A commercial practice · Toronto & Calgary · Since 2009
Most of the value, and most of the customers, sit between companies.
WithinBLUE helps founders and emerging businesses secure the partnership their next stage depends on — with a bank, a card network, a retailer or a platform — and make it work after signature.
How the practice worksOne discipline: the partnership.
Engagements usually begin at the same point: the next stage of growth depends on a partner far larger than the company. The work follows that partnership from the first conversation to the results after signature.
The right partner
Which bank, network, retailer or platform to pursue, why it would say yes, and what the relationship is worth to each side.
The deal
The value proposition, the economics and the negotiation — carried through the other side’s committees to signature.
The results
The integration, the launch and the commercial performance that follows — the part of a partnership that decides whether it was worth signing.
Emerging businesses whose growth runs through a larger partner — in financial services, loyalty, travel, retail and technology — the boards and investors behind them, and the incumbents building with them.
Where the commercial function needs building rather than advising, the practice takes on interim executive roles. Where a partnership needs capital behind it, it helps raise it.
What the deals have taught.
The committee is the counterparty.
The person across the table wants the deal. The decision belongs to a credit committee, a brand team and a legal department you will never meet. The work is building the case they need to say yes.
The value is made after signature.
Most partnerships are judged on the day they are announced and lost in the year that follows — to launch delays, misaligned incentives and no one owning the results. The agreement should be written for that year.
The smaller company has more leverage than it thinks.
Large partners need growth, speed and new customers they cannot build themselves. A founder who understands what the other side needs negotiates as an equal.
A partnership is only as good as what connects it.
Members earning in one place and spending in another, a card approved at a retailer’s checkout, data both sides trust — none of it happens in the agreement. The technology has to be scoped in the deal, priced in the economics and ready on launch day, or the partnership exists only on paper.
Both sides of the table.
Former CEO, Humm Canada
WithinBLUE is led by Tim Moulton, who has built partnerships from both sides of the table — inside the banks and loyalty programs, and inside the younger companies that needed them.
Most recently he led Humm Canada as chief executive. The perspective the practice brings comes from both seats: what the larger partner needs to say yes, and what the smaller one needs to come out ahead.
Counterparts have included Mastercard, American Airlines, JetBlue, Etihad and Walmart, and most of Canada’s leading retailers.
Background on LinkedInWhat the work looks like.
Twice: Aeroplan, as it grew from an airline program into a coalition, and RBC, as Avion Rewards grew beyond the bank. Both meant convincing banks, retailers and travel brands that a shared currency would be worth more to each of them than a program of their own.
The workThe Tier 1 partnerships, the co-brand cards, the pricing and value propositions, and the merchant ecosystem behind them.
The resultTwo of the most widely held loyalty programs in Canada.
Airlines wanted their members to earn and redeem in more places without building the technology themselves.
The workThe commercial model, the partner terms and the platform underneath, delivered for nine carriers — then the harder deal: two very large companies, each sure the other needed it more.
The resultPlatforms live across nine airlines, and Walmart customers earning American Airlines miles.
A new issuer with no portfolio needed a network willing to back it.
The workThe value case, the pricing and the path through the network’s approvals.
The resultA network partnership signed, onboarded and transacting.
Humm entered Canada with no team, no merchants and no bank partners.
The workBuilding all three, and the merchant integrations that put financing at the checkout.
The resultA national point-of-sale lender.
Begin a conversation.
A first conversation is thirty minutes. Describe the partnership; you will get a straight view on whether it is worth pursuing, and whether this is the right practice to help. Correspondence is welcome from founders, chief executives, boards and investors.