How to Build Integrations with Platforms Bigger Than You Without Getting Stuck at the Bottom of the Queue

Episode notes

In this episode of Between Product and Partnerships , Biljana Pecelj joins Cristina Flaschen to explain how smaller teams successfully ship integrations with larger platform partners. She makes the case that leveraging usage data and performance metrics is the key to proving your integration's value, giving you the necessary influence to move up a major partner's priority list. Biljana shares lessons from her experience managing integrations at Hootsuite during major platform shifts, including the rise of Instagram Business APIs and the emergence of new features like Stories that didn’t always come with immediate API support. She also details the process of aligning internal stakeholders to ensure integration features actually ship despite shifting external APIs. The conversation also covers the operational side of integrations, this includes why observability needs to be built early, how teams detect silent failures before customers do, and how to structure internal alignment when integration work touches engineering, legal, partnerships, and revenue.

• The Vibe Coding Phenomenon: What Happens When Everyone Becomes a Developer?64 / 100
• Beyond Handshakes: How to Structure Partner Programs for Success64 / 100
• Why Partnerships Fail (and How to Fix Them): Insights from Jenn Steele, SoundGTM69 / 100
• Why AI Doesn’t Replace Product Thinking: Insights from Stephanie Neill, Stripe
• No-Code vs Code First: Why Visual Builders Often Lead to Integration Dead Ends