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About Us

How did Hockey Stick Advisory come about?

Through five years leading Xero’s ecosystem team, founder Bryan Williams gained a unique lens into how hundreds of global SaaS companies operate. Hockey Stick Advisory exists to pass that on.

Bryan’s early days connecting retailers with cloud tools at Vend

The origin

It started with a pattern

Through Bryan’s five years leading Xero’s ecosystem team, he gained a unique lens into how hundreds of global SaaS companies operate; uncovering market trends, what “great” looks like, and the common pitfalls to avoid.

Earlier in his career at Vend POS in 2013, Bryan connected retailers with emerging cloud tools and quickly saw a clear trend: those embracing connected technology were growing faster. These businesses, and the SaaS companies enabling them, were thriving together.

The insight

Today, partnership ecosystems are one of the strongest strategic assets a company can build.

Across the tech landscape, Bryan watched emerging companies build ecosystems while scaling their product value and, in some cases, evolving into full platforms. Yet competition is fierce, and many hope that simply joining a platform will guarantee easy customer acquisition, without understanding the real mechanics of growth.

The Hockey Stick Advisory team today

Closing the gap

Helping ambitious companies grow, never alone

Bryan saw a gap: many scale-ups lack the resources, insights or time to build impactful partnership strategies in-house. That’s where Hockey Stick Advisory comes in, helping companies fast-track their ecosystem maturity through tailored strategies and hands-on support.

We’ve continued to evolve through the launch of our Partnerships Framework™: a structured program that turns partnerships into a repeatable, high-performing growth channel, combining strategy, execution and AI-powered enablement.

We’re here to help ambitious companies achieve Hockey Stick Growth faster, smarter, and never alone.

— Bryan Williams, Founder, Hockey Stick Advisory

Our team

A high-impact team with a deep, trusted network

Bryan Williams

Bryan Williams

Founder

Bryan is passionate about helping SaaS businesses and the people within them realise their ambitions, unlocked through connected, innovative technology to grow, scale and deliver incredible customer outcomes. With a strong, authentic network across the APAC and global tech community, he believes there has never been a more exciting time to drive forward partnership ecosystems. Bryan is based in Melbourne, where he lives with his young family.

Scott Cooper

Scott Cooper

Director of Marketing Operations

Scott is a highly experienced marketing and operations leader across the Australian and international tech community. He was US employee #1 at tech double-unicorn Go1 as VP of Marketing, helping scale their marketing globally, before COO roles at Drawboard and Versus Merch. Scott brings a wealth of experience to take Partner Marketing to the next level for our clients. Based in Melbourne.

SP

Shuba Paheerathan

Partner Program Manager

Shuba is a B2B SaaS partnerships specialist with a deep, trusted partner network across Australia and beyond, and an active Partnership Leaders chapter lead. She works closely with B2B technology companies to develop partner strategies and build effective go-to-market motions with and through partners. Passionate about the power of partnerships to accelerate growth, Shuba helps our clients turn partner programs into performing channels.

Our values

What we stand for

Outcome Driven

Our North Star is impactful customer outcomes. Outcomes, not output. How can we create shared value for a win-win-win?

Technology-Enabled

We practice what we preach, using repeatable, scalable automations and market-leading technology to increase productivity and unlock better decisions.

Authentic

We’re transparent, honest and ready for challenging conversations. Optimistic yet pragmatic, and we contribute to a fun team environment.

Growth Mindset

We believe skills are developed, not fixed. Forever curious, obsessed with learning and improvement.

Health & Well-being

To make the biggest impact we operate like racing cars; prioritising optimal health as a competitive advantage. We’re sick of seeing burnt-out leaders.

Endorsements

What partnership leaders say

Bryan has broad experience and understanding of how to successfully leverage partnerships for growth, and execute platform strategy, in both startup and scale up sized companies.
Nick Houldsworth
Nick Houldsworth
Former EGM Ecosystem, Xero
Bryan has done an incredible job building & uniting the Xero & tech ecosystem community across APAC. He has rare IP & understands platforms and how to grow the partner ecosystem.
Scott Brinker
Scott Brinker
VP Platform Ecosystem, HubSpot

Get in touch

Let's chat about how we help you achieve your goals, faster

We'll work with you to understand your challenges and develop a bespoke strategy that maximises your growth potential through a partnership ecosystem-led approach.