Growth-as-a-Service ✳ Prague ✳ Est. 2022
Growth is a service.
Order it.
We're an independent go-to-market agency from Central Europe where marketing, sales and technology actually pull in one direction.
Fire the pile of suppliers. One senior team handles strategy, performance, outbound, RevOps and creative, for B2B and B2C alike. Everything we do is evidence-based. No 50-year-old frameworks.
Brands our team has worked on. Some under Daniel & Friends, some in previous engagements.
We won't hang certificates or awards here; what our clients say above tells you more.
Advertising awards are like participation medals. They shine nicely, and no customer ever bought because of one. Our specialists have collected drawers full of them over their careers, which is exactly why we won't wave them in your face. We'd rather focus on your revenue than on trophies for the cabinet.
No. 01 · Your situation
Does any of this sound familiar?
Most of our client conversations start with one of these lines:
I work in leadership
- “We invest tens of thousands a month in marketing and nobody can tell me what we got back.” Performance
- “We’ve spent six months looking for a head of marketing. The good ones either aren’t interested or want more than we can pay.” Senior team
- “We want to expand abroad. We know our home market, but over there nobody knows us.” Go-to-market
- “We’ve paid for AI for a year and I still can’t see it in the numbers.” AI & automation
I work in marketing
- “There are two of us for all of marketing, me and a junior. We’re supposed to know everything, and we can’t tell what actually matters for us.” Strategy
- “Sales says our leads are junk. We say nobody calls them.” RevOps & CRM
- “The budget is flat, the targets keep going up, and leadership asks what they’re getting for it.” Performance
- “Ask ChatGPT and it recommends our competitors. It doesn’t know we exist.” Content & GEO
I work in sales
- “Our forecast is a gut feeling, and we miss it every quarter.” RevOps & CRM
- “Reps sell for two hours a day. The rest goes on hunting for contacts and filling in the CRM.” Outbound & sales
- “Deals drag on for a year, ten people decide, and we know one of them.” ABM
- “Referrals dried up. Now we have to find new customers ourselves.” Outbound & sales
I work in IT & data
- “We need a new CRM and can’t tell which one is right for us.” RevOps & CRM
- “We have to get off our old CRM and we’re scared of losing data on the way.” Migration
- “Our systems don’t talk to each other, so someone keeps retyping data by hand.” AI & automation
- “The same customer exists in three versions and nobody knows which one is right.” RevOps & CRM
Don’t want to wait six months for a hire? That is why we work as a team on demand.
Didn't find yourself? Describe your situation and we'll tell you how we'd tackle it.
No. 02 · Services
Fifteen disciplines.
One team.
One point of accountability. No ping-pong between vendors. Each service spells out exactly what we deliver.
Go-to-market (GTM) strategy
Launch without burning cash. Positioning, pricing, channels and your first repeatable sales.
Detail 02Marketing strategy
Evidence-based strategy per Binet, Field and Ehrenberg-Bass. We know where to look for growth and what's actually worth investing in.
Detail 03Growth & performance
Meta, Google, TikTok and Amazon. We optimise campaigns for revenue and profit, the numbers you'll find in your P&L.
Detail 04ABM & intent marketing
We spot the companies wrestling right now with a problem you solve, and reach them before they start shopping the competition.
Detail 05Outbound & sales
Cold email and LinkedIn that don't read like spam. The right company, the right person, the right reason to reach out right now.
Detail 06RevOps & CRM
We connect marketing, sales and data so leads don't slip through the cracks and everyone knows the next step. HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive.
Detail 07Media planning & buying
Online, RTB, OOH, TV and radio. One plan, no overlaps or hidden margins.
Detail 08Branding & websites
Product + Personality = Brand. Identity, UX/UI and websites that sell.
Detail 09Content & production
Photo, video, 3D, copywriting CZ/EN. Content that humans and AI search engines find.
Detail 10Creative & idea making
A big idea, a creative concept and art direction. We make work the market still remembers long after it cleared the approval round.
Detail 11CX & customer experience
Customer journey mapping and CX management. So customers keep coming back and refer you on.
Detail 12PR & public affairs
Reputation, crisis comms, disinformation monitoring and government relations. For when it matters who trusts you.
