Some had been working with GOOG already. Some with YHOO. (this was '07-08) There was healthy skepticism all around - the deadliest aspect was where they (clai

Some had been working with GOOG already. Some with YHOO. (this was '07-08) There was healthy skepticism all around - the deadliest aspect was where they (claimed to have) felt more comfortable handling the design and development themselves rather than working with any partner. "Healthy" as they rightly felt they could self-implement and wondered at motivations behind partners' help offers. "Deadliest" as there was a track record of "needing to do it in-house" and yet not doing it at all. Our motivation to help was straightforward: we'd been partnering with hundreds of newspapers for decades. Their vitality - circulation, reach, revenue - directly effected same for our products. We had the resources and incentive to build and "give away" products and services to our partners as it was clearly in our interest. Lessons learned included 1) even gratis is not sufficient positioning for adoption. "Gratis with guaranteed revenue generation" wasn't either: high-touch execution support and hand-holding through the process is what made it work where it did. 2) just because people are smart and capable of executing doesn't mean they will; if they were capable and still hadn't yet executed, they almost certainly would not without some fundamental shift. Illogical, IMO, but those realizations have made other opportunities recognizable.