Growth & Strategy
The thing holding you back is rarely the thing you're working on. We find it, then hand you the plan that shrinks the rest.
- Diagnosis
- Positioning
- Growth strategy
- Unit economics
Consulting studio / Est. 2024Austria / Remote worldwide
ZIRKSTUDIO
Not hired help. A second founding team.
Brand, paid, email, ecommerce, product, content. One team, looked at together. We find what's holding you back and fix it ourselves.
Start the application
No calendar link. You fill out the form, I read it myself, and if it looks like a fit I send you a time.
Trusted by founders
What we are
Ten years building across edtech, consumer and SaaS. The best operators from all of it, in one team, on your business.
Capabilities
Everything a founder actually needs, under one roof.
Paid Media
Most accounts stall the moment the return dips. We build creative testing into the buying, so spend scales and the numbers hold.
- Meta
- TikTok
- Creative testing
- Attribution
Email & Retention
You already paid to win these customers. Most founders never earn a second dollar from them. Flows first, campaigns second.
- Lifecycle flows
- Campaigns
- Segmentation
- SMS
- Win-back
Product & Engineering
Ideas prove nothing, shipped software does. Our own engineers build it, then iterate every week against what real users do.
- Discovery
- Design
- Engineering
- Internal tools
- Automation
Content & Creative
Performance marketing eats creative faster than you can make it. We produce shoots, edits and social at the volume the account needs.
- Photo & video
- Editing
- Social
- Ad creative
- UGC
Sales Systems
Leads aren't the problem, what happens after is. We build the machine, CRM, follow-up, scripts, coaching, so fewer leads make more money.
- Sales process
- CRM
- Outbound
- Coaching
The founder
Intro video to come: public/robin/intro.mp4
Meet Robin.
Intro·Pitching Tutorium on the Austrian version of Dragons' Den.
Over a decade across ad-tech, ed-tech and consumer brands. I found the best people I've ever worked with. Now they're pointed at yours.
Over the years I've worked with plenty of good agencies and consultants. I rarely had a problem with the work, I had a problem with how it worked. What I wanted was a team that felt like an extension of mine, led by someone a bit further down the road who'd done it before. Nobody was offering that, so I'm offering it.
I've started companies, sold one, sit on the board of another, and I'm scaling one now: intellijend, an automated marketing platform for musicians that hit a million in ARR in five months, bootstrapped. I've raised venture capital, pitched on the Austrian version of Dragons' Den, hired, fired, killed products and fought churn.
Which means whatever's breaking in your business, I've probably watched it break in one of mine first.
The developers, designers, creatives and strategists I met along the way mostly never left. They're the same team scaling intellijend today, and they're who you'd actually be working with. Not juniors you never meet.
Whatever's actually holding you back, I'm in it with you.
The difference
Founder-led
An account manager
You work with me directly. No handover after the pitch.
In-house
A chain of subcontractors
Our own developers, designers and strategists, on your work.
End to end
A deck and good luck
We find the real problem, then we do the work to fix it.
Beside you
A monthly check-in
In it with you for the whole run, not reviewing it from outside.
How we work
Six more months of the same number is the expensive option.
Two ways in. Same team behind both. Both start with the same question: what is actually costing you the most?
Four weeks
The sprint
The one thing costing you most, gone. Then you decide if you want us for the rest.
- A written diagnosis in week one
- The fix built and live by week four
- Handover your team can run without us
OngoingMost people
The team
You stop being the growth department. We hold the whole picture and build what matters.
- One agreed focus a month, no scope creep
- Engineers, designers, buyers and creatives on call
- One hour a week from you, that is the entire ask
I'm inside it with you, not reviewing your deck once a fortnight.
Start the applicationTen minutes. If I can't move your numbers, I'll say so.
What happens next
From application to the work.
No calendar link, no discovery sequence. You write it down, I read it, and we only talk if there is something real to talk about.
- 01
You apply.
You fill out the form. It's long on purpose: it tells me more than a call would.
- 02
I read it.
Every application, myself. If I can't move the needle I'll say so and tell you who can.
- 03
We talk.
If it looks like a fit I send you a link and we go through what I already saw in your answers.
- 04
A focus.
We agree on the real problem, what success looks like, and where we start.
- 05
The work.
Retainer basis, minimum three months. Direct line to me and the full team. Strategy and execution both.
It starts with ten minutes of writing.
Start the applicationThe work
Three businesses. All of them ours.
Not case studies borrowed from a client list. These are companies I built. The best operator from each one stayed, and those are the people who'd work on your business. Every capability above was built here first.
Growth & StrategyContent & CreativeSales Systems
A drink from whiteboard to supermarket shelves
Gillian Anderson's functional drinks range. I led product ideation and go-to-market: formulation, supply chain, packaging and pricing, through to national grocery listings across the UK. Negotiated and launched the Netflix and Sex Education partnership. Raised the round, hired the team, and built the thing to run without me, which it now does.
- Four SKUs from concept to national retail distribution
- Netflix franchise partnership: brand deal, creative and retail activation
- Venture capital raised
- Team hired and handed over, still operating, I'm off day to day
Asset needed
The Independent Artist Blueprint
public/work/indepenjend-book.jpg
Asset needed
indepenjend, second still
public/work/indepenjend-02.jpg
Email & RetentionContent & CreativePaid Media
We built the audience first, then the business on top of it
A media and commerce business for independent artists, built with Nico Jend, a producer and a good friend. We built a store around community, content and products with Nico at the front of it, and the book at the centre: how to grow your music and run your career as a business. We sold 100,000 copies of the book, which paid for everything after it.
