# Jay McBain

Jay McBain contributes to and hosts events for the technology channel industry, bringing together managed service providers, vendors, and other partners to discuss business growth, channel economics, and routes to market.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/jay-mcbain/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymcbain
- LinkedIn followers: 63,295
- Based on 9 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Jay McBain is most useful for analyst-led channel events and discussions on partner economics.

- Best for: Channel-partnerships software brands seeking keynotes or advisory on partner programs and MSP economics.
- Not for: Consumer or prosumer launches aimed at small-business owners outside the partner ecosystem.
- Check first: Ask for post-level engagement on comparable keynotes or webinars before committing budget.

### Takeaways

- Channel events should be judged by curated meetings and independent analysis, not expo scale.
- MSP business economics deserve the stage more than AI.
- Cloud-born, community-led companies can reach unicorn scale far from Silicon Valley.

## Main ideas

- **Channel events should be judged by curated meetings and independent analysis, not expo scale**: Jay McBain argues that a channel event’s value lies not in its expo floor or chance encounters but in pre-arranged one-to-one meetings between vendors, partners and distributors. An independent, analyst-led agenda separates these gatherings from vendor-led conferences. The case rests on who is in the room: an invite-only audience of more than 1,000 senior executives from EMEA's largest partners and distributors, plus global channel chiefs, can commit investments for the following year. A regional cadence argument follows: one flight per region in the fourth quarter lets vendor partner executives meet most of their addressable market. They write about this as a contributor and team member, not as a reporter.
- **MSP business economics deserve the stage more than AI**: Hosting a panel at MSP Summit, Jay McBain deliberately framed it as a "No AI-Zone" to keep the conversation on how managed service providers actually make money: their businesses, profitability, marketplaces, changing programs and economics, services multipliers, and the impact of private-equity funding. The argument is that these decisions shape MSP companies, while AI-first programming crowds them out.
- **Cloud-born, community-led companies can reach unicorn scale far from Silicon Valley**: From the same MSP Summit panel, Jay McBain draws a pattern across the three companies represented: all were born in the cloud, founded 11 to 15 years earlier, reached valuations above a billion dollars, began thousands of miles from Silicon Valley, and grew through a grass-roots community approach in the MSP space. The point is that a repeatable route to scale exists outside the venture-and-hype model usually associated with technology growth.
- **Claims about the channel should be measured against a tracked market**: Jay McBain argues for a franchise's distinctiveness by counting rather than asserting. The Canalys Forums post places one event within a tracked universe of 352 channel events worldwide, points to longevity as evidence, and presents the event's senior audience and meeting format as structural choices rather than marketing language. The MSP Summit post makes a similar case for another franchise, calling Channel Partners Expo in Las Vegas the largest channel event in the world and describing MSP Summit as a premier fall event paired with it each spring.

## Work to read

- [Kicking off Canalys Forums 2026 in Barcelona](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jaymcbain_kicking-off-canalys-forums-2026-in-barcelona-activity-7513534019054264322-pwOU)
- [Great first day at MSP Summit in Orlando](https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd2u6j-jiv4/)

## Brand relationships

- **Informa** (employment)
- **Canalys** (employment)

## Partnerships

Jay's partnership activity in these posts is event-based, not a published sponsorship programme. They hosted a panel at MSP Summit in Orlando for the Informa team, bringing together executives from Huntress, NinjaOne and Pax8, and describe being a contributor and team member at Canalys Forums, the analyst-led channel event held in Barcelona, Scottsdale and Bali. Before committing budget, ask about sponsorship packages, rates, exclusivity terms and the partnership contact route.

## Alternatives

- Steve Sipos - M.B.A.: Choose Steve Sipos when the campaign needs a partner-program practitioner rather than an independent analyst. Both posts show field-level channel enablement: presenting Verizon Business channel programs to a distributor's enterprise, SMB, and public-sector sales teams, and working a distributor symposium with reseller partners. If the ask shifts from market framing to rolling out a specific partner program — explaining co-sell mechanics, connected-device offers bundled into complete solutions, partner compensation, and what reseller reps should do next — someone who does that work at distributor events matches the task more directly than an analyst delivering a market keynote.
- Roger Collins: Choose Roger Collins when the audience is MSP account teams and the deliverable is an operational playbook. The reviewed quarterly-business-review post offers a step-by-step framework — standardised deck template, business update, executive-summary metrics, security review, service-experience review, roadmap progress, risk review, and recommendations — aimed at turning a $3,000-a-month client into a $10,000-a-month strategic account. The career post adds a persistence story about returning to an account-executive role and finishing a year at roughly 170% of target. That combination suits a webinar, workshop, or enablement piece that teaches MSPs how to run a business-review motion more than a market-analysis keynote.
- Joe Markert: Choose Joe Markert when the goal is MSP-community presence and conference-circuit engagement. One post is a practical networking guide for first-time conference attendees; the other describes contributing an essay, "The Two Chasms," to a customer-success book for MSPs and sets out its six disciplines — strategy, health, deliverables, process, people, technology — as an operating system MSPs can run. That mix suits a campaign that wants to meet MSPs in person, build community around a customer-success message, and co-create practical content with a contributor to MSP thought leadership.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/