Detail 13Political campaigns
Election campaigns from strategy to execution. Modern, data-driven and free of political folklore. Our people have helped get candidates into local councils, the Senate and city halls.
Detail 14AI & automation
Custom LLM integrations, AI agents, chatbots and predictive models. AI that saves hours of work and speeds up decisions.
Detail 15Digital transformation
Processes, cloud, ERP and data infrastructure. Change people accept and get behind.
Detail
“If you try to sell everything, you become nothing.”
Our specialisation lives in people: everyone works in one discipline, and each project gets only the ones it needs. No one learns on your budget.
And when we're not the best at something on the market? We'll tell you, and point you to someone who is. Free. We know almost everyone here.
No. 03 · How it works?
From the first call
to real growth
Intro call
30 minutes. You tell us what hurts, we tell you what to do about it and whether we're the right people for the job.
FreeDiscovery phase
We go through your data, tech stack, marketing and sales. We look at the whole funnel and find where you're losing customers and money, and what's worth fixing first.
1–3 weeksPlan
One or two pages. Priorities, budget, owners and the metrics we'll measure results by.
Fixed priceExecution & report
Our team, your team, or a mix. Every month a report in business language: what we did, what it earned, what's next.
HourlyNo. 04 · Approach
We plan by marketing science. Gut feel is useless.
We talk about the four metrics your board cares about: penetration, market share, revenue, profit. You can't book likes into the P&L.
One more thing: advertising is often the least interesting thing we'll bring you. Pricing, distribution and product move the numbers more, they just make a worse pitch.
Our creative isn't a hunch either. It's built on the research into human behavior, on what Kahneman, Ariely, Cialdini and Zajonc found out about how people decide. A pretty ad no one remembers and no one buys from is wasted budget.
That's why we test creative before we spend a single crown on media. Predictive AI tools like Neurons, Attention Insight and Realeyes are trained on eye-tracking data. The models predict where people will look and what they will miss. So we find the weak spot in a creative before launch, when a designer fixes it in an hour, and you never pay for it in media spend.
Three numbers we build on
01 · Budget
How much to brand, how much to sales
the B2C default
02 · Return
What one dollar in advertising earns
03 · Growth
Invest above your share and you grow
“Evidence over vibes.”
Pillar 1
Mental availability
Being recalled in the buying situation. Distinctive, consistent brand assets and broad reach.
Pillar 2
Physical availability
Being easy to find and buy. Distribution, visibility, a frictionless purchase.
Pillar 3
Penetration
Brands grow mainly through new customers. And you have to keep winning them, because a share of your existing ones is always drifting away.
What stands behind those words? Read our manifesto →
No. 05 · Comparison
Us vs. the agency norm
| Daniel & Friends | Typical agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Reply to an enquiry | Within 24 hours. And we mean it. | “We'll get back to you soon.” |
| Pricing | Public on the website. Every hour itemised on the invoice. | “It depends.” A real number only after several meetings. |
| Who works on your account | The same seniors from the first call through delivery. | Seniors at the pitch, juniors on the account. |
| The plan | The first 5 weeks, concretely. Then we iterate on the data. | An annual plan that by March is explaining what should have worked in January. |
| Reporting | A handful of metrics that actually connect to your business. | 30 slides of impressions, clicks and engagement. |
| When we're not the best fit | We recommend someone better. No commission. | They take it on anyway, then go hunting for specialists. |
What to watch out for with any agency?
- → Who exactly will work on the project after signing, and how often will the seniors you met at the pitch be involved?
- → Will you get a price breakdown by piece of work, or one number and an explanation that it depends?
- → Does the media buy include commissions or markups? And will you see them in the report?
- → Will the ad accounts, domain and analytics be in your name, or the agency's?
- → How long is the notice period once the partnership stops working?
- → Does the reporting show impact on revenue and profit, or mostly impressions, clicks and engagement?
- → Do you know exactly what you are paying for and how much time each piece of work takes?
- → Is the strategy built on your market and your data, or on a playbook from the last client?
- → If part of the work goes outside the team, who will actually do it, and will you know in advance?
- → How fast will you get an answer once the contract is signed?
- → What happens when the numbers don't add up? Will the agency name it first, or wait until you ask?
