I’ve been working with a Russian SaaS company for the past eight months as they expand into the US market, and I thought it might be useful to share some of what we learned. Not everything went smoothly, but some of it has been genuinely surprising.
The setup: B2B SaaS tool, originally built for Russian companies, strong product-market fit there. Founders had US ambitions, decent capital, and a good team. But they had zero presence in the US market and no clue how to build one.
The influencer angle: We decided early on that creator partnerships could accelerate awareness faster than traditional sales/marketing alone. The theory was solid—creators in the productivity/SaaS space could reach decision makers and practitioners, build credibility, and generate buzz.
What actually worked:
We partnered with 4-5 mid-tier creators in the US (not mega-influencers, but people with 50k-200k engaged followers in the right niches). The selection process was brutal—we looked for people who actually used similar tools, had credibility in the space, and had some international appeal.
The creators who won were the ones who took the time to actually understand the product. We didn’t just hand them a brief and money. We gave them trial access, let them use it for two weeks, asked them what they genuinely thought. When they made content, it was authentic because they’d already formed an opinion.
We also let creators choose their format. Some did short-form video, some did longer YouTube deep-dives, one did a Twitter thread that somehow went viral. Letting them play to their strengths worked much better than forcing everyone into the same template.
What didn’t work:
Early on, we tried the “mega-influencer” approach. Single creator with 500k+ followers. Huge waste of money. The audience wasn’t relevant, the content felt sponsored (because it was purely transactional), and the ROI was basically zero.
Also, we underestimated how much the messaging needed to shift from Russia to US. The product’s value prop in Russia is around “affordable, powerful alternative to Enterprise SaaS.” In the US, we quickly learned people wanted “Here’s how to save your team 10 hours a week, specifically.” Very different angle.
We also had timezone chaos for the first 3 months because the team in Russia was driving the campaign, but all the creators and target audience were in US hours. That got messy fast.
What we’d do differently:
-
Spend more time on creator selection. We’d probably test the first 10 creators with smaller budgets before committing to bigger campaigns. The difference in ROI between mid-tier and tier creators was 3x.
-
Align the whole company on US messaging first. Don’t let the Russia team design US campaigns. Get someone deep in the US market to lead strategy. (We ignored this and paid the price.)
-
Build a content calendar differently. Instead of “spray and pray,” we’d do 3-4 campaigns with deep measurement and iteration, rather than 10 shallow campaigns.
-
Invest way more in the relationship. The best outcomes came from creators who felt like partners, not vendors. We spent 2x more time with those people, and it showed in the output.
We’re now in month 8 and seeing solid traction—$X in ARR from US market, decent pipeline, and way better position than we had 6 months ago. The influencer component contributed maybe 30-40% of that.
Open question: For anyone else doing cross-market expansions like this—how much of your initial push came from new partnership/creator channels vs. traditional paid/organic? Just curious what the different approach looks like in other industries.