The big one
We brought the DCN back from the dark — and gave it a warm start.
This morning the DCN was a question mark. By end of day it's a live app with six fixes shipped, GitHub and email under our own control, a full brand-to-partner co-sell loop walked in UAT, and a pilot dataset — assembled almost entirely from public data — that lets the network open warm instead of empty. We closed the cold-start problem on paper and proved the product on screen.
6 fixes shipped
Full UAT loop validated
54 partners mapped
8 warm intros surfaced
GitHub + email owned
Linear backlog triaged
Where the day netted out
6
product fixes to preview
100+
named partner clients
8
warm intros (named Adobe AE)
The headline: Adobe's own partner directory returns zero partners for a Content Supply Chain search (it AND-filters product by product). Hyvara returns a ranked, coverage-scored list — and layered with real currency, it already surfaces warm intros into Marriott, Microsoft, PayPal, MLB, and Hunter Douglas. That gap is the pilot's founding story, and Adobe handed it to us.
Foundations locked
GitHub connected done
The DCN — which turned out to be very much alive on Lovable — is now synced to NC-kevinkunz/hyvara-co-pilot, all 2,176 commits. Version history, safe branches, and a trivial move to the new Mac (clone and go).
Email under our own control done
Stood up mail.hyvara.ai in our own Resend account, verified the DNS in Namecheap, and pointed the app at it. Adobe-grade infrastructure now owned by Hyvara, not a cofounder's personal account.
Connected Linear — closed real backlog items done
Pulled the full Hyvara backlog (220+ issues) and reconciled it against the code, so today's fixes map straight onto tracked tickets — HYV-135 (notifications), HYV-160/198 (intel routing), HYV-172 (sharing UX), HYV-211 (unlock state). Notably, Anne's bug report — HYV-226, the "Connect" button foreign-key error she hit on the Network tab as a Partner — was diagnosed and fixed the same day. Backlog reconciled, and a real user-reported issue closed.
Six fixes shipped to preview
- Notifications turned on — email + in-app, re-enabled and validated in a live inbox (HYV-135).
- Connect button fixed — the foreign-key error partners hit on the Network tab (HYV-226).
- Intel routing + render — domain-normalized matching so shared intel stops vanishing (HYV-160/198).
- Level framing + blue/green color coding — the tiered exchange reads clearly by role (HYV-172).
- Email no longer dumps raw JSON — clean Level 1/2/3 summary, sensitive detail kept out of email.
- Share-dialog unification — both sides now use the same staged Level 1/2/3 model everywhere. This was the root cause of the reciprocal-exchange problem we'd been circling for weeks.
Full UAT loop — walked live, end to end
- Signup → account match → intro request → email delivered → accept + identity unlock (connected state, both calendars) → staged intel & currency exchange, with Level 3 gated until after the first call.
- The unlock/connected state we most worried about (HYV-211) actually works on the thread path.
- Open items surfaced in UAT: persist intel on the View Account page; surface active accounts in the Opportunities list; human-readable tag labels; staging DB; publish the six fixes.
Mike's whitespace — the brand side
Adobe FY26 Master Whitespace ingested brand data
~115K rows across Scale / Enterprise / Greenfield / Industry — every Adobe account tied to its owning AE and per-product open pipeline. The demand side of the network, seeded with real data.
The Content Supply Chain wedge
Adobe filters to zero; Hyvara scores coverage insight
CSC isn't a SKU — it's a rollup (Workfront + AEM + Firefly + GenStudio + Express). Adobe's directory only AND-filters products, so selecting the full stack returns no partners. Hyvara models the solution and ranks partners by coverage. Mike felt it live — this is the differentiator he'll evangelize.
Partner mapping + their customers
- Pulled the Adobe Solution Partner directory: 37 Silver + 17 Gold = 54 partners with specializations, HQ, certs, and co-seller counts.
- Built the currency map from public case studies + Ensemble's real forecast: 100+ named clients, 57 whitespace overlaps, 8 warm intros with a named Adobe AE.
- Flagged the multi-brand angle: Nortal → ServiceNow, so the same currency extends beyond Adobe.
Warm start proven: the cold-start seeds itself from public data. A partner walks in to find we've already built their relationship map and shown where it overlaps Adobe's open pipeline — their activation cost drops to near zero.
The sales strategy
Campaign plan: practice → build → kill
Warm-up on low-stakes boutiques (Content Bloom, Sii, Anchora, CO-WELL) to learn the pitch, build confidence on single-marquee hooks (Groundfog→Siemens, Coforge→Emirates, Digital Hub→Ajinomoto), then go for the whales last — Code and Theory (5 warm marquee accounts), Slalom, NTT DATA, Ensemble.
Ensemble — the flagship pilot partner
Their real 2024 forecast gives 24 whitespace matches from a single partner — Hunter Douglas, Toyota, Synopsys, Stanley Black & Decker, Macy's, Sony. Even the lost deals are currency: the relationship outlives the deal. Josh Markovitz as partner manager.
Partner recruitment one-pager
Built and ready: the "thin list to start, you control every reveal" ask that lowers partner activation and leads with the trust story.
Two builds that close the loop
Mass upload — admin ingestion building
An admin console tool: upload a spreadsheet or CRM export → map columns → dedup → insert into directory_partners + account_vault via an edge function. The master seed workbook and the Salesforce-format CRM exports are already the templates. This is the concrete "prevent cold-start" build — a partner hands over the forecast they already keep, and it maps straight in.
Partner vs Alliance Manager — the traffic cop designing
Add a Brand Partner Manager (BPMGR) role — the brand-side orchestrator, mirroring the partner-side alliance manager. A relationship/mapping console where one manager sees all partner ↔ account ↔ AE mappings and routes connections on behalf of the BAEs and PAEs. It's the natural home for the ingestion tool and the pre-seeded matches: load → review → hand warm matches to the right AE. Solves cold-start and adoption in one surface.
Also queued
- Publish the six fixes; stand up a staging DB so UAT stops touching production.
- Persist shared intel on the View Account page and surface active accounts as Opportunities.
- Human-readable tag labels (warm_intro → "Warm Introduction").
- Finish the currency crawl (Tavily/Nimble) for the pending partners + ecosystem tags.
Shipped to the folder today
- DCN_Partner_Master_Seed.xlsx — Partners · Currency · Campaign Plan · Ensemble Pipeline (the ingestion template).
- Partner_Currency_Map.xlsx — 13 partners, 106 named clients, sourced with confidence flags.
- Adobe_Partners_AEM_Workfront_Silver.xlsx — the 37-partner directory pull with websites.
- Hyvara_Partner_Pilot_OnePager.docx — the partner recruitment pitch.
- Adobe_CRM_Jordan_Donahue_AD_BPMGR1.csv + AD_PMGR1_Strong_List.csv + Ensemble_Currency_Josh_Markovitz.csv — Salesforce-format upload examples.
- Ensemble_Customer_Success_Stories.md — the narrative currency for the partner manager.
- DCN_Local_Dev.md + DCN_Sharing_Flow_Fix_Plan.md — the runbook and the fix plan.
- Infrastructure: GitHub repo connected ·
mail.hyvara.ai email live.
From "is this thing even alive?" to a warm-seeded pilot with a strategy, a call sheet, and a working product — in one day.