I am YouTube Certified expert and have consistently passed the annual renewal exam for the past three years.
Many of the people who want to start a network find they cannot get any assistance from the YouTube Partner Managers. The problem you have is one of communication; lower-tier employees like Partner Managers don’t care if you start a network or not and therefore have no incentive to want to help you. Simply put, you’re communicating to the wrong people. Worse, the senior level managers you need to talk to rarely attend the sort of events that channel creators do. This makes it more difficult to network with them and get on their radar.