Moon Partners and Rocks Partners: "AI will work its way into every process, but genuine human relationships aren't going anywhere"

Building and scaling an affiliate team is one of the most challenging tasks in the industry, yet it's rarely discussed openly. In this conversation, Maxim from Moon Partners and Tom from Rocks Partners share their hands-on perspective on what actually makes affiliate teams perform.

They cover the full spectrum: how management evolves as a project scales, how to delegate without creating teams of mindless executors, which metrics give an honest picture of performance, how to recognise and prevent burnout, and where the industry is heading in the coming years.

How does managing an affiliate team differ from managing teams in other digital areas?

Maxim: You're not just managing an internal team; you're also managing external relationships. Every manager on your team is the face of the program to a specific partner, and if communication breaks down somewhere, the partner walks rather than giving you feedback. That's why building processes alone isn't enough: you need to build a culture of working with people, both inside the team and beyond it.

How does the approach to team management change during the scaling phase of an affiliate project?

Tom: In the early days, you do everything yourself: you manage partners, handle conflicts, build processes. That's normal. But when the project starts to scale, the biggest trap is continuing to work hands-on instead of building a system.

The approach shifts entirely: you stop being the best manager on the team and become the person who develops the best managers. That's a different job, a different skill set, and a different mindset. Those who don't make that shift become the bottleneck holding back all growth.

What qualities do you consider key for a strong affiliate manager or team lead?

Maxim: The ability to build trust with partners and within the team alike. A manager who only tells partners what they want to hear to avoid upsetting them is a liability to the entire program. We need people who speak directly, think long-term, and take genuine ownership of their partners' results.

What helps retain strong partners and specialists within the team?

Tom: Money keeps people for a month. Everything else is about the environment. Strong people stay where they grow, where they're heard, and where responsibility is real, not just performed. It's the same with partners: they choose the people who keep their word, pay on time, and don't disappear after the contract is signed. Loyalty in an affiliate isn't a loyalty program; it's the quality of the relationship, day in and day out.

There's also one point I think is undervalued: every manager should have their own edge. Something that makes them memorable among the dozens of other people sending partners roughly the same message. It could be expertise in a specific geo, an unconventional communication style, or deep knowledge of a particular traffic source.

It doesn't matter what, as long as the partner walks away from that first conversation thinking: this person is different. In a competitive landscape, that's what creates personal loyalty, and in affiliate, personal loyalty holds better than any bonus.

How do you build a motivation system within an affiliate team?

Maxim: In my view, a motivation system isn't just about bonuses and perks (though they obviously account for a large part of what drives any employee, especially in a remote setting). It's also about the experience and knowledge a person can gain.

What's more, having worked across very different products, I can say that the financial component isn't always what tips the balance. Well-structured processes, solid products, and the space to make independent decisions can sometimes matter more in the long run.

How do you approach delegation and distribution of responsibility?

Tom: Delegation isn't "passing off a task"; it's transferring the logic behind it. The way I do it: the person needs to understand not just what to do, but why, and what a successful outcome looks like. Without that, delegation doesn't work: you just end up with executors who don't think.

In affiliate especially, it's crucial to give managers real autonomy in their partner relationships. They need to feel that these are their relationships, their responsibility. That's when the results change.

What matters more to you when hiring affiliate specialists: experience, market awareness, or flexibility?

Maxim: Flexibility, hands down. The affiliate market moves fast, and someone with an "I already know how this works" attitude will slow the whole team down. What I need is someone who can learn, asks the right questions, and isn't afraid to admit mistakes: that's the foundation. Everything else develops along the way.

What metrics and KPIs do you consider truly important?

Tom: Everyone looks at Revenue and NGR: that's table stakes. But I look deeper: partner retention, portfolio activity, traffic quality by cohort. A manager can put up impressive numbers off the back of a single partner, and that's a risk. A strong team is a stable, diversified portfolio that grows steadily rather than spiking.

Picking one or two metrics is impossible: any single number will be incomplete. For the business, I look at a combination: ROI (how much we've returned and when we expect to break even), Retention Rate as a forward-looking indicator, and Deposit-to-Spend as a safeguard against letting current RTP distort the picture.

Traffic is never uniform, and that's exactly why any single metric will always lie. ROI, Retention Rate, and Deposit-to-Spend together give you an honest picture.

How do you set up processes so the team consistently delivers results?

Maxim: Results shouldn't depend on any single person. We have clear metrics, a well-defined distribution of partners across managers, and a culture where problems get raised immediately, not after everything has already fallen apart.

How do you deal with burnout?

Tom: Affiliate is a high-pressure environment: deadlines, partners, numbers, competition. Burnout here isn't the exception; it's a systemic risk. I work on it at two levels. The first is prevention: clear expectations, realistic goals, and a culture where it's safe to say "I'm not coping" without fear.

The second is catching early signals before the person even recognises them in themselves. A drop in initiative, going through the motions, a loss of interest in outcomes: those are warning signs. I act on them right away and don't wait for things to become critical.

Tell us about a situation that became an important management experience for you.

Maxim: It's hard to single out one specific moment, since my experience has been incredibly varied: from building my own team from scratch to stepping into an existing project with established processes and people already in place. The most valuable lesson I've taken away is this: as hard as it can be, sometimes you need to set your ego aside, listen to your team, and make the right call rather than the easy one.

Tell us about a situation that became an important management experience for you.

Tom: In affiliate, there's a temptation to be "the nice guy": to handle partners gently, to patiently wait for activity to pick up. The problem is that being nice without results is just a waste of time and money. When I see that a partner isn't gaining traction with a specific manager, I move them to someone else. No lengthy discussions.

It looks harsh from the outside, but it works on two levels: the partner gets a fresh point of contact and often comes back to life, while the manager who lost the partner suddenly kicks into gear. It's the best teaching moment I know. If that still doesn't work, then the person simply isn't in the right role.

A manager isn't a mother hen who "hatched" a partner and now sits on them. My job as a leader is to make sure the system responds to a lack of results. And it does.

What trends in affiliate team management do you see in the coming years?

Maxim: The quality of communication and reliability will become the main competitive advantage. There are a lot of programs out there, conditions are evening out, and partners choose the people they actually enjoy working with.

AI will work its way into every process and significantly reshape operations, but genuine human relationships aren't going anywhere. And personalisation: partners increasingly don't want to be just another row in a CRM. They want a manager who truly understands their business.
 
What trends in affiliate team management do you see in the coming years?

Tom: First: specialization. The era of the generalist manager is fading; those who win are the ones who deeply understand a specific geo or traffic source.

Second: data at the core of every decision. Instinct is fine, but the winner is whoever can read the numbers and act on them. 

Third, and perhaps most importantly: the affiliate manager is becoming a trusted advisor to the partner, not just a point of contact. Whoever builds a team with that mindset will be head and shoulders above the market.