Behind the Handshake: KP

Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, better known simply as KP, drops knowledge in this Behind the Handshake interview thanks to the wide range of his experiences:

• Migrating from an engineer (Vodafone) to startup Chief Product Officer (TapTu) to VP of Partnerships at Facebook.

• Scaling products across multiple technology waves: mobile, social, messaging and AI.

• Operating across countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom to Silicon Valley.

• Working in consumer internet and now enterprise B2B.

KP’s first full-time partnerships role was when he joined Facebook in 2012, at a pivotal stage in the company’s growth. KP forged early partnerships that helped to scale Facebook Login, Instagram APIs and Spark AR, among others.

Today KP serves as SVP of Partnerships at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

What stood out to me from our conversation is how KP’s background in Product and Engineering keeps him laser focused on uncovering the core / underlying value that a successful partnership unlocks for both sides.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with KP as much as I did.

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How do you describe what you do to someone sitting next to you on a flight?

I work in technology and my job is to accelerate product strategy and I do that by explaining to the business that you cannot do everything on your own and that partners are a way to fill gaps for the business and accelerate growth. The partnerships I lead are often invisible to the end user but, when they work, they unlock enormous value for users.

How did you find your way into partnerships?.

I started my career as an engineer at Vodafone and over time I moved into defining and building prototypes and products. I became a Product Manager and eventually moved to Skype, where I was first exposed to working with 3rd party integrations to enhance the product. I continued that product work with partners as a PM leader at Yahoo! and eventually as the Chief Product Officer at a mobile startup (TapTu). Then I made the switch to partnerships when I joined Facebook in 2012 at a stage when they were defining the partnership function and they needed partnership leaders who understood product management and could also understand our partner ecosystem.

Since then, at Snapchat and now at Oracle, I have always been drawn to partnerships that have a strong product component.

What trait do you look for when you’re hiring that isn’t usually on the resume?

I believe that to succeed in partnerships, you need to be able to hold two truths in your mind simultaneously. On one hand, you need to represent the ecosystem and effectively become an ambassador of that ecosystem to your internal stakeholders in Product and Finance and Sales. At the same time, you also need to represent your company to your partners. In that way, you need to be able to translate and contextualize internal realities to your external partners and your partners’ realities to your internal partners.

In an interview with a potential new hire, I’m trying to understand if the candidate has that kind of empathy and curiosity whether or not they have deep industry experience.

What advice do you wish someone had given you early in your career?

In an external facing role, the fundamental job is to build trusted relationships. And that trust is built by driving value. That trust is not built with entertainment, taking my partner to a game. I am not opposed to having fun with partners. But my view is that my partnerships are best served when I understand and can serve the individual interests and business interests of my partner and find where it overlaps with our product and corporate strategy.

Tell me about a partnership that you’re proud of and a lesson from that deal?

One lesson I have taken from several partnerships that I’m proud of is that in the early stages of a product there are a lot of assumptions that need to be validated and if you can find the right innovative partners who are willing to try new things, then you can validate a lot of assumptions very quickly. I look back with a lot of fondness and pride at the period at Facebook when we were building Facebook Login. We eventually grew the product to a billion users and that was thanks in large part to the partner ecosystem we built and those early partners were so valuable to our rapid learning in the early days.

What is one thing about negotiations that you find to be true but is often overlooked?

The person responsible for negotiating a partnership agreement should be the same as the person responsible for managing the partnership going forward. That is the best way to make every step of the partnership successful.

What is an unpopular or contrarian view that you hold?

A lot of people hold the view that you should not do anything one time, that everything in partnerships needs to be designed to scale. But in my experience, in most cases, there are only a handful of partners that deliver the majority of value and the other partners are just not as consequential.

I believe it is okay to do custom things for one or a few top partners.

What is something you read or listen to that makes you smarter?

I tend to get up early before the others in my house and digest a few newsletters to get up to speed on what is happening. Two of the newsletters I rely on are the NYTimes Dealbook and the Information.

Is there a non-business book that has been helpful to you in your career?

Give and Take by Adam Grant - this book offers a distillation of a lot of things that I was trying to create frameworks around. It put into words a number of ideas I’ve long believed to be true but had not articulated.

What is one question I should have asked you?

How do we scale AI responsibly for the benefit of humanity?

I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of several incredible technology waves - from mobile to social and messaging and now to AI. It seems clear that this AI opportunity is different. It is a technology that is very easy for users to grasp how it can solve problems for them. In that way, it is a massive opportunity. But this AI opportunity is going to require a huge investment in infrastructure. And some people are intimidated or skeptical by that level of investment. I think we have a responsibility to create a framework that prevents those technologies from being abused and only work towards the benefit of mankind.