To piggyback on this, think about these issues when recruiting JV partners--there are 2 lessons here:

1) You need to work out the kinks and make sure you can put on a good launch before you approach big JVs because the worst thing you can do is finally convince someone to promote and then they make no money. You'll struggle to get them to promote again... And the same goes if they DO make money but because of "growing pains" you fail in fulfillment and end up with a ton of returns.

2) There is a lot of value in working your way up gradually--with progressively larger launches and bigger partners, you can learn the lessons at each stage you need with burning people or having launch disasters. Then when you get your "A" partners you'll be ready!

-Brett