How to Ship Integrations with Platforms Bigger Than You

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

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.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts

Key Topics

  1. Why integration product work is relationship work
    Technical execution matters, but alignment with partners determines whether integrations actually ship and scale.
  2. Building in ecosystems you don’t control
    APIs change. Features launch without endpoints. Roadmaps shift. Successful teams anticipate uncertainty rather than assume stability.
  3. The importance of observability from day one
    Silent failures are common in integrations. Without monitoring, teams often learn about outages from customers instead of systems.
  4. Roadmap tradeoffs when beta opportunities arise
    New partner features can require immediate shifts in engineering priorities. Negotiation and resource reallocation become core product skills.
  5. M&A and integration complexity
    Brand consolidation rarely means backend integration. Teams often inherit layered systems that remain technically independent long after acquisition.

“You’re going to walk into a job where you expect it to be all about technology and APIs, but fundamentally it’s a relationship job.”
— Biljana Pecelj

Episode Links & Resources

🎧 Listen to the full episode
🔗 Biljana Pecelj(Guest) on LinkedIn
🔗 Cristina Flaschen (Host) on LinkedIn

Keep integrating,