- → Is the recommendation based on data about your customers, or on the taste of the people in the meeting room?
- → How stable will the team be over the year, and how many times will you re-explain your business?
- → Can the agency say it can't do something, or that a project makes no economic sense?
Feel free to ask us the same questions.
No. 06 · Who do we work best with?
We're not for everyone.
By design.
Companies that want to change something for real and can make room for it, in the budget and in the calendar.
And one more thing: we'll tell you things that aren't easy to hear. When a product has no market, a campaign doesn't add up economically, or the best move is to hold off on marketing for a while, we say so. Some projects we turn down after the first meeting. A few clients have shown us the door for that same honesty. We can live with that. Our job is to protect your result, even when it isn't a comfortable conversation.
Established companies
$1M+ in annual revenue
Your business works, and you suspect marketing and sales have more potential than you're getting from them today. We find where growth is stalling and start there, even if it turns out not to be marketing.
Startups
Post-seed or Series A in Europe or the US
You've convinced the investors. Now it's the market's turn. We build your go-to-market, repeatable sales and a system that can carry the growth. We've been through this phase with companies many times.
Ambitious SMBs
Quality has a price. And it pays you back.
You're SMB in size but your ambition reaches much higher. You know good strategy and craft end up being the cheapest route to growth.
Mid-enterprise & enterprise
Managers with a mind of their own
We don't expect procurement, compliance or sign-off to disappear in a large company. What we need is someone with the mandate to move the project, who can win support for it internally and say where the real limits are. We can survive a round of sign-off. Corporate mediocrity we're allergic to.
Shall we sit down, or save each other time?
✓ We'll get along if…
- you want to grow and can handle an honest conversation about the numbers
- your margins leave room for a senior team and quality work
- you can decide without a third committee and a sixth round of sign-off
- you treat marketing as an investment with an expected return
✗ We'll save each other time if…
- you're looking for “PPC management for $200 a month”
- you pick agencies by the lowest bid
- you mainly want an agency that agrees with everything you propose
- you need to fix in a fortnight a problem that took two years to build
No. 07 · References
Clients who said yes
Some projects we can show publicly; for the rest we send anonymised context. What speaks for us are the brands the team has worked with, and the projects you can ask for.
Want a reference from your own industry? Tell us what you are solving and we will prepare and send an anonymised case study from a matching project. With concrete numbers, just without the client name.
Drop us a line and we will get back to you within 24 hours.
No. 08 · Team
Daniel & friends
Every brief needs a slightly different team. So around a senior core we assemble specialists to fit what the project actually has to solve. We work with people who average 8+ years of experience, can take ownership and bring their own initiative. That keeps the team small where small is enough, and broad where the project needs more disciplines. Friends are our colleagues, our clients, and the people we call when we need someone even better.
CEO & Head of Strategy
Daniel Votruba
10+ years in marketing, agencies and tech. Has worked with startups and Fortune 500 companies alike.
Behind Daniel stand 70+ specialists across several countries and a network of partner studios we assemble precisely for your brief.
- Pavel C.MediaPilsner Urquell, Mondelez, Tchibo
- Charlie I.Art DirectorRed Bull, Mastercard, Riot Games
- Jiří K.PR & PAMeta, Amazon, Wolt
We build our own team and buy media through a network of partner studios, publishing houses and media agencies: FORECOM, Zircon Tree, Holomotion Media, Seznam.cz, CNC, VLM and many more. Meet the partners →
No. 09 · Pricing
Prices on the website.
Yes, really.
Almost no agency in this market publishes prices. We do, because “it depends” is not an answer you can budget with.
Consulting with the CEO
$160 / hourA one-off consultation directly with Daniel Votruba: strategy, second opinion, campaign or CRM audit. Book a slot, pay by card, done. No strings.
Project & team
⌀ $90 / hourblended rateStrategy, website, campaign, data or a complete project. Our senior team's average blended rate is $90/h. You get a quote with scope, hours and budget within a week.
Growth team
Monthly feeby scopeA senior growth team matched to what your company needs right now: strategy, performance, CRM, outbound, data and creative. We can scale the scope up or down as results and priorities shift.
Why this rate, exactly?
