Sunil Dhaliwal, Amplify Partners (Menlo Park, Calif.)

Like Skok, Dhaliwal departed a prominent venture firm -- in his case, Battery Ventures -- to launch his own. In Dhaliwal's case, the inspiration was the rise of what he calls Infrastructure 2.0 -- and he echoed a number of Skok's sentiments about the role of the channel as the new generation of IT infrastructure advances. "There's an interesting gap in the area of turning technologies into solutions," he said. "It's something a lot of companies are looking for."

Companies need partners who can understand their app, for instance, and are able to talk about which technologies can help meet their app's needs, Dhaliwal said. Partners who can bring expertise and tell customers, "'we understand how XYZ is needed for system automation, or for data analytics' – I think there's an opportunity for that," he said.