Tackle Drives 100%+ ARR Growth Leveraging AWS Partner Network and AWS Marketplace

Tackle leverages the AWS Partner Network (APN) to align itself to different parts of AWS (Amazon Web Services) and meet the needs of its independent software vendor (ISV) customers. Tackle delivers industry expertise and a zero-engineering platform to help B2B software companies establish, operate, and scale sales through cloud marketplaces. Tackle quickly evolved from two employees supporting a handful of ISVs to a unicorn with over 170 employees. Tackle supports hundreds of ISVs because of its serverless software as a service (SaaS) platform built on AWS and partnerships with the APN and AWS Marketplace.

Tackle helps ISVs generate revenue through cloud marketplaces. Listing, transacting, and scaling on cloud marketplaces takes significant resources and domain expertise, requiring ISVs to complete multiple business and technical tasks. Tackle developed the Tackle Cloud Marketplace Platform to automate and accelerate the process, requiring zero engineering from ISVs to list and start selling in the AWS Marketplace. The company is changing the way ISVs sell software in the $500 billion B2B software market. Tackle works with software companies—from seed-stage start-ups to global public companies—to launch and scale their businesses with AWS Marketplace. 

“Our goal is to help software companies enter the cloud era and develop cloud commerce strategies that are scalable, repeatable, and profitable,” says Brian Denker, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Tackle. “We help companies get listed quickly, design their cloud go-to-market approach, and support streamlined procurement and new revenue channels. Our software also supports downstream integration into systems like Salesforce and advanced revenue reporting to make it easy to run businesses with a marketplace.” 

Being built serverless on AWS allowed Tackle to grow quickly without major technical pain points. But the company lacked marketing and sales support. “We knew that in order to scale we would benefit from a closer collaboration with AWS as well as go-to-market support,” says Denker.

Tackle joined the APN in 2017. The company was quickly matched with a partner manager who was an advocate of the AWS Marketplace and understood Tackle’s value. Denker states, “Our partner manager was a key part of our early success. He helped guide us through where we should be leaning in and which programs we should sign up for. He became our biggest advocate. As a result, we were introduced to teams and programs within AWS that we would have never even known about otherwise.” 

After joining the APN, Tackle quickly leveraged the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) Program to build connections with the AWS field, partner managers, and marketplace category leaders to scale and build the brand. “The exposure and positioning we received by being part of the AWS Partner Network has led to incredible output, and the impact for Tackle cannot be overstated,” adds Denker. 

In 2019, Tackle was nominated to the AWS Global Startup Program, a go-to-market program built to support select mid to late stage startups that are ready to scale, and the AWS ISV Accelerate Program, a co-sell program for AWS Partners who provide software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. Both programs allowed Tackle to further innovate. Because the company had already built solid connections within AWS, the ISV Accelerate Program became a catalyst for further growth. “Getting into the ISV Accelerate Program provided us with tremendous sales support and helped us refine the co-selling process,” says Denker. “We liken it to pouring gasoline on a fire that was already raging.”

Denker says Tackle owes a lot of its success to its close partnership with AWS. “The partnership has allowed us to better align to different parts of the AWS organization, including AWS Marketplace, which gives us the insights we need to continuously meet the needs of our customers. Thanks to that, we have helped hundreds of customers scale their businesses through AWS Marketplace.” 

As a result of the partnership—and because it was built serverless on AWS—Tackle quickly scaled from a two-person company to over 160 employees in 30 states and Canada, helping hundreds of ISVs sell through the AWS Marketplace. Since joining ISV Accelerate, the company has also seen a consistent uptick in AWS-generated opportunities. In 2021, 48 percent of Tackle's co-sell opportunities originated from AWS. Tackle also helped ISVs to transact thousands of private offers, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, through the AWS Marketplace. 

Going forward, Tackle is looking to expand outside the United States. “There is a relatively untapped opportunity internationally, and cloud marketplaces are becoming more interesting to buyers there,” Denker says. “We are continuously looking at how to help ISVs remove friction from the sales process, including working closely with the AWS consulting community and supporting their co-selling journey. We plan to tap AWS partner managers in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to help us reach new customers.”