- 100k email list: flows became the second largest revenue channel
- Multiple six figures in ad spend managed directly against store revenue
- 6,000-member Discord, the most active community in the category, and a 5k subscriber YouTube channel generating over 400k views
- Agency arm working with some of the industry's biggest artists and labels
- Team of ten across paid, content, email and community
Eventually the demand pointed somewhere obvious: build it as a product rather than sell it as a service. That's intellijend.
Asset needed
intellijend Instagram film
public/work/intellijend-reel.jpg
Product & EngineeringPaid MediaGrowth & Strategy
$1m ARR in five months. Bootstrapped, no outside capital.
What I spend most of my time on now. The demand we saw at indepenjend turned into software: an artist uploads a song and the platform builds and runs the campaigns for them, no agency, no media buyer. Our own engineers built it and ship to it weekly against real usage data. Two more products came off the same engine inside a year, and we're still building.
- $1m ARR in five months, bootstrapped
- 6,000+ artists on the platform, with over $1m in ad spend running through it every month
- rosterOS, the same engine built for labels and managers: 400 accounts in its first two months
- Concierge, the done-for-you arm, from side offer to standalone service line
Where it's going: the whole business of being a musician, in one place. Simple enough that an artist can run it alone, and powerful enough that they don't need anyone else to.
Start the application
Client work sits under NDA, so what is shown here is what we built ourselves.
Testimonials
The founders who know how I work.
All named, all reachable. Ask them yourself.
“I've known Robin for years and we're in touch constantly. The founder experience shows in how he thinks about growth, he explains things in a way that makes them obvious, and the team he's built is very impressive. He's also just enjoyable to work with, which counts for more than people admit. I'd recommend him to anyone.”
MLMoritz LechnerSerial entrepreneur, most recently New Fluence (acquired)Forbes 30u30 “I run most things past Robin before I commit to them. He's got a proper read on strategy generally and the online growth side specifically, and the advice is specific rather than the usual vague stuff. He's a real operator, works harder than anyone I know, and the team he's built behind him are seriously good. Easily worth the conversation.”
MPMoritz PailCo-founder FIZZ (YC S21), now senior developer at RampForbes 30u30 “I've known Robin for years, watched what he's built and met the team he's built it with. That's why I'd take his word on any part of what he offers here. He's the real deal, and I don't say that lightly.”
KKKonstantin KlinglerCo-founder, SeamflowForbes 30u30 “Robin's by far the best growth and product visionary I've worked with, someone who drives real results and I could genuinely spend 24/7 with.”
JCJosef ChenSerial entrepreneur, most recently KAIKAKU (acquired)Forbes 30u30 “You're not just getting execution. Robin's a founder himself and it shows in how he thinks about your business. The team he's built are exceptional. I'd point anyone in his direction.”
NBNathan BustamanteFounder & CEO, Symbiosis Markets
Headshots still to come, and Carlo Kobe and Federico still to be asked
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
Anything not covered here, ask directly. We answer straight.
Founders running online businesses with a small team, usually £15k to £150k a month, who need strategy and execution together. Sometimes the ceiling is growth or sales. Just as often it's the product, something that needs building or shipping and never does. We do both sides, with our own engineers. Pre-revenue happens occasionally, so make the case in the application rather than assuming it's a no.
- GrowthIt's stalled, and nothing you've tried has moved it.
- PaidIt works at your current spend and falls apart the moment you scale it.
- EmailA list you're not really mailing, and customers who buy once and never come back.
- ProductA site that converts, internal tooling to replace what your team does by hand, or the product itself, front end to back end.
- CreativeYou need more content than you can make, and the account is starved without it.
- Sales / StrategyNo system behind it, so it still depends on you to close.
Or all of it at once, which is the most common answer.
Client work sits under NDA, so what I can show you are the businesses I built myself. The founders below are named and reachable, so check with them directly if you want to. Anything else, we can discuss on the call.
Apply anyway. The six are what we do most, not a hard list. I read every application myself and I'll tell you honestly whether it's something I can help with. If it isn't, I'll normally point you at whoever can.
I work with very few clients, and some months none at all. If applications are open, I have room. When I don't, they close, and you won't find a form here at all. The reason it's that small a number is that I'm properly in it. I really enjoy sitting with a founder, working through their problems and watching the number move, so if I take you on it's hands-on and shaped around how you want to work rather than a template.
An agency sells you what you asked for. We look at the whole business instead: product, paid, email, content and sales, with real engineers on it, so a fix that needs building gets built rather than recommended. You're getting a team that treats your business like it's theirs, and because we've worked together for years, things move fast.
You're in a shared channel with me and whoever's on your account, so questions get answered the same day. One call a week, thirty to sixty minutes, looking at what moved and deciding what's next. Everything gets written down: the diagnosis, the monthly focus, and what we're claiming will happen.
Start here
Tell me what’s actually blocking you.
About ten minutes. Six short sections on your numbers, who is already helping, and what you have already tried. I read every one myself, and if it looks like a fit I come back with a time.
- hello@zirk.studio
- Based
- Austria / Remote worldwide
- Terms
- Retainer, minimum three months