Inside Our Process: Kickoff to Launch Without the Guesswork

Why we over-communicate the process

A $15,000-$30,000 branding or website engagement is a real commitment for a Seed-to-Series-B company, and we don't take that lightly. The founders and CMOs who hire us are usually juggling five other fires at the same time this project is happening. So here's what we've learned, project after project: the single biggest predictor of a smooth engagement isn't creative talent. It's whether both sides agree, in writing, on exactly what happens next at every stage. So we say it plainly, before the contract is even signed — no vague "we'll figure it out as we go."

Week 1 — Discovery

We start with structured interviews: you, your best sales rep, and two or three of your customers if you'll let us talk to them directly. We're not fishing for adjectives about your "vibe" — that's not useful to anyone. We're listening for the specific sentence a customer actually uses to describe why they chose you over the alternative. That sentence, almost every time, becomes the spine of the new positioning.

Weeks 2-3 — Strategy and direction

Before a single pixel moves, you get a positioning document and two genuinely distinct creative directions — never one safe option next to a throwaway nobody was ever going to pick. You choose a direction here, not a finished design. This is the stage where big changes are still cheap and fast to make, so we protect it and slow down here instead of rushing past it to get to the fun part.

Weeks 4-6 — Design and build

We build the chosen direction into a full system — brand identity, website, or both — component by component, with weekly checkpoints along the way instead of one big reveal at the very end. You'll never be more than a week away from seeing exactly where things stand. No surprises, no all-or-nothing final presentation where you're seeing everything for the first time and expected to react on the spot.

Week 6+ — Launch and handoff

You leave this with a live site your own team can edit without us, a brand system documented clearly enough that your next designer or agency could pick it up cold, and a short async Loom walking through how everything actually works day to day. We're not trying to make ourselves indispensable here — honestly, an agency that can't be replaced hasn't done its job right. Our goal is to hand you something that keeps working long after we're off the invoice.

What we ask of you

The projects that move fastest have one thing in common: a single decision-maker who can approve or reject direction quickly, instead of routing every choice through a committee. If that's not how your team works yet, tell us upfront — we'll build the timeline around it rather than getting stuck mid-project figuring it out.