Hey everyone, I’m at a point where I need to scale beyond my local market, and I keep hitting the same wall: finding partners I can actually trust to execute on campaigns across borders.
Right now, I’m managing projects for Russian-rooted brands that want to hit the US market, and the process has been… rough. I’ve tried cold emails, LinkedIn outreach, even referrals from friends. But every time, I end up spending weeks just figuring out if someone’s actually competent or just talks a good game.
I know there are agencies out there doing this kind of work—connecting creators and brands across markets—but I’m not sure how to evaluate them without committing to a full project first. What should I actually be looking for? Are there any red flags I should watch for early on? And more importantly, once you find someone who seems solid, how do you structure that first collaboration so it doesn’t blow up halfway through?
I’m also curious about people who’ve used partnership networks or hubs to find collaborators. Does that actually save time, or are you just getting more mediocre options?
What’s been your actual experience with vetting international partners?
I’ve been through this cycle more times than I’d like to admit. Here’s what actually changed the game for me: I stopped treating the first collaboration like a huge commitment. Instead, I’d propose a smaller project—maybe a 2-3 week UGC pilot or a micro-influencer collab—just to see how they operate. You learn more about someone’s work style in two weeks than in six months of calls.
On vetting, I ask three specific things: Can they show me a completed project similar to what I need? Have they actually worked with creators/brands from my partner’s market before? And crucially—do they have someone on their team who speaks the language and understands the cultural nuances? That last one gets overlooked constantly.
The red flag that always gets me is when partners oversell and underdeliver. If someone’s promising you the world in the discovery call, they’re usually covering for something. The good ones are honest about what they can and can’t do.
For the structure piece—I’d recommend a simple retainer or project fee for the first few months, not a revenue split. Revenue splits require way too much trust upfront, and honestly, they create weird incentives. You both end up fighting over who gets credit for results instead of actually collaborating.
I also built a basic partner scorecard: responsiveness, quality of output, communication clarity, and follow-through on timeline. I literally score them on each after the first project. If they don’t hit at least a 7/10, I don’t double down.
About partnership hubs—I’ve used a couple, and the screening is better than cold outreach, but you still have to do work. The benefit is that the people on there are at least interested in cross-border work, so you’re not starting from zero. But honestly? The vetting process is still on you.
This is a great question because it hits on something most agencies won’t admit: the real cost of international partnerships isn’t just monetary—it’s the operational overhead. Before you even evaluate a partner, I’d suggest defining what success actually looks like. Are you looking to offload execution? Expand your service offerings? Access a new creator network?
Once you know that, you can be much more surgical about who to approach. A creative agency and a data-focused performance team need very different skillsets, and conflating the two is where partnerships break down.
For vetting specifically, I’d add one more thing to Alex’s list: ask for references, but don’t just take the ones they volunteer. Ask for a difficult project reference—someone they’ve worked with on something that didn’t go perfectly. How they handled that reveals character.
From the creator side, I can tell you what makes me trust an agency partner vs. running from them. If they can’t clearly explain what they want before we start, I’m already worried. But the ones who say ‘here’s the brief, here’s what we’re looking for, here’s the timeline, here’s the budget’—those people have their act together.
Also, payment terms matter way more than people talk about. If a partner agency is sketchy about upfront payment or wants net-60 payment terms for a new relationship, that’s a yellow flag for me. It usually means they have cash flow problems or they’re not serious.
Here’s what I look for from a data perspective: Ask them how they track campaign performance and what metrics they actually care about. This will tell you if they’re thinking about business outcomes or just vanity metrics.
I also ask for historical performance data from similar campaigns—not exact client names if there’s an NDA, but anonymized results. If they can’t or won’t share that, it suggests either they don’t track properly or results weren’t as good as they claim.
One more thing: ask how they handle underperforming campaigns. Do they have a process to optimize mid-stream? Or do they just let it run and hope for the best? The way they answer that question is incredibly revealing.
I’ve been on both sides of this—looking for partners and being approached as a potential partner. Honestly, the biggest waste of time for me has been with people who don’t clearly define what they want upfront. Vague expectations = vague results.
What’s worked: I ask potential partners about their last failed partnership and what they learned. Everyone who’s worth working with has had a failure. How they talk about it—whether they blame the other side or take ownership—tells you everything. The good ones are honest about their part in it.