Oftentimes, the companies you think are your customers or go-to-market partners can often be the companies you're supposed to be disrupting.

It's very common to find young startups attempting to create new user experiences and business models that change how an industry works - while also choosing a go-to-market or sales strategy that relies on legacy players in an industry.

In these cases, here's what's likely to happen when dealing with these players...

They are unlikely to understand your innovation.
If you are lucky enough to find some stakeholders to understand and champion your innovation, the people they work with are likely to slowwalk or kill their initiative.
If the initiative gains some momentum, it's highly likely to be killed due to priority changes (due to changes in KPIs, market conditions, management whims, etc.)
Even if you squeeze through the eye of the needle to get *something* out to market, they are unlikely to implement it the way you want.
Even if they implement it the way you want, it will take *forever* to ship it.
Even if they ship it, they're unlikely to market and/or sell it how you want/need it.
Even if they were to do all of the above, you would be unable to rapidly test/iterate on the implementation details and marketing messages (essential for disruptive new products) - which can cause your product to suffer or fail.
They will likely change their mind when market conditions change or the intial rollout “fails” to live up to its potential - particularly because you have been unable to iterate and experiment.
Even if it finally ships and starts to get marketed correctly, making any changes will be painful if not impossible (see: all of the above).
If you are implementing a white-label solution (often the case): Even after all that, you won't own the user. Which is the most important thing

Instead...

Go straight to the end-user.
Disrupt legacy players - don't partner with or sell to them.
Later: Maybe give them a little SDK or API to adopt some of your incredible innovation.
See: Youtube vs. Media companies, Instagram vs. Brands, Twitter vs. News, Uber vs Taxi, Netflix vs Blockbuster, etc etc