesome. So we're proud to win the Rising Star Partner of the Year award this week. which really is a testament to not only our CoSell journey, but also our commitment to the platform. So again, our customers are hosted on AWS. We work very closely with various product teams within AWS to make sure that we're all aligned and it's been an exciting week and we're really proud of that award.

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Alex Smith:

So obviously, Journey has been successful so far. There must have been some challenges along the way. Anything of note that you guys had to overcome, whether it's kind of internally or in your relationship with AWS, just to kind of, you know, allow you to scale the way that you... Yeah, there's always some things that you need to think about.

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Phil Simpson:

I talked earlier about probably, you know, one of the biggest challenges is sometimes your own sellers getting them on board. But also, when you're working with AWS, you really need to understand their sellers are fantastic, and they're very hyper-focused on, you know, they're obsessed with their customers, they want to find the right solutions for them. It's really important when you're working with the AWS field that you really differentiate yourselves so that they understand how you're different from other competitors in the space, and ultimately how you're going to make their customers have a more successful journey into the cloud. And so, you know, sometimes making sure that they understand where we sit from an identity standpoint can be a challenge, but you know, they're juggling talking to a lot of different ISVs. So you want to make sure that you're very crisp in terms of how this benefits their customers and also how it benefits them. The other advantage that we had is we're all in on AWS, right? And so if you host your solution on AWS, the level of support you get from them goes up incrementally, right? The more we're in a phase of our company where we really want to drive more customer acquisition, We want to drive more new logos. We want to expand our accounts. AWS not only helps us do that, but as we expand, their footprint expands, too, because our solution is hosted on their cloud.

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Alex Smith:

Absolutely. So as you're thinking about expansion, new customer logos, I mean, there's many avenues to doing that. You have your kind of product-led kind of growth motions that you might be able to, you know, run through a marketplace vehicle. You have your co-sell motions that you could run with the AWS sellers. What are some of the things that you're thinking about in terms of expansion and how are you looking to, you know, grab more customer mindshare through the marketplace?

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, we're now, we feel like we, so it's full speed ahead for us on the marketplace, you know, we want to do even more deals through there. But what we also want to do is we want to leverage other marketplace programs to just help our overall reach. So, you know, we also do work a lot with channel partners and specifically AWS channel partners. And so we want to do more cross-pollination like channel partner private offers, for example, or CPPOs. where we actually involve a reseller on the transaction as well, which helps our reach. And everybody wins, right? The customer works closely with these resellers and bars. It's done through a private offer. So from a friction standpoint, we're able to process those deals faster. And then the customer wins as well, because it's typically their preferred vehicle too. I think that's one area where we look to expand, especially moving into 2026, and start working with the AWS overall partner ecosystem more. I think that's pretty exciting.

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Alex Smith:

So let's double click on that, because you're responsible for channels in your role. I think you'd said before that going back a number of years, you were largely a direct focus. Yes. So you've mentioned the AWS channel partner community. Do you have your own partner community as well, or are you largely

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Phil Simpson:

Absolutely. AWS is the only cloud partner we support from a go-to-market standpoint, but we do work with various security VARs and resellers as well who work closely with our prospects and customers. So we've always had that separate channel, but what we're trying to do now is sort of blend that in with the AWS ecosystem as well. And it's a natural fit for them too, because for many of these companies, they've also built their business on AWS as well.

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Alex Smith:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think some of the, as you mentioned as well with private offers, some of the programs that the marketplace has to enable you to, you know, it's not an alternate channel. It's a way that you could also bring your existing channel partners or AWS partners into your AWS marketplace motion too. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then for them as well, it's some kind of service opportunity that they might build around your technology platform.

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, definitely. At the end of the day, the resellers want to, in the VARs and the SIs, they want to continue to focus on their customers and be involved in the transaction. Obviously, from a procurement standpoint, they're still involved through CPPOs. But to your point, Alex, they also are able to sell services on top, which, again, sort of completes the cycle for them. And, you know, the customers become more sticky across the board, not just with us, but also with those VARs and resellers. And the nice thing for us as well is it ensures that, you know, they have a better teleport experience as well because they're leveraging all facets of the partnership.

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Alex Smith:

Absolutely. So we're getting close to wrapping up, Phil, but you've obviously won the award this year. What are some of the things you're thinking about doing so that you have a good chance of winning an award next year as well? How are you going to be leaning into the marketplace?

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Phil Simpson:

Yeah, the bar is set high from 2025 reInvent for us, but it's full speed ahead. Really for us, we're not going to change what we're doing. We're going to continue to just focus on partnering with AWS in the field, continue to drive more marketplace wins, maybe focus on some other, I mentioned CPPOs, or some other things that we can pivot to. But again, we've flipped the culture of our sales organization, of our company from the top down, from our CEO, from our CRO to be cloud first and to lead with AWS. And so we're not stopping now. We wanna continue to grow that. And we're at 50% today. I'd love to be 75, 80% next year because it's the right way for our customers to procure Teleport. You know, we're driving a lot of engineering efficiency for our customers, but we also need to think about how to drive procurement efficiency, and the Marketplace is the best way to do that.

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Alex Smith:

Absolutely, and I know a lot of the innovations they've announced this week will only help that further. I'm so excited to, you know, see how that journey goes for you and your company. So Phil, thank you so much again for taking some time. I know it's been a very busy week here at reInvent, but really appreciate you coming and talking with us about your journey. And to those of you tuning in, thank you for watching the series and hope you have a great rest of the day.

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