Find the channel before the runway ends
Startups don't fail from bad marketing. They fail from spending twelve months on the wrong channel. We help you find the right one fast — and tell you when to stop.
Startups & Scale-ups benchmarks
- Concept to App Store
- 11 wkConcept to App Store
- Users in year one
- 104kUsers in year one
- Day-30 retention
- 38%Day-30 retention
- Avg. App Store rating
- 4.8★Avg. App Store rating
Drawn from Digital Squad engagements with startups. Your realistic range comes out of the audit.
Startups & Scale-ups clients
What holds startups back
The same four constraints show up in nearly every startups & scale-ups engagement we start.
You're testing too many channels shallowly
Six channels at $2k each teaches you nothing about any of them. One channel at $12k produces a real answer.
Building features nobody asked for
Every week spent on an unvalidated feature is runway spent. Scope discipline is the highest-ROI decision a startup makes.
No instrumentation, so no learning
Without activation and retention tracking from day one, you can't tell whether a channel is working or whether the product is.
Hiring a marketing team too early
A full in-house team before you know which channel works burns money on salaries while you're still guessing.
What we do differently for startups
Sequential channel testing
One channel at a time, funded properly, with a pre-agreed kill criterion. Ambiguous results are the most expensive outcome.
Ruthless MVP scoping
We cut scope to the smallest thing that proves value. One client shipped 9 of 80 planned features and hit 104k users in year one.
Instrument before you launch
Product analytics, activation tracking, and cohort retention wired in with v1 — because retrofitting them costs a quarter you don't have.
Fractional squad, not headcount
Access a full growth team without the salary commitment until you know which roles you actually need in-house.
Services that move the needle for startups.
We'll recommend the smallest set that unblocks your actual constraint — not the biggest bundle.
Startups & Scale-ups results, in detail.
Full case studies with the numbers, the mistakes, and what we'd do differently.
Startups & Scale-ups questions, answered straight.
Usually not for growth marketing. Pre-revenue, your constraint is product and customer discovery, not distribution. Product build work makes sense; demand generation rarely does.
How each service works for startups
Let's talk about your growth constraint.
A free 30-minute teardown built around how startups actually grow. You keep the findings whether or not we work together.