[Startup]

Startups don’t need an agency. They need a senior team that thinks like founders.

Limited cash, rapid decision-making, and a relentless focus on unit economics. We work as an extension of the founding team, not as an external vendor operating on monthly SLAs.

Why Startups Fail with Traditional Agencies

The Startup Model

The traditional agency operating model—account managers, approval workflows, monthly deliverables, and rigid scopes—works for mature companies that have time, structure, and internal redundancy. In a startup environment, that same model creates friction, slows down decision-making, and often leads to relationships that burn out after six months, leaving both sides dissatisfied.

What a Startup Actually Needs

A startup needs a different approach. Fast decisions instead of hierarchical approval processes. Rapid experimentation instead of quarterly planning cycles. Senior consultants who work directly with founders instead of account managers acting as intermediaries. Flexible investments instead of rigid retainers. Complete transparency about what is working and what is not, rather than reassuring presentations filled with green KPI dashboards.

A Model Built with Founders

Working with startups requires a different operating model. We built ours by working alongside enough founders to understand exactly where traditional approaches tend to fail.

What We Actually Do

We work with early-stage startups, growth-stage scale-ups, and corporate ventures that operate with a startup mindset (innovation labs, new ventures, and spin-offs). The scope varies significantly depending on the stage of the company: a pre-seed startup typically needs foundational setup; a Series A company wants to accelerate acquisition while maintaining healthy unit economics; a Series B company is focused on international expansion supported by scalable operational processes. Our operating model sits between advisory and execution. For an early-stage startup, paying a full monthly retainer often makes little sense for activities that founders can still manage themselves. Instead, we work with modular engagement models: foundational setup (tracking, GA4, GTM, CRM fundamentals, and a minimum viable attribution framework) delivered as a fixed-fee project during the first 60–90 days; growth experimentation through a lightweight retainer focused on 2–3 priority channels with a weekly testing cadence; scaling advisory through recurring strategic sessions with founders or marketing leaders, without unnecessary operational overhead. The goal is not to maximize agency revenue from a startup. The goal is to build a relationship that evolves alongside the company—starting with foundational consulting and, ideally, growing into a more structured operational partnership as the startup reaches the appropriate level of business maturity.

The Objectives We Measure

For startups, the traditional agency KPIs (ROAS, CPL, CTR) are useful but insufficient. The metrics that truly drive founder decisions are different: business model validation, learning velocity, the sustainability of unit economics, and the ability to scale when the time is right. The KPIs we monitor for startups include:

Customer acquisition payback period, a critical metric for determining how much cash can be sustainably invested in growth
CAC trend over time segmented by cohort, to understand whether unit economics improve or deteriorate as the business scales
Early LTV indicators estimated from 30-, 60-, and 90-day retention when 12-month data is not yet available
Learning velocity: the number of tests executed, hypotheses validated or disproven, and decisions driven by data
Channel viability: early identification of channels that can scale and those that are unlikely to ever become scalable
Burn efficiency: the relationship between marketing spend and newly acquired customers, segmented by channel

The first project we undertake with a startup is almost always the same: clearly defining what needs to be validated over the next 90 days and identifying the binary metric that will determine whether the experiment has succeeded. Without that clarity, even the best media strategy becomes noise.

The Startup We Work Best With

We work best with startups that share a number of common characteristics. Founders are directly involved in marketing decisions, because at the early stage marketing cannot be fully delegated—the founder needs first-hand insight into how the product is evolving in relation to the market. The business model is reasonably clear, at least at the hypothesis level, even if it still needs validation. There is some capital available for growth experiments, even if modest (from a few thousand euros per month at pre-seed stage to more structured budgets after funding rounds). And there is a willingness to embrace honest feedback: they want to know when a channel is not working, even if they have already invested in it.

We are less effective with startups looking for “the agency that does everything” as a substitute for the absence of an internal marketing function. Marketing at the early stage is too strategic to be fully outsourced. We can act as the first senior team supporting a founder, but we cannot replace the person who will eventually build and lead the company’s marketing culture as it grows. We make this clear from the very first conversations.

The Channels and Expertise We Work With

Our approach is based on a “minimum viable marketing stack”: we start with the essentials and build progressively, avoiding the over-engineering that often occurs when agencies sell enterprise-level setups to pre-seed startups. Foundational setup including GA4, GTM, a basic CRM (HubSpot Free or Pipedrive), and conversion tracking focused on critical business metrics. Performance channel testing across 2–3 priority channels selected according to the business model (typically Meta + Google for B2C, LinkedIn + Google for B2B, and often Google + content marketing for SaaS businesses). Foundational SEO when the expected time-to-result aligns with the company’s runway. Content and thought leadership when the founder can credibly become a voice within the industry. Ongoing advisory covering strategic decisions related to channel mix, budget allocation, expansion initiatives, and the development of the internal marketing function. As startups move into the scale-up phase, the scope of work gradually becomes more similar to that of mature B2B or B2C organizations. However, the operating model retains the speed of iteration and transparency that define startup partnerships, even as budgets and teams grow significantly.

Next Steps for Founders Looking to Explore a Startup Growth Journey with Us

Initial 30–45 minute founder call to understand your stage, business model, runway, key assumptions to validate, and where support can create the greatest impact

Modular proposal focused on a short-term scope (90 days), prioritized around the most critical validation milestone rather than a rigid annual retainer

Foundational setup as the first fixed-fee project, ensuring a measurable baseline is in place before any significant spending decisions are made

Structured growth experiments with learning velocity as the primary KPI during the first 90 days, before any discussion about an ongoing retainer engagement