A higher rate often comes out cheaper: an experienced person needs fewer hours, spots a dead end sooner and needs less management. Compare the total cost of the work and its result.
Want to know more?
For context: according to this year's hourly-rate survey by the Czech Association of Communication Agencies (AKA), an account manager at Czech agencies runs around $120/h, an art director over $140/h, and a creative director close to $230/h. Those are rates for single roles. Our blended rate of $90/h already includes a whole senior team. So yes: we're still quite cheap.
For long-term engagements, a monthly fee makes more sense. We set the scope by your priorities, the disciplines you need and the team's accountability, and we adjust it as the business moves. We still track hours, but they're not the only thing we steer the work by.
Now and then we work on value-based pricing with clients. VoxComm, the global agency association co-founded by EACA, pushes the same way. Its guide Redesigning the Agency Value Model urges agencies to move from selling hours to solutions measured by outcomes. We agree, so on bigger engagements we can also price by impact.
No. 10 · Questions
Straight answers
What is growth-as-a-service?
Instead of piecing together several agencies and freelancers, you get one senior growth team. Strategy, performance, outbound, CRM, data and creative under one lead and one monthly fee. The team's size flexes with what your company needs right now. You don't pay for a big agency's overhead and its fancy open-plan office.
Do you work with B2B and B2C?
Yes. Our team has delivered over 750 projects across 15+ countries in B2C (e-commerce, FMCG, real estate), B2B (SaaS, industry, services) and B2G. The recipe differs; the science behind it doesn't. In a sector we don't know, we start by working out how it makes money and where it loses it.
How much does it cost?
A one-off consultation directly with the CEO is $160/hour. Our senior team's work and services are billed at a blended rate that averages $90/h; every invoice shows the breakdown, no bundling. The first 30-minute call is free.
What makes you different?
We bring marketing, sales and technology together in one team. Seniors lead the projects, we show prices and hours openly, and we decide by the data. The biggest difference shows once we work together, which is why on the first call we'd rather dig into your specific problem than read out another list of our strengths.
Will you tell me things I don't want to hear?
Yes. When we see that a product has no market, that a campaign will only burn budget, or that a partnership won't pay off for you yet, we say it out loud. Sometimes we turn a client down on the first call. You're not paying us to nod along, you're paying for results, and results sometimes start with an uncomfortable truth. How many agencies ever told you to kill a product?
What results does the team have behind it?
Over 750 projects across 15+ countries in B2C, B2B and B2G, and more than $19M in revenue generated for clients through our services. Some projects we can show publicly; for the rest we send anonymised context and numbers from your industry.
How fast do you respond?
Within 24 hours. And the first opinion is free, even if it's "you don't need us".
No. 11 · Blog
Latest from the blog
Marketing, sales, RevOps, GTM and CRM. What the data actually says and what's just noise. No fluff, sources linked.
ChatGPT Ads are live: how to advertise before your competitors
Real advertiser CPCs, a ninety-day case study, five measurement mistakes that surface on the invoice, and what the platform still lacks.
Marketing scienceMeta’s artificial brain predicts how people react to ads
What Meta’s brain model can do, why you can’t sell it, and how companies test ads before they go live. With a map of forty companies.
MediaPlatforms are lying to you about performance. And you still believe them.
Incrementality over platform-reported ROAS, the impact of AI Overviews on paid search, and eight channels from Google Ads to Reddit. Backed by Haus, SEC filings, StatCounter and BrightEdge.
Sales & RevOpsA good feeling about a rep’s pipeline won’t pay the invoices
Pipeline of 30M, a target of 12M, a forecast of 8.6M. The whole calculation step by step, four risk categories instead of percentages, and five places to find the missing 3.4M.
No. 12 · Contact
What would have to happen for next year to be your best growth year yet?
That is exactly what the first call is for. 30 minutes: you tell us what hurts, we tell you what to do about it. No meter runs on the first meeting.
$19M+ generated for clients · 750+ projects · reply within 24 h
- E-mail: daniel@dfriends.cz
- Phone: +420 722 658 771
Prefer writing to a human instead of a form? Understood. Daniel reads his own e-mail.
Chances are an agency has burned you before. All the more reason to get it right this time.