Before You Ask Finance for Rome, Find Three Partners Worth the Trip.

Start with the request, not the reasons.

Write down three partner types or companies you'd want to meet in person this year, and next to each, why. Not "networks." The kind of network: one that runs consumer offers to its own traffic, in the markets your CMO keeps mentioning, at a payout your margin can carry. Not "affiliates." The kind that would actually send new customers, chosen because their traffic fits your product, not because they signed up. Maybe a marketplace, if your offer should be listed somewhere affiliates browse and isn't.

If you can fill in three lines with a straight face, you have the beginning of a trip worth proposing. If you can't, you've saved yourself a memo, and that's a result too.

That's the whole test. Everything else on this page is about running it against a real list rather than a poster.

Why the test matters more than the memo

Everyone in this job has had the thought, usually with the Slack window closed: the event can be good and still be impossible to justify internally. And the reason is almost never the event. It's that the request went upward as "networking", which is a word that means nothing to anyone who signs budgets.

But here's what's easy to forget when you've spent a year scrubbing that word out of requests: the memo is the last step, not the first. What you actually want isn't approval. It's a partner who produces, a network whose terms you finally understand, a conversation that's been stalled since March moving forward. Approval is just what lets you go and get those. Sell yourself the trip first. Then sell finance.

A growth lead wrote the version of this that leadership recognises: "Pre event outreach seems to be the only thing that leadership actually understands, since you can point to meetings booked not just conversations had." That's true, and it starts with knowing who you'd request.

Check the three against who's confirmed

Affiliate Grand Slam is in Rome from 2 to 5 November at Fiera Roma. It's a performance-marketing event, which for a program lead means the floor is heavy with the partner types you spend the year trying to reach.

Two contrasting examples make "three names" concrete. ClickBank and Digistore are marketplaces: if one of your three is "get the offer in front of affiliates who browse and choose", the conversation there is about listing requirements, offer fit and commercial model. MaxWeb and TerraLeads are networks that run consumer offers to their own traffic and partners: if one of your three is "a network that would take the offer to markets we don't reach", the conversation is about suitable offers, supported markets, payout expectations and what a launch requires from you. Those are different conversations with different preparation, and it's worth knowing which you're going for.

Also confirmed: MGID and Outbrain on native, TikTok, Meta and Google exhibiting with staff (a person to put a question to, not automatically a partnerships decision-maker), PlatformPay on payments. On stage, brand-side operators including Marisha Lakhiani of Mindvalley and Nick Shackelford of Brez.

None of that is a promise that the account director you've been chasing will be in the building. A company on the list is a research lead. What the list gives you is the first component of the AGS Rome 2026 Welcome Kit for Growth & Affiliate Teams: who you could meet and why they matter, by partner type, with roles named where they're confirmed. Run your three against it. See what holds.

What you could get done, honestly

The second part of the kit is an opportunity map, and it's deliberately an agenda rather than a list of outcomes. Recruiting affiliates in person. Discussing offer distribution with a network. Qualifying a partner you've only ever seen as a logo: who are their customers, which markets, what traffic, how would you both know it's working. Renegotiating terms with someone whose face you've never seen. Hearing from operators on stage what's breaking at other companies.

A growth lead wrote, of events generally: "You also meet the humans behind the logos, which makes future outreach and negotiations dramatically easier." That's the plain version of why the trip exists. Not because email is dead. Because some conversations are stalled through email alone, and a room with several relevant companies in it lets you move several of them in four days.

Then the cost, before the memo

Here's where most requests go wrong: they price the ticket and forget the trip. The kit's Best Value for Money Guide is built for the step between "I have three names" and "I'm asking for money". It compares the passes against what you're actually going for, shows exactly what each tier includes, and lays out the whole trip budget: pass, flights, hotel, transport, the incidentals, and the days out of the office. It also gives you a shortlist worksheet, so the three names become a row each with the question you'd ask and the next step you'd want.

Cost per meeting belongs in there as a planning forecast: estimated total trip cost divided by a realistic number of qualified meetings, labelled as an estimate. After the event, it becomes actual cost over meetings actually held. Requests, accepted bookings, meetings and deals are four different things, and a memo that keeps them separate is a memo finance trusts.

The memo, when you're ready

The fourth component is the Justification Memo, with the event facts already filled in: dates, venue, the confirmed roster by partner type, the tier comparison and prices. You add your three names, your travel costs, your objectives and assumptions, and what you'll report back. It's ready to customise, not to forward untouched, because nobody at AGS knows your CFO.

And the sequence after approval, in plain words: once you've purchased a pass and meeting access is available, you request the meetings you want. Accepted requests form your itinerary. That's what you'll report on, and that's what "meetings booked, not conversations had" actually means.

Write your three

Then get the kit and check them. If the three hold up against the confirmed list, price the trip with the guide, and decide whether it deserves an internal proposal. If they don't, you've reached a decision without spending anything but ten minutes.